ASA Adjudication on British Sky Broadcasting Ltd

Ad

Teleshopping channel Sky Travel advertised various holiday packages in the USA and invited viewers to telephone a number with the prefix 0870 to book. The presenter said "Calls are charged at the national rate which is just 8p per minute for BT customers; charges from other operators may vary."

Issue

A viewer believed that ads needed to state the maximum price for calling a number with the prefix 0870 number using a BT line and were misleading for using the description "national rate."  He cited a previous ASA adjudication on a non-broadcast ad that had instructed advertisers not to use the description "national rate" because most UK callers now paid more for calls to non-geographic 0870 numbers than for calls to geographic national destinations.

Response

Sky Travel Shop supplied details of pricing information from BT's website, which described numbers with the 0870 prefix as "National NTS" and stated a maximum call rate of 7.91 pence per minute for BT customers.  They said they therefore did not believe it was misleading for them to use the description "national rate" in their own ad.  They said they did not believe they were required to include pricing information for telephone numbers that were not premium rate but had chosen to do so in this case to provide helpful and accurate information for viewers who might be unaware of the likely cost of calling numbers with the prefix 0870.

Assessment

Complaint not upheld

The ASA noted that the presenter's wording that calls were charged at 8p per minute for BT customers but that charges from other operators might vary was factually accurate.  Because most UK callers now paid more for calls to non-geographic 0870 numbers than for calls to geographic national destinations, we considered that the term "national rate" was inaccurate; we asked Sky Travel to avoid using the term in future.  We considered, however, that because the ad made the actual financial cost of the calls clear, the inaccurate use of the term "national rate" was not, on this occasion, likely to be materially misleading to viewers.

We investigated the ad under CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1 (Misleading advertising) and 5.3.1 (Accurate pricing) but did not find it in breach.

Action

The advertising must not be broadcast again in its current form.