ASA Adjudication on Virgin Media Ltd

Ad

A national press ad, for Virgin Media, was headed "The real deal. Free TV with your phone line". Below, it stated "£11 a month with BT gets you line rental. £11 a month with Virgin media gets you line rental, unlimited weekend calls to any UK landline and free digital TV (over 35 channels plus access to a vast library of films and TV shows). It's your call 0800 xxxx". Included in the smallprint at the bottom of the ad, it stated "Competitor comparison excludes special offers and is based on not receiving paper free billing".

Issue

BT believed the comparison of the two £11 a month offers was unfair and misleading because, at the time the ad was published, BT had an offer of inclusive evening and weekend calls for a year, at £11 a month. They also said their usual BT Together Option 1, which cost £11 a month, included fixed rate calls, that were cheaper than those offered by Virgin Media.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Virgin Media said the smallprint in the ad stated "Competitor comparison excludes special offers ...". They said they understood that BT's offer of inclusive evening and weekend calls was a special offer when customers signed to BT Together Option 2 for 18 months and the evening and weekend calls were only inclusive for a year. They said Virgin Media's £11 a month free TV and phone deal was offered as standard and was not a special offer. They therefore believed the comparison was fair.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted Virgin had compared their standard service with BT's standard service on a like-for-like basis; we also noted the ad did not compare the cost of non-inclusive calls. We noted the smallprint explained that special offers were excluded from the comparison, but considered that, because the ad made a direct comparison with one named competitor, the relevant smallprint should have included more detailed information about the BT offer that was available at the time in order to allow consumers to make a balanced judgement about the relative benefits of Virgin and BT's packages at the time the ad appeared. Because it did not, we concluded that the ad was misleading by omission.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness), 18.1, 18.2 and 18.3 (Comparisons).

Action

We told Virgin Media to ensure future ads that excluded a competitor's current promotional offer provided sufficient information about the offer to allow consumers to make an informed and rational decision at the time the ad appeared.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)