Vodafone Ltd The Courtyard 2-4 London Road Newbury Berkshire RG13 1JL Number of complaints: 21

Date: 17 September 2008 Media: Television, Magazine, Poster Sector: Computers and telecommunications Agency: Bartle Bogle Hegarty

Ad
A poster, a TV ad and a magazine ad for an internet mobile service.

a. The poster showed a pair of eyes on a black background. Text in a red box stated "Don't get left in the dark. Unlimited Facebook* on Vodafone. Make the most of now." A footnote at the bottom of the poster stated "Web Browsing Pack has a monthly data allowance of 500mb (UK only). Fair use policy and terms apply. See www.vodafone.co.uk for details." The asterisk after the word "Facebook" in the main body of the poster was linked to a further footnote which stated "Facebook is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc".

b. The TV ad showed three lit matches in the dark heading towards a lit open doorway. Voice-over stated "Keep up with your friends. Get Facebook on your phone with unlimited mobile internet from Vodafone. Don't get left in the dark. Make the most of now." On-screen text stated "Pay monthly only. Min contract read. Fair use of 500MB (UK). Handset dependent. Terms apply see www.vodafone.co.uk ."

c. The magazine ad showed a woman leaning on a tree in summer. Headline text stated "New price plans. Endless fun, unlimited value ... Add £5 for unlimited mobile, e-mail and internet". A footnote stated "Unlimited texts are within the UK, and have a fair usage policy of 3000 a month. You will be charged at your standard rate after this limit is reached. Unlimited mobile internet and email is available as part of your web browsing pack, which is included in the duration of your price plan and has a monthly data allowance of 500mb within the UK only."

Issue
Twenty one readers and viewers objected that the claim "unlimited" mobile internet was misleading because they believed it was contradicted by the footnotes in ads (a) and (c) and the on-screen text in ad (b) stating that a 500 Mb per month data allowance applied. They believed this was a significant limitation on the service.

The CAP Code:	3.1;7.1
BCAP TV Advertising Code:	5.1;5.2.3

Response
Vodafone said their web browsing pack had been described as "unlimited" since May 2008; they said it had previously had a data limit of 120 MB per month.  They said similar "unlimited" packs across the industry were subject to fair use policies. They said they had taken care to ensure the ads made clear the existence of the fair-use policy and the level at which it was set.  

Vodafone explained that they were aware of the need to review usage patterns regularly as customer habits changed. They said, in June 2008, only a very small percentage of their web browsing pack customers exceeded 500 MB.  They said, by contrast, the vast majority of their web browsing pack customers used less than a tenth of the allowance and significantly less than that per month visiting Facebook.  They said Vodafone handsets were set up to access Vodafone live! and the mobile internet through the Wireless Application Protocol (WAP) apn; they said some internet content was very data intensive but that could only be accessed if customers chose to change their handset settings.  They said those very few customers who exceeded the fair usage policy would be asked to moderate their usage in order to reduce the impact on the quality of the service for other users, but nevertheless believed that, because a high percentage used only a very small proportion of the amount allowed, the claim "unlimited mobile internet" was justified.

Clearcast responded to the complaint about TV ad (b).  They said they fully endorsed the response from Vodafone and considered that Vodafone had shown that the percentage of customers who exceeded the fair-use limit of 500 MB was so low that they should be considered as atypical.  Clearcast also pointed out that, even if a customer did exceed the fair use limit of 500 MB, their service was not automatically terminated.

Assessment
Not upheld
The ASA noted all the ads made clear that a fair-use policy applied to the service and the level at which the allowance was set.  We noted the information provided by Vodafone demonstrated that only a very small proportion of their customers had exceeded the fair-use policy limited and that action was likely to be a request to moderate their usage in the first instance.  We acknowledged that the vast majority of customers used only a small amount of the available allowance and concluded that the existence of a fair-use policy did not contradict the claim "unlimited mobile internet".

We investigated poster (a) and magazine ad (c) under CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness) but did not find them in breach.

We investigated TV ad (b) under CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1 and 5.2.3 (Misleading advertising) but did not find it in breach.

Action
No further action necessary.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)