Ad description
Two pages on the Community Fibre website, communityfibre.co.uk, seen in July 2025:
a. The homepage of the website featured the claim “Excellent-rated service […] #1 rated internet provider on Trustpilot – with the most 5 star reviews”.
b. The second page, titled “Claims”, included the text “London’s #1 Best ‘Internet Provider’/#1 Best ‘Internet Provider’ […] We have the highest number of 5 star reviews from all companies who only appear in the ‘Internet Provider’ category on Trustpilot (3rd June 2025)”.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the claims “#1 rated internet provider on Trustpilot – with the most 5 star reviews” and “#1 Best ‘Internet Provider’” were misleading.
Response
Community Fibre Ltd stated they intended for consumers to understand the claim “#1 Best ‘Internet Provider’ to mean that they were the number one rated internet provider on Trustpilot with the most 5-star reviews. They stated that searching the Trustpilot category ‘Internet Provider’, applying the filters “London” and “4.5+ [stars]” and sorting the results by “Highest number of reviews” showed that Community Fibre had the highest percentage of 5-star Trustpilot reviews and the lowest number of 1-star reviews. They stated they also had the highest Google review score, and the highest average Google review score and Trustpilot score.
Community Fibre believed that they offered the best prices for the fastest internet speeds, and the best rated service in London. They stated that they were recognised by Which? in March 2025 as the UK’s Greatest of Great Value Broadband Provider, as well as by the Internet Services Providers’ Association (ISPA) as the Best Consumer ISP for the past five years. They also referenced a December 2024 OpenSignal report, which they said demonstrated that they were the top performing broadband provider in London for Download Speed, Upload Speed, Consistent Quality, and Reliability Experience, and joint top performers in Video Experience.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA considered that consumers would understand the claim “#1 rated internet provider on Trustpilot – with the most 5 star reviews” to mean that Community Fibre was the highest rated internet provider on Trustpilot compared to its competitors. We considered that consumers were likely to understand “internet provider” to refer generally to companies which provided a broadband service, and they would therefore expect Community Fibre’s main competitors to be included in this comparison. We considered that consumers would have understood the claims in the ads as absolute, and in the absence of any qualifications in the ad, would have expected Community Fibre to appear as the highest rated internet provider on Trustpilot without the application of any filters.
We understood that, at the time the ad appeared, Community Fibre had a rating of 4.6 out of 5 on Trustpilot. However, the highest rated company in the category ‘Internet provider’ on Trustpilot had a rating of 4.9 out of 5. When the companies in that category were sorted by “highest number of reviews”, two had a higher number of five-star reviews at over 182,000 and 65,000 five-star reviews respectively, compared to Community Fibre that had over 60,000 five-star reviews.
We understood that in order for Community Fibre to appear at the top of the list of ‘Internet providers’ on Trustpilot, the results had to be sorted by “Highest number of reviews” and the filters “4.5+ [stars]” and “London” had to be applied. This had the effect of filtering out a large number of Community Fibre’s competitors. Whilst there were approximately 400 companies in the Trustpilot category “Internet provider”, when these filters were applied only 20 companies appeared. Moreover, when these filters were applied, although Community Fibre appeared at the top of the list of internet providers, another company which appeared beneath them in the list held a higher star rating.
Because the ads gave the impression that Community Fibre was the highest rated internet provider on Trustpilot when we understood that was not the case, we concluded the ads were misleading.
On that point, the ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising) and 3.7 (Substantiation).
Action
The ads must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Community Fibre Ltd to ensure they did not state or imply that they held the number one ranking, or had the most 5-star reviews, on third-party review websites if that was not the case.
