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ASA uphold ntl ad complaint
# 13 March 2004, 22:38 by Frank
Yet again cable co ntl:home has fallen foul of the UK advertising regulator, the Advertising Standards Authority. Within a mailing for ntl:home’s Talk Unlimited 24 service was a leaflet which featured a cartoon – a stickman, with a halo over his head, holding a telephone – stating “we’re still cheaper than BT!”
British Telecom claimed that the leaflet exaggerated the benefit to customers of the Talk Unlimited Service and misleadingly implied that it was always cheaper than BT’s Talk Anytime service, regardless of call patterns.
The ASA upheld this complaint, calling the advert “ambiguous”, and said that readers were likely to understand that the advertisers’ package was cheaper for both monthly charges and calls than the complainants’ equivalent package, which is not the case as ntl’s package contains hidden charges.
The Authority advised ntl to amend the advertisement to make clear that the claim only compared the two packages’ monthly charges and not call charges as it made out.