ASA backs T-Mobile complaint

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld a complaint about an ad campaign by mobile operator Orange.

A recent TV ad featured a woman acting out a play representing the things she liked to talk about. She stated: 'I like conversations that last for hours and hours, full of jokes about singing bees and talking flowers. I like it when they take up whole mornings and fill up whole nights.'

The voice-over then stated: 'Talk for hours with unlimited talk and text on Orange pay monthly. Life as you like it.' On-screen text mentioned 'Fair usage. Terms apply.'

A similar national press ad was headed 'Unlimited calls or texts on pay monthly' and further text stated: 'Only Orange customers can choose from four truly unlimited talk and text packages. Unlike other networks, we don't put restrictions on the time of day, or the day of the week you chose to talk ... So, day or night you can talk and text for hours and hours. Or even longer if you like.'

Small print stated: 'Fair usage. Terms apply.'

Rival operator T-Mobile complained to the ASA that the ads were misleading since calls and texts were subject to a fair usage policy of 3,000 minutes or 3,000 texts a month, and not 'unlimited' as the ads suggested.

Orange responded by saying that the policy had been drawn up using an analysis of customer usage and was designed to protect the network from abuse and fraud, and thus was not a limit on usage.

The operator explained that, once a customer reached 3,000 calls or texts, they could still carry on making calls or sending texts and were not charged for the additional usage.

However, the customer's usage would then be monitored and Orange might withdraw a particular offer from a customer's account if the fair usage policy was continually abused and the usage appeared to be fraudulent.

Orange claimed that it had not yet terminated an account or withdrawn the unlimited offer from any customer.

Orange went on to say that the rationale behind the 'truly unlimited' claim was that it offered packages that customers could use at any time of the day, or any day of the week, which it believed justified the claim 'day or night you can talk or text for hours and hours'.

The ASA agreed with T-Mobile's observations that, because 3,000 minutes per month equated to just one hour 40 minutes per day, the claims 'conversations that last for hours and hours', 'take up whole mornings and whole nights' and 'talk for hours' were misleading.

Furthermore, the watchdog considered that the claim 'truly unlimited', in combination with the other claims in the ad, was contradicted by the fair usage policy qualification in the small print and that the ad was likely to mislead customers.

The ASA ruled that the Orange ads should not be repeated in their current form, and told the company not to repeat the claim 'truly unlimited' unless there were no restrictions on their service.