The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) of UK issued its recent adjudication in favour of BT broadband provider who lodged a complaint over an advert published by TalkTalk.

The controversial advertisement of TalkTalk broadband went on like this:
"This year, why not join our Talk3 call plan and get up to 8 Meg (speed depends on proximity to exchange) broadband free! All you pay is £8.99 per month plus TalkTalk line rental at £11 per month (the same as you'd pay BT)". A footnote stated "When you take calls, broadband and line rental together there is a minimum contract term of 18 months".

The centre of the BT’s complaint was this: the contract length of the current Talk 3 package and the older version of it (Talk 3 call plan) are different. As such, the phrase ‘free broadband’ that comes in the advert could be misleading the customers as they may be unaware of the fact that the contract length of Talk 3 is 18 months (previously it was 12 months, when the offer was introduced). The argument of BT was that current version of Talk 3, although it is not different from the promotional offer except in terms of contract length, should be considered as a new package from Talk 3 and TalkTalk should have mentioned the change in contract length more clearly than putting it in small print (as a footnote).

However, TalkTalk said that it had sought guidance from the CAP Copy Advice team on the advert and this was in accordance with the earlier adjudication from the ASA and further claimed its ad was compliant with the CAP Code and ASA guidelines and did not mislead its customers as it did not have receive any complaints from its customers.

TalkTalk further explained that the promotional ‘free broadband’ offer with 12 month contract was already over after six months of its launch.

However, the ASA after scrutinizing the issue, concluded that the advert clearly breached CAP Code clauses 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 32.3 (Free offers and free trials:
“ We concluded, therefore, despite the fact that broadband had been available separately at an extra cost in combination with Talk 3 beforehand, and that combination had a contractual period of 18 months, because TT had not demonstrated that they had added broadband to their existing product Talk 3, but had instead launched a new package of which broadband was an integral part, the broadband element of the new Talk 3 package was not 'free' and the ad was likely to mislead.”

In addition, the ASA also advised TalkTalk to get guidance from the CAP Copy Advice team before using the term ‘free’ in their future adverts