Virgin Media's ad fibs EXPOSED by bitter rival BT BT successfully convinced Britain's advertising watchdog to admonish rival ISP Virgin Media for "misleading" its customers with unsubstantiated savings claims. The cable company failed to defend itself against three separate complaints filed by BT, which had griped about five national press ads and one posted on Virgin Media's …
This post has been deleted by its author
Virgin/BT/Sky are all pushing the limits because they know they can and WILL get away with it.
Punishments months after the fact are NOT in actual fact punishments.
The only thing worse in this arena than the shitbag suppliers is the shitbag enforcement body.
Sadly anonymous for this rant.
"Punishments months after the fact are NOT in actual fact punishments."
1: Telling them not to do it again isn't a punishment
2: The ASA is a trade association, not an enforcement body. The fact that they claim to be exempt from FOI rules exposes the lie for what it is.
It was created to stave off government regulation and has no actual powers. Up until the mid-late 2000s there was no evidence it had actually collected any of the fines it had supposedly levied.
All the ASA does is create an illusion of regulation where there is none.
That I don't get bombarded (well weekly) with junk mail addressed to 'the householder' from VM & Sky trying to persuade me to sign up to their frankly hideously expensive crap. Yeah, I'm a cheapskate but I might be more inclined to part with my cash if they just STOP sending me the crap.
I looked at the latest missive from VM and found it exceedingly hard to actually put a price on any of their offerings. Well Duh! If I can't see the upfront and final costs then sorry no sale.
{The same goes for solar Energy Companies who tell you how much you can save but won't show you on paper the hard costs until you are almost ready to sign up}
Two final words that are strangely appropriate for the season
Bah Humbug!
As a Virgin customer I have exactly the same problem with BT endlessly calling me trying to sell me their useless crap (yes I used to be a BT customer). I have repeatedly told them to stop calling me cos I will never buy anything off them again if there is any alternative but they continue.
I have now raised a complaint , , , which they haven't responded too :-(
"That I don't get bombarded (well weekly) with junk mail addressed to 'the householder' from VM & Sky trying to persuade me to sign up to their frankly hideously expensive crap."
Junk mail that there is no way to opt out of. A DPA section 11 "stop spamming me" notice doesn't apply to crap addressed "to the householder" and they know it.
I've signed up to the Royal Mail's junk mail opt-out here: http://www.royalmail.com/personal/help-and-support/how-do-I-stop-receiving-any-leaflets-or-unaddressed-promotional-material
Its all a bit "get a from from the locked filing cabinet at the bottom of the dark stairs behind the sign that says 'Beware of the Leopard'" but its cut my junk mail to pretty much zero.
> "That I don't get bombarded (well weekly) with junk mail addressed to 'the householder' from VM & Sky trying to persuade me to sign up to their frankly hideously expensive crap."
Well, part of the hideous expense is the proportion of the subscription that is spent on raining envelopes through the rest of the population's letterboxes. Suppose we could, magically, all push them through Richard Branson's letterbox at the same time and watch his house explode. I'm pleased to say that I don't get junk mail from Sky, does that mean that they respect the Mailing Preference Service list?
Virgin Media try to cunningly disguise their junk as important looking post - a plain a4 envelope with no VM branding on it. I got wise to this and if you turn it over at the bottom it says 'This contains promotional material from VM', at which point i put it straight in the recycling unopened.
"We're putting the price up! (so we can make it better)."
Thanks guys. It's better enough for what I want/need already. What I don't want is a fifteen percent increase in price. It's not the cost, which is only a few quid a month, it's the bloody principle.
Mind you, I don't think they liked me since I called them last time to downgrade my service and reduce the cost...
I did exactly the same, including paying "line rental" (a hidden fee which exists purely to reduce their headline figures) a year in advance. Of course, last time a renewal came, that fee has also increased significantly.
Yet for some reason the only additional service they have provided me is extra bandwidth, which I don't need, didn't ask for and don't want to pay for.
They're shysters, the lot of them.
Saying that I could move from TalkTalk (who I'm not with) only if I did it in the next n days (n may have been ~30, I wasn't paying much attention by this point) because of TalkTalk price rises.
Then two days later I got a letter from TalkTalk about their great new deals if I moved from BT (with whom I don't have a contract, although my provider does)
So apparently I can save hundreds of pounds I don't currently spend, by switching in either direction between two companies with whom I don't have a commercial relationship...
...the ASA step in and ban an ad from appearing again in its current form, just after the limited time offer expires and the ad wasn't ever going to appear in that form again. Just what is the point? This has happened before with Virgin and will doubtless happen again, and it isn't just Virgin that take advantage of the toothless ASA.
By virtue of their very existence, the ASA give advertising a certain amount of credence with the public, after all, it must be true and honest if there's a standards authority governing it, isn't it? We'd be better off without the ASA and with a much more sceptical and distrusting attitude to advertising.
Either that, or give the ASA powers to punish the offenders sufficiently to put a stop to repeat offences.
"the 0.1% levy on the cost of buying advertising space and the 0.2% levy on some direct mail "
It's also interesting, according to their own reports, that they resolved more cases in 2013 and 2014 than complaints lodged ...
http://www.asa.org.uk/About-ASA/~/media/Files/ASA/Annual%20reports/Website%20KPI%20publication%20-%20Q1%202014.ashx
Perhaps I'm missing something ...
But at least if you're ruled against they do actually have teeth - they can put you on their 'non compliant' page like all of these ...
http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Non-compliant-online-advertisers.aspx
It's like being at school; "Was Steven naughty today? You can check to see if we put his name on the 'Wall of Shame' which can be found in the basement behind the third cabinet on the left ... remember to take a torch."
The problem is that under most circumstances, it doesn't matter who's cheaper, it's what you can get in your area (In an odd inversion of the usual circumstances, I get VM just fine, it's BT who I can only get 1.5mb with, with no prospect of FTTC for the forseeable future due mostly to Digital Region bullhockey. Some choice.)
The endless tide of VM marketing mail saying "look at our TV deals" is irksome, but under the circumstances, I don't apper to have much leverage.
They don't KNOW that.
Ring up and say you've had an offer from Sky that is generally what you want and ask them to better it to stay. Take into account cashback from Quidco etc and see what you can get. It will renenw your contract mind, but if you're stuck with them anyway....
And if they don't offer what you want, say you'll think about it and wait a week.
Funny coming form a company selling "fibre" internet and delivering you copper... The fact they extend the fibre from the exchange to the cabinet doesn't remove the weakest link which is the copper bit. Realistically if I connect to an US server i'll get about 4000-5000 miles of connections on fibre, so according to BT if I dial up (or have a pigeon delivery me the IP packets on paper) for the last 0,01% it should still be called an "fibre" connection.
I'll call it fibre when I get light entering my house, not electricity
@SMabille
are you complaining about BT or Virgin? Both do the same thing for their fibre services, unless you get FTTP (Fibre To The Premises) which as suggested in its name is a fibre connection to your home, Virgin's Fibre broadband is coax from the street cabinet to your home. I can never understand why the ASA let Virgin get away with calling their service Fibre broadband whilst BT's FTTC is essentially the same arrangement but is banned from being labelled a Fibre broadband service.
Why is it that people are so fixated over the substrate their broadband is delivered over? As long as it does what I want I really don't care if the cable is made out of glass, copper or bacon. FTTP may came into your house as glass, but before you get to connect to it the optical is terminated and you're given a metallic connection.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
