ASA Ban Lycamobile Advert for Unlimited UK Data, Calls and Texts Claim

The UK Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a website advert for Lycamobile’s various “ALL IN ONE” bundles, which misleadingly claimed to offer “unlimited” mobile broadband data, calls and text messages but later stated a specific limit on the use of such services.

The promotions small print stated “Unlimited usage is subject to a fair usage of 3000 minutes/texts/MB per month per SIM” and warned that anybody who exceeded its Fair Usage Allowance would be “charged at standard rates“. Lycamobile claimed that just 2.72% of the customers who took this package ended using the product up to the fair use cap.

ASA Ruling (REF: A13-227300)

We noted Lycamobile’s assertion that only 2.72% of their users reached their allotted restrictions. However, because those customers had exceeded the minutes, text and data thresholds and had been subject to additional charges, we considered the service could not be described as “unlimited”.

We therefore considered that the information in the small print about the FUP contradicted the “Unlimited” claims, and we concluded the ad was misleading.

As usual Lycamobile were told not to claim that a service was “unlimited” if additional charges applied as a consequence of exceeding a usage threshold associated with a FUP. Meanwhile their website still appears to be making the same “unlimited calls & texts” claim as before, with the same FUP rule as before.