BT Get Sky Broadband ISP Advert Banned Over Misleading Prices Claim

The Advertising Standards Authority has banned a national UK press advert for Sky Broadband after rival ISP BT complained that the promotion’s claim of offering “Unlimited Broadband At Our Best Prices” was “misleading,” not least because they’d recently offered the same package for less.

In response Sky said that the prices offered were the “best prices” for the products advertised and they believed the ad made clear that the “best prices” offer was based on certain conditions, such as the customer taking up Sky TV.

Sky also highlighted how they did not say the prices offered were their “best ever prices” (although they did do something similar a month earlier, before a price rise) as they did not intend to make a comparison against previous prices offered by Sky. The ASA took a different view.

ASA Ruling (REF: A17-404590)

The ASA noted that the ad did not clarify the basis of the claim “our best prices”. In the absence of such information, we considered that consumers would understand the claim “our best prices” to mean that the advertised broadband packages were at a lower price than they had been for a reasonable amount of time prior to the offer being available.

However, we understood that the basis for the lowest price claim was that the packages were cheaper when purchased with TV than when they were purchased alone. We noted that in the previous month Sky had offered the same broadband products at lower prices.

Therefore, while we acknowledged that the prices offered were their best prices for the relevant products at the time the ad appeared, because the ad suggested that the packages were at a lower price than they had been recently, but in the previous month Sky had offered the relevant broadband product alone at lower prices, we concluded the “our best prices” claim was likely to mislead.

As usual the ASA gave Sky a quick slap on the wrist and told them not to re-run the advert, at least not without making clear the basis of their lowest price claims. We tend to see a lot of tit-for-tat when it comes to ISPs shopping each other out to the advertising watchdog, so don’t be surprised if Sky similarly gets the odd BT advert pulled in the future.