Another Vodafone UK Martin Freeman TV Advert Gets Banned

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a second Vodafone TV advert featuring actor Martin Freeman, which occurred after 11 complainants said the promotion “misleadingly” implied that Mobile customers could leave their contract at any time. Instead they could only do so within the first 30 days of service.

The move comes after another Vodafone TV advert featuring the same popular actor was banned last month over a misleading promotion for the operator’s fixed line broadband ISP “Ultimate Speed Guarantee” (here). By comparison this complaint centred on the advert where Freeman is sitting in a car during the pouring rain and then attempts to leave his current network.

At this point Freeman says, “Look, I haven’t got the strength to keep arguing with you, I just … I’m leaving.” The representative then responds, “Sorry sir, you can’t leave, you’re still within your contract, unless you wish to pay a penalty fee?” A voice-over then stated, “Breaking up’s never easy, but unlike other networks, Vodafone has a 30-day Service Guarantee, so if you don’t love us, you can leave us.”

The 30 claim is also supported by on-screen text and the original advert can be found below.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=doUK8Sx97UY

In fairness we didn’t find Vodafone’s advert to be particularly confusing and the 30 day aspect seems to have been quite clear, although the ASA took a stricter line and upheld the complaints.

ASA Statement (Complaint Ref: A18-457519)

We considered the ad left it ambiguous as to when it applied, and because of the scenario presented, suggested consumers were entitled to exercise the guarantee at any time. We understood that it in fact acted as a 30-day cooling-off period, whereby consumers were able to leave the service within the first 30 days of the contract. After that point, consumers would face those same difficulties in trying to leave their contract with Vodafone, and whilst we acknowledged Vodafone’s reference to the small print which referred to the terms and conditions on the website, we did not consider that this altered the impression presented by the ad.

Therefore, because the ad implied that consumers were entitled to exercise the guarantee at any time and that was not the case, we concluded that the ad was misleading.

As usual the ASA told Vodafone not to run their advert again without first changing it to “not misleadingly imply that their service guarantees applied at any point during a contract other than the cooling-off period.”