O2 Refresh Ads Banned by ASA UK for Misleading Comparisons

A website and YouTube advert for O2 UK’s custom plans (refresh campaign – the ability to upgrade your phone at any time) have been banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) following complaints from rivals Three UK and Virgin Media, which said that some of their comparisons were “misleading.”

The first advert on O2’s website warned that “other networks charge you for a phone you already own … with a custom plan from O2, we won’t.” The promotion also included an interactive “overpayment estimator,” which included an illustrative example output that stated, “Ouch! … If you’re not on O2, you could have overpaid your network provider by …”

The second advert, a YouTube video, showed different cars unable to exit a car park and appearing frustrated. The on-screen text stated, “Would you keep paying for something you’ve already paid for” and later repeated another familiar claim: “other networks charge you for a phone you already own” (this reflects how O2’s Refresh plans won’t charge you extra for the bundled handset once your contract ends).

Virgin Media and Three UK complained that the website advert (a) was misleading because it failed to make clear what was being compared and the results of their overpayment estimator did not reflect the actual costs charged by other networks. As for the YouTube advert (b), Virgin pointed out that both they and Sky Mobile also offered similar custom plans and thus it was misleading of O2 to suggest that they were the only operator to do it. The ASA agreed and upheld all three complaints.

ASA Ruling (REF: G19-1030559)

Because the ad implied that O2’s competitors only offered bundled plans and that only O2 offered unbundled plans, when neither of those things were the case, we concluded that the ad was misleading.

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Although the qualification below the calculator explained that the calculations were estimates, we considered it was not sufficient to override the overall impression of the ad, that the calculator was based on exact figures rather than speculative amounts. We therefore concluded that the ad was misleading as did not reflect the actual costs charged by the other networks.

The ASA banned the promotions (as seen during July 2019) and told O2 not to make the same misleading mistakes again. In the future they told O2 to ensure that such promotions don’t give the impression that they are the only operator to offer custom plans and not to compare the costs of bundled contracts with unbundled contracts, unless they made the nature of that comparison clear. “We also told them not to make comparative claims based on speculative figures,” said the ads watchdog.