OneStream UK broadband Ad banned over paid auto renewing product trials

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a website advert for Hampshire-based broadband ISP Onestream after it “misleadingly” failed to include information about two “free” product trials, which automatically renewed for a fee and were added to the cost of the plan during the checkout process.

The promotion itself, which was first seen in June 2026, displayed the contract term of the package, its speed, monthly rental and activation fee. But one person complained that the advert was misleading because the package included “two subscriptions that could not be removed [and] were added to the cost of the plan during the checkout process“.

In its defence, Onestream argued that at the time the ad was seen, the Priority Plus and McAfee Multi Access services were presented in the checkout journey as optional additions, which customers could remove if they did not wish to include them. The ISP then stated that, as part of an “ongoing review“, those services had since been removed from the checkout journey and were now only available as optional extras for consumers who actively chose to add them.

The ASA noted that the both subscriptions included a free trial period, after which the “Onestream Priority Plus” subscription automatically renewed at a cost of £7.95 per month, while the “McAfee Multi Access” subscription automatically renewed at a cost of £34.95 per year. The ASA ultimately ruled that these details should have been made clear on the promotion.

ASA Ruling Ref: A26-1344540 OneStream Ltd

Onestream stated that the subscriptions were optional, could be cancelled during the free trial period, and could be removed during the checkout process. They provided a partial screenshot of the final checkout stage to illustrate how the subscriptions were presented to consumers at checkout. The screenshot showed a text box titled “Included with your order – free for 30 days” that contained brief information about the subscriptions. A “remove” option was included in the top right-hand corner of the text box in small font.

We had not received a full copy of the webpage in order to be able to assess how clearly the information had been presented to consumers, but considered the option to remove the subscriptions was unlikely to be sufficiently prominent. Regardless, information about the subscriptions was not included in the ad. Consumers would therefore be unaware of the free trials, and the potential further costs associated with them, when choosing their broadband package.

Although the costs of the subscriptions were not required to be included in the total price of the broadband service, we considered information about the free trials, including that they would automatically renew for a fee, was material to consumers’ understanding of what was included in the package. We therefore considered the omission of that information made the price claim misleading.

Because the ad did not include information about free trials which would automatically renew for a fee, we concluded it was misleading.

The issue of auto-renewing subscriptions for additional (often unwanted) services, which have in the past been stealthily added to packages by some UK ISPs, is not a new one. But modern consumer protection rules have made such activity quite rare, although sadly some niche business broadband providers still sometimes do something similar (businesses don’t benefit from the same protections).

The ASA ultimately chose to ban OneStream’s advert in its current form and told the provider to ensure that their future ads “made sufficiently clear that their broadband packages included free trials that would automatically renew for a fee“.