Carphone Warehouse rapped for 'free broadband' advertising

Andy Merrett Broadband
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C’mon, we all know that when a company tells us something is free, that it’s not really.

There’s always something to pay, somewhere, or some tie-in.

Though the Advertising Standards Authority received complaints about Carphone Warehouse‘s advertising of its broadband offering as ‘free’ when it involved an 18-month tie-in to one of its talk packages, they’re still allowed to call it ‘free’ because broadband is also bundled with another package.

Or something like that… it’s all a bit contrived.

Why can’t everyone agree that there’s no such thing as truly free broadband, and move on?

Oh yeah: marketing.

With Sky entering the arena offering yet more ‘free broadband’ the confusion can only get worse. More choice for consumers is great, in principle, but misleading plans and contracts don’t help consumers.

I’d rather go with a package that from the start simply says that you sign up for x months at £y per month.

Are you convinced by these ‘free’ broadband offerings?

Andy Merrett
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2 comments

  • Carphone’s seems to be free, it’s not true that you have to pay BT line rental on top either. If I give you 100litres of petrol, would you seriously whinge that it was a piece of crappy marketing because you had to buy a vehicle to use it ? FFS.

    You buy the same package (Talk 3 ?) as you could have a few months ago and you get broadband as well at the same price. The rest of the deal is the same. Period. What don’t these people understand ? Apart from BT who have a very very good commercial reason to complain, don’t the other complainants have lives ?

  • They should not be allowed to say that they are FREE. They should tell the whole truth. If I wanted to take up any of these ‘FREE’ offers then I would have to go and ‘BUY’ a BT Telephone line and pay monthly line rental on top of any existing Orange/Sky/Carphone package. The ASA should stop these guys F us in the A with their crappy marketing lies.

    And breathe..

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