Virgin in trouble with ASA again

The Advertising Standards Authority has once again upheld complaints about an advert for Virgin Media's broadband services.

The advert claimed that customers of Virgin Media could download films, TV programmes and music tracks within a certain period of time thanks to its fibre-optic broadband network.

However, the advert did not clarify that Virgin Media puts download restrictions on heavy users of the service during its busiest times, which fall between 1600 and 2100, in a practice commonly known as 'traffic shaping'.

A complaint was made by BT that the speeds quoted in the advert did not apply at all times because of Virgin Media's traffic-shaping policy.

"We considered that one of the main objectives of the ad was to highlight the speed with which customers could download a TV show on all three of Virgin Media's packages and, in the absence of any clarifying text, readers were likely to understand that those speeds applied at all times," the ASA said in its judgement.

Virgin Media will face no further action from the ASA, other than being told to withdraw the ad.

"Virgin Media are a prolific advertiser, so it is not entirely surprising that they can fall foul of the Codes; however, this ruling is on a different issue to previous adjudications. Virgin Media are not repeating their mistakes and so at this point we are not looking to further penalize them," an ASA spokeswoman told Web User.

The broadband, telephony and television provider has been hauled in front of the advertising regulator several times in recent months, largely due to its ongoing spat with rival Sky.

Its most recent offence was two weeks ago, when it failed to make sure that marketing materials it sent to customers were adequately marked as such.

www.asa.org.uk
www.virginmedia.com