False Advertising I – Tesco Mobile “Unlimited”
Boo hiss Tesco!!!
http://www.tesco.com/mobilenetwork/paymonthly.aspx?page=5
They’re advertising that for £30 per month, you get UNLIMITED (in capital letters) calls & texts. However, in the small print, you’re limited to “£500 worth of usage” per month.
Now admittedly that’s a lot of usage… but it’s not unlimited! This type of false advertising has me fuming. How are Tesco allowed to advertise “Unlimited calls & texts” that’s limited?
I’ll never buy from Tesco Mobile because of this. An overreaction? Possibly. But there is so much misleading advertising these days that someone has to take a stand, even if it is just one person!
I’m not sure I’ll go as far as closing my Tesco Savings account and ceasing to shop in their supermarkets. But that’s certainly crossed my mind. I absolutely *hate* companies that think that just by adding an asterisk (*) after a word, that they can change the English definition of that word to whatever they want.
Vodafone did a similar thing a while back – they advertised “Unlimited Internet” which was limited to 2GB per month. I’ve never bought from Vodafone since then and I never will again.
come on! yes its not unlimited technically… But they have to place safety measures in place to protect themselves from fraud and from people misusing the service or finding a way to profit from it. I think it is more than reasonable of them to offer £6000 per year allowance, in return for only £360! What more do you want from them? Blood?
I think they are doing something really brave – and its about time someone did. This move is going to bring down the monopoly of mobile networks and the EXCESSIVE call charges that are out there. This is going to seriously benefit everyone, and they should be applauded. They are flexing their muscles in a positive way…
Why are you suddenly amazed by this? Other providers have been doing this for years. Face it none of those “Unlimited” Internet packages were ever truly unlimited, Vodafone go as far as saying 500mb a month is Unlimited?
That said they don’t tell you the rates charged over that £500 limit, so you could ring up a giant bill, but unless they tell you the call charges before it wont have any effect. What worries me is that I cant find a ppm charge, so if its 50p a minutes im going to storm through £500 in no time.
I don’t know why this suddenly bothers me. I guess it’s because they’re really advertising it everywhere at the moment, so it’s always in my mind.
But you have almost affirmed my point – they don’t tell you the ppm charge, and there’s a £500 “fair usage limit” – far from unlimited.
If they claim that the price of a call is £1 per minute – not totally unreasonable – then that means after 500 minutes (8 and a bit hours), you will have reached your “unlimited” cap. If you ask me, 8 hours is FAR from unlimited. I stand by my post!
Ok, So most company’s do this. Skype does this they say unlimited and guess what they don’t tell the truth they is an far limited. Befor this start of this year most internet provides well all did say they offered unlited downloads well I can tell you from my having to ring them up from being caped from downloading anything big that that a load of shit. But now they do offer unlited downloads. Point being that you have to do hard work to get thought 500£ and that to be fair its an way of drawing people in.
I dont aggree as have not tested Tesco Mobile yet. But the 2 WORST have got to be 3 AND VODAFONE, TOTAL CRAP.
Unlimited calls, unlimited webspace, unlimited downloads, and more like these. People put up with it because they get ‘quite a lot’ and are not likely to reach the actual limit. I agree with Matt though, it is not unlimited and it should not be called that, it is false advertising. Some marketing guy somewhere came up with the term to set them apart from the competition and others simply followed because they don’t want to be seen to offer less. It shouldn’t be allowed and they should stick to the facts.
I have been incensed by this since I returned to live in the UK. Presently, because of such limited competition between ISPs in London, I have been forced to have TalkTalk as my broadband provider. Since it cannot provide a fibre optic connection (from which I could use Vonage + VOIP) I have to have DSL with telephone line rental, (another BT hangover scam to print money) TalkTalk offer Unlimited * anytime anywhere phone calls. The * means Unlimited for calls of up to 59 minutes. Then you have to put the phone down and recall to get the “Unlimited” call for another hour. Who the hell has time for that childish penny pinching! Besides which this is totally false advertising. The BBB (Better Business Bureau on http://www.bbb.org/us/bbb-code-of-advertising/) says :
“Asterisks
An asterisk may be used to impart additional information about a word or term which is not in itself inherently deceptive. The asterisk or other reference symbol should not be used as a means of contradicting or substantially changing the meaning of any advertising statement. Information referenced by asterisks should be clearly and prominently disclosed.”
When I complained. the response was “Well all the other Providers use this” as well. That does not make it any more legitimate; it just makes us idiots to continue to accept such blatant rip offs.