The 'unlimited' broadband con

[dirtydog]

As we all know, many ISPs claim to offer 'unlimited' usage when in fact they have very stringent restrictions indeed. To any right thinking person this is clearly misleading and in my opinion should be blatantly illegal. There was a petition on the government's website and this is their response...

Read the Government's response

In general, companies are free to use whatever contractual terms and conditions they consider reasonable. If prospective customers are unhappy with these they can attempt to re-negotiate the terms in question or go elsewhere. There are, however, some legal safeguards for consumers in relation to unfair contract terms.

The Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999 provide protection for consumers when entering into contracts. Companies who deal with consumers and use standard form contracts must ensure they do not use unfair terms.

These regulations require that any written term of a contract is expressed in plain intelligible language. Consumers should be able to read and understand all the terms of the contract before they are bound by them. Consequently, contract terms which are hard to understand because of obscure wording or unreadable small print are more likely to be found unfair.

Advertising in the UK is controlled primarily by self-regulation and co-regulation under which the Advertising Standards Authority has responsibility for ensuring compliance with the British Code of Advertising Sales Promotion and Direct Marketing (non-broadcast advertising), the TV Advertising Standards Code, and the Radio Advertising Standards Code. It requires all forms of advertising to be legal, decent, honest and truthful and prepared with a sense of responsibility to both consumers and society.

The Government is aware of complaints by consumers to the Advertising Standards Authority that some Internet or telephone packages are being promoted as being 'unlimited' or 'unrestricted' in some way. Qualifying an 'unlimited' claim with a fair usage policy in the small print of an ad is allowed as long as it really is fair and not misleading. For example, if 80% of domestic customers fall well within the limit specified by a broadband provider and the remaining 20% fall outside of it, perhaps because they are using a domestic package for business use, then it may be considered a reasonable claim. The Advertising Standards Authority considers each complaint on a case-by-case basis.

http://www.pm.gov.uk/output/Page12235.asp

It beggars belief doesn't it? How can the ISPs who do this be allowed to get away with blatantly LYING to their customers? They are nothing more than con artists. Clearly the government cares more about the profits of large corporations than the electorate.

It also illustrates how the free market does not always operate in the best interests of consumers if left to its own devices. The 'unlimited' ISPs are often the cheapest which means they are very popular (until people sign up and realise how crap they are), compared to the more expensive ISPs which on paper are more restrictive because they publish their caps, but in truth are actually less restrictive than the 'unlimited' ones. But the average non-savvy home user doesn't understand this so gets ripped off by the con artist ISPs. And the government has now given this the green light. How wonderful.

 

[marc2003]

The 'unlimited' ISPs are often the cheapest which means they are very popular (until people sign up and realise how crap they are), compared to the more expensive ISPs which on paper are more restrictive because they publish their caps, but in truth are actually less restrictive than the 'unlimited' ones.

well the worse culprit of all is certainly not the cheapest. i'm talking about bt of course. not only are they extrememly uncompetitive on price but they have a minimum 12 month contract. in my eyes they are the worst isp at the moment (i might be biased though - i'm just leaving them at this moment in time. )

we all know it's not financially viable for any isp to supply an unlimited connection for 20-30 squids a month but why do they insist on using that word....

 

[dirtydog]

Zen do have what is apparently truly unlimited broadband for £17.99 but of course the catch is that it's only 256k

The two providers I looked at recently (because I am considering moving from F2S in the wake of the Tiscali takeover) are Supanet ('unlimited' for £7.99 a month - yeah as if!) and UKOnline (£9.99 for 1Mb 'unlimited'). In fact from what I can gather, the £7.99 Supanet package is actually capped to 2 gigs and the next one up is 10 gigs. Unlimited my arse

 

[Teal]

It is still a numbers game at the moment.

Based on what little published information there is around I'd say that 85-90% of consumers can use these services as though they are unlimited because their usage is so low they will never get close to a limit.

That is why the ISPs can do what they do as it isn't hard to show that if over 85% of people never come near a limit then the other 15% are not behaving 'reasonably'.

Throw in the fact that it is sold as a contended service and you have a pretty easy position for the ISP to justify.

What is needed to change this is some sort of 'killer app' for the net. Something that even your Grandparent would use to consume a lot more bandwidth each month.

It may turn out to be IPTV is some form or other probably linked to a set top box not a PC but whatever it is, if that happens so that the 85% below the limit drops below 50% then the 'unlimited' offers would vanish (so would a lot of ISPs I suspect as well).

 

[dirtydog]

Indeed that is the rationale that they use. But whatever spin they (and the government) put on it, it does not alter the dictionary definition of the word 'unlimited'

 

[tolien]

You can be connected for an unlimited period of time. Et voila, "unlimited" - note that Tiscali never (that I've seen) say "unlimited data transfer", just "unlimited".

 

[dirtydog]

You can be connected for an unlimited period of time. Et voila, "unlimited" - note that Tiscali never (that I've seen) say "unlimited data transfer", just "unlimited".

http://www.ukonline.net/home/broadband/index.php?wp=ONNET_LANDING&sso_auth=0

Unlimited bandwidth

http://www.supanet.com/broadband/newtobroadband/

 

[tolien]

:shrug: they're lying then - complain to the ASA if you want.