UK Virgin Media home broadband get ASA bashing
Richard Branson’s Virgin Media is an up and coming force within the UK’s entertainment scene. As well as providing Cable TV with TiVo style capabilities and on-demand movies, they offer an assortment of home broadband packages to capture all ends of the market. Known for its controversial adverts and (generally legal) slating of competitors, Virgin makes it no secret that it thinks it is awesome. Well, think again Branson, think again.
British Telecom (BT), the previously state run phone provider, along with the Advertisement Standards Agency (ASA), have slapped Virgin hard with a demand to update its ‘Hate to Wait?’ marketing campaign with more transparent price plans. Now, check this out, and stay with us; it’s amusingly complicated.
Virgin currently have hidden restrictions on all their packages whereby customers’ usage of their home broadband is monitored between 10am to 3pm (for downloads), 4pm to 9pm (downloads) and 3pm to 8pm (for uploads, i.e. P2P sharing). If you go over a hidden limit for either the amount you upload or download, your speed is throttled to the high-heavens and capped for 5 hours! OUCH. You’re left trawling through soup.
With such an elaborated policy, it is hard to see how Virgin will market this to its consumers now it’s being forced to do so. It might be worth checking with your ISP, wherever you are, to find out if such policies are prevalent in your area. We hope not, for your sake.
Popularity: 1% [?]
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.