There is a sick practice in marketing in telecoms that is much worse than the misleading speeds issue Ofcom and the ASA have recently been looking at. Let’s face it, anyone who knows what a Megabit actually means is likely to realise the quoted “up to” speed means very little in real terms. No, a much bigger issue with the broadband industry is misleading price claims, which have been a pet peeve of mine for some months now. BT are not the only ones guilty of this, but from what I’ve seen they are the worst offenders – employing similar tactics for other products, like their mobile plan.
Without the slightest hint of shame, BT advertise their unlimited option 3 broadband service is advertised on their site, on a page comparing their three plans, as “From only £18.99 a month”. Normally you expect a catch when you see the words “from only” preceding a price, and that’s fine if you’re adding extras on top of a basic plan, but here, the advertised price is essentially a headline-grabbing lie. Contrast with Virgin Media, who advertise their headline introductory price first, but immediately followed by their regular price (and applicable conditions) given virtually equal prominence.
You see, when you click on “more about option 3” (the ads for other plans or ‘options’ all contain similar lies) you’re taken to a page explaining that it’s really £18.99 for just 6 months of an 18 month contract, then £24.99. Basically, I don’t see why BT (and others) should be allowed to get away with advertising a price of £18.99 for a service that actually costs £22.99 a month over the minimum term and obviously more if, as BT would like, you stay on the plan at the full price once that term has ended. Worse yet, the “order now” link takes you directly to the Option 3 sign-up page without the slightest hint that you’ll be paying over 20% more than you they told you. I wonder would they actually let you complete the registration without informing you?! (I got as far as them asking me for my MAC number).
Obviously while FireFox is hogging 99% of your CPU there’s only 1% to share among the rest of the programs you have running, so Outlook and the rest didn’t have much of a hope of doing anything at all until I killed the FireFox process in task manager. As this wasn’t the first time this had happened, I decided to go hunting for a solution – which brings me to 
