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Onetel bitten by watchdog over mobile tariff claim
'When we said cheapest, we just meant cheapest compared to some people'

By Jo Best

Published: Wednesday 21 September 2005

Onetel, the soon-to-be-sold phone arm of Centrica, has been told off by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for claiming its mobile phone tariff is the cheapest on the market.

The ad watchdog received a complaint over a leaflet from Onetel which described its One.Plan20 tariff as "Britain's lowest cost mobile plan", costing £4.99 per month. The complainant asked if Onetel could back up its statement.

Ontel told the ASA it didn't consider retailers selling mobile phone tariffs as competition but did consider mobile operators to be rivals - therefore it was able to show the regulator documentation that it considered proved One.Plan20 beat all other operators' tariffs.

The ASA, however, thought consumers who saw the advert would naturally assume that Onetel was offering the cheapest tariff, regardless of whether the competition came from retailers or network operators.

In its ruling, the ASA said: "Because they had not provided robust evidence to support the claim, we considered that it was misleading and told them to delete it."