NZ Telcos Mislead With Marketing

Written by Adam Gosling

Saturday, 03 March 2007

Both New Zealand Telecom and Vodafone have been called to task for using misleading advertising in two separate findings by the country's Advertising Standards Complaints Board. The misleading advertising was found by the Board to have breached the truthful presentation rule in the Code of Ethics for advertising. In one instance Vodafone advertising for its "Bestmate" plan claimed customers could call, video and text their "best mate" as much as they like for only NZ$6 per month but neglected to mention that this applied only to pre-paid phone accounts. The other related to a TV commercial by New Zealand Telecom which promised its "Freedom Plan" allowed subscribers to make unlimited calls a designated mobile number as much as they like from their home phone line. Only in the smallest of small print did the carrier mention that "normal charges apply after 60 minutes". Related news items Australia's First Free Mobile Navigation Service -13/09/2007 New Nokia Intellisync Management Features -19/08/2007 VIPtel Telemarketers Were Misleading: ACCC -29/07/2007 Google Experiments With AdSense For Mobile -16/07/2007 Unreleased iPhone Beats The Competition -28/05/2007 Newer news items Railroad Gets Its Own 3G Coverage -03/04/2007 Disruptive Bundle Brings Skype To Mobiles -27/03/2007 Mobile, Not VoIP The Big Growth Area For Voice -16/03/2007 Opera Community On T-Mobile -15/03/2007 3 Could Take In More Cash From NZ -06/03/2007 Older news items Mobile Rates Cut By 40% -26/02/2007 SMS Revenues To Get Stratospheric -26/02/2007 Unwired Revenue Up 46% -21/02/2007 ACCC Sets Interim Mobile Prices -18/02/2007 Telstra Behind Schedule On CDMA Migration -12/02/2007 Tag This Now: