BTinternet Anytime removes “reliable” claim

The Advertising Standards Authority have asked Btinternet Anytime to withdraw a “reliable” claim made in recent advertising campaigns.

However, BT said that the claim had already been removed as problems had already been identified with its Btinternet Anytime Internet service provision during peak periods.

The Advertising Standards Authority upheld complaints made to the Authority by customers who had found the service unreliable at peak usage times.

BT said that the reliability problem had arisen when exchanges were overloaded and users were unable to get a connection even through the special “gateway” Internet access systems provided to its customers. This had led customers to experience a line busy condition. BT said that some exchanges were experiencing conditions where router capacity, necessary to find a gateway connection when a user tried to connect, was being exceeded and that BT internet were working to resolve the problems with BTIgnite.

However, the ASA did not uphold complaints relating to the name of the service. BTinternet Anytime pointed out that the service was being affected by problems over which they had no direct control, and emphasised that the service, as stated in the terms and conditions, was not guaranteed to be “fault-free”.

The ASA found that as with other internet service providers “Anytime” related to an unlimited 24-hour, 7-day-a-week service and that customers were getting over 90 per cent connection. (SP)