Telecommunications

The advertisers invited consumers to check out their online broadband coverage map to see if their house was fibre broadband enabled.

Under the link: “Check your house here” consumers were invited to input their address to see if their premises was fibre broadband enabled.

The complainant said that when he inputted his information online he was provided with the following information:

“We checked (complainant’s address)
Great news! Your home is eir Fibre enabled”

The complainant then tried to have the service installed and was told by the technician
who visited his house that the service was not available at his address as he was too far away from the exchange.

The complainant considered the information provided by the advertisers to be misleading.

The advertisers offered their apologies to the complainant and confirmed that there had been an anomaly in their system which had caused the complainant to be provided with the wrong information.

Further Information:
The Secretariat informed the complainant of the advertisers’ response. The complainant said that he had, on receipt of the Secretariat’s response, checked the online checker again and was provided with the exact same information. He considered that this confirmed his earlier opinion that the advertising was misleading.

Advertisers’ Further Response:
The advertisers said that they would alter their system to ensure that the complainant’s address was removed from their Fibre-enabled addresses.

Complaint upheld.

The Complaints Committee considered the detail of the complaint and the advertisers’ response. They noted that this was not the first time they had addressed this issue with the advertisers, formerly known as eircom now eir (Case 23201). The Committee considered it unacceptable to provide consumers with a service (in this case the address checker) which did not provide accurate information. They said that the onus was on the advertisers to ensure that their system offered the correct information to consumers and unless this was the case then they should correct or cease using the information checker in question. In the circumstances the Committee upheld the complaint under Sections 2.22, 2.24 and 2.45 of the Code.

Action Required:
The advertising should not be used in its current format again.