Ta .

Interesting though, that document is all a load of waffle. An important bit is the quote you give here, which basically says exceeding any FUP should not incur any charge.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

... and it is pointless your thinking of complaining to officialdom.

It is the ASA that is relevant in this case, not OfCom, as it is the product advertising you are concerned about.

I didn't respond back then, but remember specifically mentioning comparison sites, and the reason I mentioned OFCOM was because of those sites whose "comparison" is accredited by OFCOM (not the ASA) and that gives them some air of "recommendation".

I see that someone blogged not long ago (in their personal capacity, though employed by AAISP), about there being some barriers to inclusion and thus they compare only a subset of ISPs.

It does seem a pretty poor show that while the data is meant to be "accessible, accurate, up to date, transparent and comprehensive" (my bolding), according to the poster Edd Dawson of broadband.co.uk, it also seems pretty clear that unless they get commission they may not have bothered to include lots of the ISPs. (I know that TBB depends on ISPs to update them with changes, so cannot be blamed for any inaccuracies, but at least the comparison on TBB does show lots more of the smaller ISPs, somewhere in the list (depending on the criteria people use when searching, and low price is often in mind for, I suspect, a majority).

I actually found it hard to even see Plus.Net (despite trying to choose combinations of things which should make it show up) on one of the comparison sites (don't remember which one). The issue of which are "truly unlimited" and which have hidden limits (clouded by FUPs where one figure might be the limit one month and a different figure in a different month) won't go away while "unlimited" still gets used so widely, and these "accredited" comparison sites seem rarely to add any additional value (except to provide a call centre so their "advisors" can help the public choose a product that pays a commission - OK, perhaps harsh, but I suspect they all operate primarily to gather commission income rather than for altruistic reasons).

Not sure whether TBB is more of a "gift to the community" like open source is to programmers, than a "for profit" venture, but certainly a source of information I have a lot more faith in...

The same applies to any form of insurance. In general the comparison sites only include those that pay to advertise, or pay a commission - usually through an affiliate link.

On the few occasions I have been stupid enough to try one, (car/home/pet) I've found the suggested companies totally unsuitable, and been spammed by email for a while afterwards.

They should be forced to have large banner headings stating that they only consider a small selection of possibilities and receive direct remuneration from those. Along the lines of the regulations for Financial Advisers.