are the ASA the real conmen?

http://www.pcpro.co.uk/blogs/2011/06/30/who-are-the-...

media review of recent ASA ruling, I agree with most part of it.

It's so easy to sort this, too.

The ASA simply need to rule that any provider who advertises "up to" speeds must also offer a 30 day money back guarantee.

If the customer is dissatisfied with the performance or any aspect, they simply get all their money back. If that's a line + ADSL together then both are cancelled and the customer refunded.

That's what any company confident about its services would do.

No one including PC Pro has a real answer, removing up to headline speed for technology which is what most (including VM advertise) and the current requirement to give an estimate of actual for a customer might not help.

What was needed was an understanding of up to - which always carried the tag line 'actual speed is dependant on length of line from exchange'.

VM is going to be better that ADSL pretty much always due to the technology implementation, but there are questions about the typical speed Ofcom quote, since it excludes the heaviest users (>30GB a month and the lightest), it is looking at typical users only.

Down to what the public perceive the words 'UP TO' to mean, and the estimate they are given for speed at sign up.

imo theres nothing wrong with "up to", or at least its no worse than the other options. They certainly wont make things easier for consumers by removing it. All they need to do, is increase the prominence of the "up to" part (Maybe minimum of 50% of the speed text size?), and also quote an average speed achieved in the small print at the bottom of the ad.

I think the abuse of the word "unlimited" on packages with a FUP, is far more deceitful than the use of "up to"