South Africa’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled a Vodacom advert promoting a service whereby subscribers can gift data bundles to others is misleading.
The complaint was lodged by a consumer, saying: “The reference to ‘transfer’ is misleading, as it does not accurately describe the service. In reality, one cannot transfer one’s own unused data. One has to purchase additional data, and then forward this as a “gift” to someone.”
Vodacom responded by saying it is a free service allowing users to the ability to purchase a bundle and “gift” it to another user.
“Aside from the obvious gifting functionality, this service could also be used by customers to add a data bundle to other SIMs in modems and tables with ease,” the Vodacom response to the ASA said.
It said in the context of the advertisement as a whole it is clear the feature is a gifting service.
“The respondent further submitted that the headline reads, ‘Gift data bundles to your friends and family’. It clearly refers to ‘data bundles’ that can be ‘gifted’, and not ‘data’ to be ‘shared’ or ‘gotten rid of’ as the complainant appears to have intended. The mechanism through which this is done is directly explained in the body copy,” the Vodacom response read.
However, the advertising body said the prominence of the word “transfer” was misleading, leading consumers to believing they could transfer their already existing data to another user.
The ASA has ruled that the headline of the advert, “Data Bundle Transfer” be changed as it is misleading.
