Dodo advert pushes limits

2008 hasn’t been a good year for Dodo, legally speaking.

In February, the company received the rare ‘distinction’ of an ACMA direction to comply with the complaints handling and billing codes after the TIO noted a rising number of complaints.

In October it broke the record for a Do Not Call Register Act fine.

It ends the year tempting fate with an online advertisement that makes an unqualified and untrue ‘free’ offer.

The advert in question

The promotion is front and centre on the company’s web site.  It spruiks free ADSL2+ and mentions no qualifications at all.

It’s true that web advertising is different from print.  You can’t click on a billboard or newspaper advertisement and get extra information.  But that doesn’t justify a big, bold ‘free’ offer with no upfront indication that you need to buy a home phone service to qualify.

What’s the real deal ?

Clicking on the ad doesn’t whisk you to a clear explanation of what the ‘free ADSL2+’ offer is.  You are taken to a table of plans that includes a $0 monthly option.  (Let’s leave aside the fact that it includes only a farcical 150 MB data allowance before a hefty 18 cents a MB applies.)

From this table and its small print, you can figure out the catch with the ‘free’ ADSL2+ offer.  It’s only available bundled with a home phone, starting at $29.90 with no included calls.  But you need to click to a third page to find those rates.

So there are the facts

To get the free offer, it’s compulsory to buy something else, and the front page ad gives no clue of that.  Even when you work out what you need to buy, there’s more work to be done figuring out how much you’ll pay for it.

Any advertisement that uses the powerful word ‘free’ must be as simple and clear as possible in explaining what is free and what isn’t.  Dodo’s ad fails the test.

Footnote

Journalist Dan Warne has analysed the offer in scathing terms on APC online.