Vodacom apologizes for false claim

Vodacom could not say how it was possible that such a mistake could slip through
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Tell me about the rabbits George
 
The damage is done and the message burnt into thousands of minds. Their should be a general advertising law that forces companies guilty of false advertising to publicly retract their incorrect statements.

Vodacom: "We would like to apologise to all customers for incorrectly stating the our new HSDPA offering is the cheaper in the world. We lied. It is infact not the cheapest in the world, more like 59th cheapest out of 59 countries"

Now that i'd like to see...
 
Hi Gaz

I think an effective way to address false adverting (if found guilty by the ASA) is to run ads apologizing for the false advertising, where the facts are stated in exactly the same publications/mediums where the ads were run, for the same duration and the same size ads. The company will therefore pay for the advertising space for the ASA to inform the public about the facts.

Currently they can simply make some unfounded statements, pull the ads and everybody is happy…not good enough.

Regards,

RPM
 
Yeah, Vodacom has lost a couple of points on this one in my book. I wouldn't have thought that Vodacom could stoop so low as Telkom...
 
Whilst they did falsly advertise themselves, I think it was an honest mistake, and quickly rectified, without the need to bring in the ASA.

Gaz{M} : They are far from "59th" on the list. They are still one of the cheapest in the world
 
JStrike said:
Whilst they did falsly advertise themselves, I think it was an honest mistake, and quickly rectified, without the need to bring in the ASA.

Gaz{M} : They are far from "59th" on the list. They are still one of the cheapest in the world
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An honest mistake? It's something they could have easily verified had they been interested.

Unless they publicly apologize and with the same effort that they perpetrated the lie with in the first place then they havent rectified anything.

EDIT - and why are we assuming they're still one of the cheapest in the world? We cant even manage to compare the three local providers properly so how on earth can we compare internationally where there are hundreds?
 
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If only we could do that here (as mentioned above by RPM and GAZ)

They will still make much more from this honest mistake than what it cost them. They should run the ads saying sorry for at least a month, and on TV and ALL the newspapers, mags etc, not just one paper in the middle of no where
 
Vodacom has recently announced a 20% reduction in mobile data rates, applicable to all 3G & GPRS data bundles from the 1st of June.
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What happened to the cheaper rates for GPRS/EDGE?
According to Pieter Uys, Vodacom’s Chief Operations Officer this reduction in tariffs means that Vodacom customers could pay as little as 39c per meg – making their mobile internet more affordable and accessible to everyone.
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Everyone? Even people in squatter camps? Still making false claims I see.
“Vodacom reassures its customers and the public that it takes the greatest care in researching competitive market offerings and that whilst there might currently be interpretation problems regarding competitive international offerings, at the time of launching the campaign Vodacom was of the opinion that its offering is the lowest in the world,” the company continued.
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Can't they hire people that know what's going on in the world. They don't even know what's going on in this country. Don't they consider MTN a data provider?
Their free 3G/HSDPA card-swap decision could cost the company as much as R 100 Million, which gives an indication of their dedication to consumers.
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And how much more will they make because of the higher speed?
 
at the time of launching the campaign Vodacom was of the opinion that its offering is the lowest in the world,”
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What an absolute blatant lie! They took a chance, got busted and then got let off lightly. IMO they should be fined an amount that will make them wince.

The ONLY plus side to this is that these sorts of companies are learning the hard way that they are no longer in a position to get away with lying to consumers for very long, thanks to groups like MYADSL who are informed and on the warpath.

VODACOM: YOU DECEIVED ON PURPOSE!
 
I reckon we implement a policy whereby all advertising has to be factually based. I got the idea from a terry pratchet book. What I mean is if someone states that "she had a face that launched a thousand ships" they better have the harbour records to prove it or else they get fined heavily. I mean imagine how interesting a career in advertising would be then.

this might also work wonders if applied to our politicians.
 
My dear fellow ADSLians,

As a wise old man once said (I think it was William S.): "A Rose by any other name, is still a rose". Vodacom is Telkom.
 
ic said:
This is very interesting on many levels [especially how the claim escaped internal Vodacom scutiny prior to publication], but Vodacom has issued an apology and pulled remaining adverts with the false claim - there hasn't even been an ASASA.org.za investigation or ruling - it seems to me that Vodacom clearly recognises that consumers should not be lied to...
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I don't agree with that. That would mean that anyone can make false claims just to apologise for it later and still reap the benefits. I don't buy it that they didn't know their claim to be false. They took a chance, got caught and should not be allowed to receive any benefit from it. Make them pay. Power to the consumer.
 
ic said:
:confused: specifically which part of the partial part my previous post, that you quoted, are you at odds with? - perhaps you have misunderstood that post of mine?
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I looks like one of us is clearly misunderstanding something here. Maybe this will clarify. I specifically don't agree with the last line of the first paragraph of your post:
"it seems to me that Vodacom clearly recognises that consumers should not be lied to..."

I think if that was the case then they would not have advertised it to begin with. I don't belief that they didn't know the information to be false. A company of Vodacom's stature would know what the rest of the world was charging as every consumer with internet access can get that information. I think somebody took a chance. We can't say for sure that the big guys were in on it, but leaving it at "we're sorry" just isn't good enough.

On the whole Telkom issue, that's a beast that should be slaughtered.
 
What they need to do is issue a public apology so that the thousands who have been brainwashed know that they've been lied to.

But I'm surprised that nothing has been said about their other false claim that their HSDPA offering is "faster than ADSL". They never stated that it's faster than Telkom's ADSL offering, they state that it's faster than ADSL in general and providing wrong information in two ways:
1) ADSL provides speeds of currently as high as 1gbps overseas and Vodacom claim to be faster than this.
2) Leading the general public to believe that ADSL can go no faster than 1.8mbps, providing Telkom with the perfect alibi not to increase speeds. Let's not forget who owns 50% of Vodacom.

If we assume that their motive is number 2, this means that ADSL speeds will only increase when HSDPA hits 3.6mbps sometime in the next two years? The question remains why are they misleading the public by this specific claim that their HSDPA offering is faster than ADSL, when they should be clearly stating that it's only faster than the current Telkom ADSL offering.
 
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Hey hey, what a great news article by MyAdsl. Very neat.
 
ic said:
Originally Posted by ic reworded
- Vodacom clearly recognised the value of an apology to consumers who knew they were being lied to...
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Perhaps you can satisfy my curiosity - How far reaching was their apology? Was it distributed outside of MyADSL?
 
They withdrew the AD and they apologised, what more can you honestly ask of them? The article is far to aggressive over such a small misdemeanor in my opinion.
 
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