{"id":191248,"date":"2016-12-10T10:30:20","date_gmt":"2016-12-10T08:30:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/?p=191248"},"modified":"2016-12-10T10:36:57","modified_gmt":"2016-12-10T08:36:57","slug":"afrihost-wins-no-contracts-no-commitments-fight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/cellular\/191248-afrihost-wins-no-contracts-no-commitments-fight.html","title":{"rendered":"Afrihost wins &#8220;No contracts No commitments\u201d fight"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Advertising Standards Authority has dismissed <a href=\"http:\/\/www.asasa.org.za\/rulings\/afrihost-contract-m_pretorius_2016-5043f\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>a complaint<\/strong><\/a> against Afrihost&#8217;s &#8220;contract-free voice, data &amp; SMS\u201d advertising.<\/p>\n<p>The complainant argued that Afrihost\u2019s claim of &#8220;no contracts. no commitments\u201d was misleading, because \u201cthe words\u2026 when signing up\u2026 clearly refers to some sort of agreement\u201d.<\/p>\n<p>He said payment for purchase of services and bundles can only be made by debit order or credit card. \u201cSurely this reduces the interaction to a contract,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe fact that\u2026 notice may\/must be [served]\u2026 implies unambiguously that there is an active agreement between the parties. This is different to what is implied in the advertisement.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Afrihost responded, saying it does not enter into contracts, but concludes month-to-month agreements with clients for services rendered.<\/p>\n<p>As such, it agrees to offer a service and the client agrees to pay for that service up front via a selected payment method.<\/p>\n<p>Should a client not agree to these terms, then Afrihost will not provide its services. It added that a client may cancel the service at any time without incurring any cancellation fees.<\/p>\n<p>The ASA agreed with Afrihost, stating that payment through debit order cannot amount to a contract in a legal sense.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThe advertisement states very clearly that it operates on a month-to-month basis. That does not mean that every month the consumer will enter into a contract with the service provider,\u201d said the ASA.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt is therefore our view that Afrihost\u2019s advertisement does not involve the signing of a long-term contract that has cancellation fees or penalties.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The ASA dismissed the complaint.<\/p>\n<h3 class=\"my-4\">Now read:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/telecoms\/190714-afrihosts-big-network-plans.html\">Afrihost\u2019s big network plans<\/a><\/h3>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The ASA has dismissed a complaint against Afrihost\u2019s &#8220;contract-free voice, data &#038; SMS\u201d advertising.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":187851,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sma_x_autopost_status":"idle","_sma_x_autopost_error":"","_sma_x_post_id":"","_sma_facebook_post_id":"","_sma_instagram_post_id":"","_sma_threads_post_id":"","_sma_x_attempts":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[1669,351,35],"class_list":["post-191248","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cellular","tag-afrihost","tag-asa","tag-headline"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191248"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/23"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191248"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191248\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":191266,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191248\/revisions\/191266"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/187851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191248"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191248"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mybroadband.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191248"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}