In a rare review of wireless advertising claims, T-Mobile USA Inc. received a modest slap on the wrist last week as The National Advertising Division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus Inc. found that while most of the claims T-Mobile USA made in recent advertisements were valid, certain claims that it provided the “best value” in the industry should be limited to only a pair of rate plans offered by the carrier.
The NAD report, which director Andrea Levine said was the only review of a wireless carrier she could remember by the advertising industry’s self-regulatory forum, was part of a routine and ongoing monitoring program centered on a recent T-Mobile USA television advertisement that in a voice over said “Take your number to a better place … and get the best value in wireless” and “T-Mobile, get more.”
T-Mobile USA claimed the first voice-over statement referenced the recently implemented wireless local number portability mandate instituted by the Federal Communications Commission, which allows customers to keep their wireless numbers when moving to another carrier. The carrier said a consumer survey conducted by J.D. Powers and Associates found that T-Mobile provided “the best value in wireless.”
The NAD report noted it accepted the first point that the “Take your number to a better place” portion of the claim was related to the WLNP mandate, but questioned the “best value in wireless” claim, calling the J.D. Powers survey inadequate in determining the “best value” claim. The report explained the J.D. Powers survey focused only on consumer preferences and not on the specific services offered by the major wireless carriers for their various service plans, which more closely relate to the “value” component of T-Mobile USA’s claim.
T-Mobile USA also submitted confidential pricing and services information related to its $40- and $70-per-month rate plans, which the carrier said were the most popular plans offered by all wireless carriers in major metropolitan markets, noting it offered the most features at those price points compared with the competition. The NAD agreed that T-Mobile USA did appear to offer “more of the features that consumers would consider valuable” at those price points, including amount of anytime minutes, overage fee per minute and long-distance charges per minute.
But the report found the “best value in wireless” claim was too “broad and unqualified,” and consumers would reasonably interpret the claim to mean T-Mobile USA offered the best value for all of its service plans. As a result, the NAD recommended that T-Mobile USA modify its claim to reference only its $40- and $70-per-month rate plans.
“At those two price points [T-Mobile USA] did provide the best value to consumers,” Levine explained. “But, that is very different from their claim of `best value,’ and so we recommended that they make the change to future advertisements.”
T-Mobile USA, which Levine noted was “very positive” in the inquiry, appeared willing to look at the nonbinding recommendation.
“With respect to NAD’s recommendation that T-Mobile narrow its `Take your number to a better place … and get the best value in wireless’ statement to T-Mobile’s most popular $39.99 and $69.99 plans, T-Mobile will take the recommendation into account in its future advertising,” the carrier said in a statement.
The NAD report had less to say about the carrier’s “T-Mobile, get more” claim, noting that while T-Mobile USA submitted numerous examples of its longstanding “Get More” advertising slogan that began in 1998 when the carrier was known as VoiceStream Wireless Corp., the claim referenced “either the attributes of a particular service plan or new product features offered by T-Mobile. In these contexts, NAD determined the slogan was not comparative in nature, but rather “vague puffery.”
Levine added that while there were few advertising inquiries into wireless companies, the self-regulatory forum handles more than 150 cases each year from a number of sectors, and 96 percent of companies asked to provide more details respond to the inquiries.
“I think most companies are willing to work with us since their cooperation will usually keep the government from getting involved,” Levine said. “Our job is not to punish; it’s only to recommend and guide.”
