Misleading advertising in scheduled top up

[Add_31659]

Hi all

I want to highlight a bad commercial practice, unfortunately not limited to Three Ireland, which is also happening in the case of Three. 

To gain roughly 10% more revenue in subscriptions / plans / scheduled top ups / plan benefits loss etc, mobile phone operators are now (actually for years) using a period of 28 days to define a month. This has been on for a while, but only today I realised about the misleading advertising in the Three mobile apps. 

Please see screenshots. Three lures us into believing we benefit from scheduling *monthly* top ups, which then happens to be *every 28 days*  

I am going to prevent the default basic answers that anyone including Three can come up with to hide what is really happening:

1) as I said this has been going on for a while. It doesn't make it legal. 

2) as I said it's not done only by Three. It doesn't make it legal. 

3) when scheduling the top up it clearly states the 28 days cycles. It doesn't make the false advertising claim in the other screenshot legal. 

4) any operational advantage that Three may claim to justify why 28 days is better than monhtly doesn't make the false advertising legal. 

In other  words, there's nothing that anyone can say in response to this post that makes it legal for Three to do misleading advertising. 

Please Three stop immediately, otherwise you'll face the consequences. In Italy the equivalent of the Irish ComReg has fined (heftly) all operators engaging in this behavior and now they are forced to respect the *monthly* definition of a *month*  

Thanks

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[Add_31659]

Link to the Irish CCPC website explaining what is happening here:

https://www.ccpc.ie/consumers/shopping/misleading-advertising/#:~:text=Under%20consumer%20law%2C%20a... 

[Three_Niall]

Hey @Add_31659 , Welcome to the 3Community 🙂

I'd love to help you with the above query. Our Prepay prices are a 28-day plan and this would be explained and accepted in the terms and conditions before taking out the plan. 

I can understand your concerns about the above screenshot and I'll be happy to pass this feedback to the relevant team for you. The reason it advises you that the top-up will repeat every 28 days is to make sure that your plan activates automatically so you don't run out of your All You Can Eat Data, eliminates the need to remember when to top up and makes sure that you don't get charges for using allowances at an out of bundle rate.