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Retailers
October 10, 2012
Advertising Standards Authority concludes claim ‘one in ten children receive bullying calls or texts’ could not be substantiated
Carphone Warehouse has been told to remove a ‘misleading’ advertisement for children’s pre-pay MVNO Bemilo from its website by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The advert made several claims about children and their mobile usage, four of which received complaints. The ASA investigated statements about: One in ten children receive bullying texts or calls, 25 per cent of children call or text in class during school, 33 per cent spend five hours a day browsing the internet on their phone and 33 per cent are sleep deprived.
Carphone and Bemilo released a statement saying the statistics came from a variety of surveys, but the ASA concluded that none could be substantiated and classed them as ‘misleading advertising’.
The ASA also investigated a claim in the same advertisement that Bemilo was the ‘safest mobile network for children’ but concluded this claim had been substantiated in the statement from the two companies.
Carphone has now removed the advert.