I Kicked Smart Meters In The Balls FOR LYING

How you too can file 'failed' complaints that still succeed

It was 2018 and the Smart Meters adverts were relentlessly everywhere. Perhaps a little too everywhere, as they started to annoy me.

Example of the really annoying characters ‘Leccy’ and ‘Gaz’

Americans probably fail to appeciate how annoying these British adverts were. We’re talking obnoxious ‘factually wrong’ cheesy advert levels. The kind where a patronising voice-over berates you for how wrong you are.

And for some baffling reason British people liked these two simpleton characters who were just colour-coded overused ‘tall guy, fat guy’ tropes. They were such bad designs that what they actually represented had to be labelled on their chest and hovered above their heads, like some sort of neon sign.

Their simpleton antics served the goal of distracting you from the factually incorrect statements the adverts were making. You can watch one of the annoying, childish adverts here:

The Lie

Nothing was more annoying than the ultimate lie they peddled, however. See, Smart Meter adverts kept foisting this falsehood where they claimed using a Smart Meter by itself was somehow more efficient than an analogue. Did the ignorant fools who devised this advert ever correct this misleading statement of their own free will? No.

You see, a study comparing the efficiency of Smart Meters to Analogue meters found they both had compariable levels of efficiency in reading electricity - the fundamental technology had not changed in the decades. In-fact, Smart Meters were found to consume more electricity on account of them constantly broadcasting Wifi signals datamining your energy usage to your local utility company.

So, what do we do when we have a factually inaccurate statement in an advert in the UK? We complain to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

Enter ASA

Now, me and the ASA have a love-hate relationship. I file a complaint. They recognise that my statements are factually accurate, short, well-evidenced. They deny the complaint. I appeal. ASA upholds their denial of the complaint but admits the advertiser has ‘made a correction’.

It ends in this weirdly tense situation where I got the outcome I wanted but ASA refuse to acknowledge it was correct… even if they admit it was correct to other people and the advertiser acts as though what they said was false.

You do you, I guess, ASA.

Indeed, after filing the complaint, not only did ASA basically act like I had won on the complaint, but they expanded the enforcement to other domains. They upheld similar complaints by others for radio adverts:

A radio advert by Smart Energy GB has been banned for making 'misleading' claims that consumers could save money simply by getting a smart meter installed.

Shortly after the ban, Leccy & Gaz disappeared from the airwaves - I guess with no lie to sell they no longer served their purpose - and it got replaced by adverts that instead speculated that you could save enough money for maybe one whole bath if you carefully managed your electricity (which they then had to qualify in small print that you could do with a normal analogue meter).

Victory in truth!

This Wasn’t The Only Time I Used The ASA To Great Effect

McDonalds had a really patronising advert where they tried to insist that their burgers used ‘real British beef’ that was ‘grass fed’ (this came out during the time of the pink slime debacle).

Now, some companies bend the truth and usually if it is a short run, it’s not a problem, I’m not the speech police. However McDonalds really kept hammering this patronising viewpoint that anyone who dared question the integrity of McDonalds’ burgers was an idiot. So, after seeing the obnoxious advert about “grass fed beef” for the 20th time in a row in 2 months, I decided I’d take their arses to the ASA.

As per usual, the ASA did not uphold the complaint. Despite this, McDonalds was forced to clarify that actually the beef wasn’t British but Irish (and not Northern Irish at that, either), and actually their beef isn’t always grass fed, during the winter months it is fed grain. After McDonalds explained that I think they realised their own advert had no legs and they voluntarily withdrew the obnoxious advert.

What a shock, neither British nor grass-fed, who could have seen that coming?

What Does This Mean For Vaccine Harms?

What’s interesting is this situation shows you don’t need to legally win to still have a positive outcome. ASA didn’t uphold my original complaints in either case, but the study paper I provided them for the Smart Meters obviously changed their mindset and how they perceived the Smart Meter adverts, because going forwards they obviously had an attitude shift and started banning them for being misleading.

In terms of the McDonalds situation, they voluntarily withdrew the advert because I think they knew I knew their advert was riddled with flaws. They stopped questioning people challenging the integrity of their burgers, namely because those people tended to be right.

Most other people would consider this an exercise in futily. They would have seen the ASA rejections and think they lost. But if you observe for actions and behaviours, sometimes you still win even if the person initially denies your statement.

Speak truth to power!

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