Anglian Water Advert - Is this legal?

[ChrisS1968]

Hi all,

 

Its been bugging me for a while but AW have been running quite a relentless and no doubt costly self promoting TV ad campaign. Bearing in mind that unlike other commercial entities AW is fortunate that is has a huge region of its own with no outside competition meaning that its customers do not have an alternative supplier. At the very least their adverts are not factual in every way as they always finish with a scene showing of a couple engineers working through the night in fowl weather to repair a leak when in reality they do the exact opposite.

 

My point though (before I go off on a rant about AW's many misgivings) is this.

 

As end users with no alternative supplier, is it legal for a company with no outside competition to use their customers money to self promote themselves? Even if they are using money from their profits its still coming out of customers pockets via their water bills. The adverts are not going to drum up extra business as their customers are basically captive and have no other options.

 

Cheers, Chris

[Ethel Street]

Businesses in England can buy their water from other water companies so that would be one reason why Anglian Water might advertise, to attract new buisness customers.

 

Businesses, cahirities and public sector organisations can use the 'Business Retail Market' to buy water and aren't restricted to their regional monopoly supplier like we are.

 

Business retail market - Ofwat

 

Water companies are private companies so can advertise if they want to. Unless Ofwat prohibited it, which they don't.