With its most recent senior discounts advertising campaign, AT&T has accused T-Mobile of engaging in “false advertising”
After John Legere took over as CEO of T-Mobile, the company adopted a more combative stance in its advertising. T-Mobile has made a number of statements that are likely to have users switching to magenta since they are at odds with what competitors are saying. AT&T is not happy with T-Mobile’s most recent advertising push.
T-Mobile has released a new ad campaign last week in which it disparages Verizon and AT&T for allegedly exclusively providing discounts to seniors in the state of Florida.
With this announcement, AT&T claims to have taken legal action against T-Mobile for allegedly engaging in deceptive advertising. AT&T has filed a complaint in the Eastern District of Texas, asking for a jury trial to decide whether or not to grant “preliminary and permanent injunctive relief barring T-Mobile’s continuous deceptive and misleading advertising.”
T-MOBILE’S BannedSeniors.com website is part of the campaign, and it offers assistance to Verizon and AT&T customers in obtaining a virtual Florida address so that they can take advantage of senior discounts offered by those companies.
The goal of T-MOBILE’S ad campaign was to highlight the company’s Magenta 55+ plan while implying that its competitors offered elderly citizens only a small selection of discounts.
For AT&T, “false and misleading statements and representations of reality have fooled, and are likely to confuse, customers into, among other things, acquiring services from T-Mobile instead of AT&T,” thereby unfairly and unlawfully shifting money and profit from AT&T and T-Mobile. T-Mobile’s misleading advertising effort, the firm said, “has damaged AT&T’s goodwill and image and is likely to impact AT&T’s sales.”
