Lectric Shave will give you a shave “up to 52% closer.” SBC Yahoo DSL features download speeds of “up to 6 megabits per second.”
Bah. “Up to” is meaningless. “Up to 6” includes 0-5. It could be everything, it could be nothing. It’s marketing code for “we want to sound impressive but we won’t actually promise anything.”
Where else does this fly? The minimum wage isn’t “up to $5.15/hour.” Good luck telling a loan officer you plan on paying back “up to 100%” of your loan. Doctors don’t say, “The operation is risky, but your chances of making a full recovery are up to 90%.”
So it’s nice to see some pushback against the term’s widespread use among internet providers.
With few exceptions, they include language that says consumers will get ‘up to’ a certain speed…In many cases, consumer advocates and industry analysts said, customers do not get the maximum promised speed, or anywhere near it, from their cable and digital subscriber line connections. Instead, the phrase “up to” refers to speeds attainable under ideal conditions, like when a D.S.L. user is near the phone company’s central switching office.”They don’t deliver what’s advertised, and it’s inherently deceptive,” said Dave Burstein, editor of DSL Prime, a newsletter that tracks the broadband industry. ” ‘Up to’ is a weasel term that should be taken out of the companies’ vocabulary.”
A similar movement is afoot in the UK where ‘Up to 8Mbps’ ads were recently ruled misleading.
ISPs advertising an ‘up to 8Mbps’ service without explaining that many people will be unable to receive these speeds are misleading consumers…35 per cent of people who live more than 3.8 km from an exchange, would be unable to get more than a 5 Mbps connection.
Ok, get back to work. After all, you really should get up to eight hours of work done today.
Aaron
on 21 Nov 06How else can you specify a range? Is the statement “receive discounts up to 40% off” misleading even when there is a range of dicsounts from say 20-40% off (depending on your order)? I know that phrase can be misleading at times, but I don’t think always.
Anonymous
on 21 Nov 06I agree.
It was once used here: http://www.37signals.com/svn/archives2/basecamp_affiliate_program_launches.php
“You can earn up to $50 in credit for each person you sign up.” And then you find out that $50 is for the Premium account.
Dylan Bennett
on 21 Nov 06I liked the TechDirt article title on this topic: “How About We Pay Some Amount ‘Up To’ What Your Invoice Says?”
JF
on 21 Nov 06“You can earn up to $50 in credit for each person you sign up.” And then you find out that $50 is for the Premium account.
That is true though. You can earn up to $50. It’s one of 4 realistic earn amounts. We’re not talking about the extreme exception that would only happen under the absolutely perfect, controlled, ideal conditions. Premium referrals are popular.
“up to 6 megabits” for an internet connection is a theoretical limit. That up-to limit is up to the provider. It’s not something I can attain if they won’t give it to me.
Up to 52% closer shave doesn’t really mean anything. It’s not something I can even understand.
“Up to” is useful when it represents something real, but it’s misleading when it represents theoritical limits or extreme stretches towards the edge of reality.
Anonymous Coward
on 21 Nov 06It would be nice if companies showed the distribution of the possibilities, ideally visually but at least using confidence intervals like pollsters use. Surely they have the data, and probably have a reason for now showing it ;) There’s nothing inherently wrong with “up to” as long as you know what it means, and it doesn’t mean “at least” although I’m sure many people think of it that way.
The Other Side of the Coin
on 21 Nov 06I’d also like to see the phrase “well under” discarded by the automobile industry.
If I can get a Scion tC for “well under $17,500,” just how under is it? It can’t be more than $501 under, because then I’d be told it’s “Well under $17,000.”
Eugene Loj
on 21 Nov 06I agree that “up to” is a “weasel term that should be taken out of the companies’ vocabulary.” Where do you draw the line between over promising a service and meeting the customer’s expectations?
There are cell phone companies that make the “up to” promise for their wireless broadband services. Yet they know they can’t deliver the service promised. One company purports to be “America’s most reliable Wireless Network” but they won’t guarantee service inside your house. Customers are buying into their messaging and outrageous claims because company profits keep going up. Why doesn’t the customer see through the smoke and mirrors?
John Topley
on 21 Nov 06Another weasel tactic is not naming what you’re comparing against. Up to a 52% closer shave than what? Running a ruler over your face?
Kerry Buckley
on 21 Nov 06Still, not quite as bad as the completely meaningless advertising claims you sometimes see like “save up to 50% or more!”
Percy
on 21 Nov 06I think the problem is that “up to” is usually used (misused?) to give an impression that you’re going to get that much. There’s nothing wrong with using up to if you’re going to specify a lower limit as well. However, I’ve usually noticed that the lower limit isn’t specified or it’s specified somewhere where you need to have X-ray vision to find it.
It’s especially true with ISPs who tend to advertise the higher end of the speed (up to 512 kbps) and don’t say a word about the minimum speed. Suits them fine; their customers, not so much.
Anonymous Coward
on 21 Nov 06There have been up to 10 comments to this post so far.
Eric Wright
on 21 Nov 06My personal favorite is “up to x or more”, as in “Earn up to $5,000 or more in your first week!”.
It’s semantically the same as “It could be anything but here’s a random number!”
Cam Beck
on 21 Nov 06Great post. Thank you for entering it into the discussion.
Michael Wagner
on 21 Nov 06A friend of mine just bought a new SUV and spent a little extra to get the extended version because they claimed it could hold up to 8 full-size passengers comfortably. What the hell is a “full-size passenger” and what do they mean “comfortably”. It wouldn’t hold more than 6 of us without someone sitting on someone.
Jamie Tibbetts
on 21 Nov 06Your comparisons to minimum wage and loans don’t apply because they’re set, non-variable figures. For other things that can have variable rates/values, “up to” is used, and is often the only solution that I can think of.
I agree that “up to” can be misused a lot, but this post criticizes the use of it without offering an alternative solution. For example, what should DSL companies say instead of saying “up to 6 Mbps”?
Farmer
on 21 Nov 06Another ridiculous phrase is, “I don’t disagree.” While this is not directly similar to “up to”, I feel it implies the same evasiveness that has become pervasive (even acceptable or at least predictable) in corporate and political lexicons. Instead of people saying what they mean, they are trying to imply everything that they don’t mean.
Andy
on 21 Nov 06Yeah, I once saw an ad on the Red Line (chicago subway) for some kind of phone sales positions where you could “make up to $10 an hour, or more”. Way to rope ‘em in.
Mrad
on 21 Nov 06Good call. I personally kinda fell for the hype, that is to say, I never really thought about it. Death to those sneaky marketing folks…
Colin
on 21 Nov 06I’m getting snagged by this too, in my case by France Telecom. I pay for 8Mbps, but at best get around 2.5. The only reason I continue to pay is because the next option that’s cheaper is to get capped off at 1Mbps.. When the choice is to get ripped off for upto 8, or to get ripped off for upto 1, I’ll take the former.
Just for extra fun, I have to pay France Telecom extra to get tech support. So if I want to complain that I’m getting nowhere near the 8Mbps that I pay for, I’ll have to pay a per minute fee to hear their excuses.
Gabriel
on 21 Nov 06@Farmer: what you describe reminds me of a figure of speech called “litotes” ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Litotes ) which has been used by Caesar for political speech more than 2000 years ago…and I reckon that it’s “not unusual” to find it nowadays.
So I guess people haven’t changed that much at all since then, just the medium has…
Scott Meade
on 21 Nov 06“Up to” and “as low as” are useless when they refer to aspects for which the consumer has no choice or control but “Up to” “as low as” are are useful when they indicate real choices.
The limits can serve as a filter when trying to choose among products – e.g. I can look at an event center and tell if they can handle my event (up to x people), I can look at a truck and see if it can tow my big dream boat (up to x pounds).
What bothers me is when companies combine the “as low as” pricepoint with the “up to” features. “Homes! As low as $1. Up to 5,000 sq ft!” – not much help.
Tim Connor
on 21 Nov 06The Other Side of the Coin: Nah, they should just swap the usage of “well under” and “up to.” :D “Get internet speeds well under 8Mbps” and “Buy a car for up to $17,500” instead of the usual vice versa. That’d be truth in advertising all right.
When the install guy came out for my DSL, he said the line quality was GREAT, I could probably bump it up to 8-9 Mbps. I let it slide – what I didn’t tell him was I used to have the 5 meg service, and connecting directly to my ISP and using their tests, I never topped 3 something. >_<
Kevin Marsh
on 22 Nov 06Even worse: pairing “starting at”, or “from” with the “up to” figure. “Up to 8MBps from just $4.99/mo!” When $4.99 is the monthly fee for their baseline 24kbps service, for example.
This is done all the time and ever since I noticed it, I can’t help but point it out.
Patrick
on 22 Nov 06My favorite is reading something like:
“We have more than 17 satisfied customers!”
So you have 18 satisfied customers?
Patrick
on 22 Nov 06Actually, it’s more typical or likely to be “We have more than 17 years of experience with misleading customers such as yourself.”
Geoff
on 22 Nov 06My business provides customer satisfaction surveying for homebuilders and remodelers. Our survey response rate is very important to users (we call them members) and prospects. When conveying attainable response rates in conversation, our salespeople say, “Our average survey response rate last month was 68%. More of our members experience above 90% than below 50%.”
bill
on 22 Nov 06I agree!!
You see it ALL the time with sale ads.
- Up to 50% off your purchase. - Going out of business up to 75% off.
Yeah, one item is that % off. The rest is 10% off.
Jordan Dobson
on 22 Nov 06And looks like basecamp is up to 100% down. Unfortunately its no where in the middle and is actually 100%.
BooURNS.
Love the blog! I wish you didn’t write so much, I always feel behind.
random8r
on 22 Nov 06Um Jordan, dude… you’re a bit of a toss-pot. “Up-to” in the case of internet connection suppliers relates to actual through-put, not potential through-put.
In other words, you’re purchasing a PIPE, not the WATER that comes through that pipe. If the water you’re trying to use comes from france, you’re going to get low actual through-put compared to if the water comes from your next-door-neighbour.
In order NOT to say “up to”, they’d have to qualify it with “when connecting to services hosted by us”, or somesuch.
Trundling Grunt
on 22 Nov 06I also like the precision which accomplishes these spurious claims – why 52% rather than 50? There’s also a cold cure ad running that suggests that my cold will be up to 94% less (or somesuch). Anyone know what that actually mean?
Gabriel
on 22 Nov 06That may be because 52% sounds more “calculated” than a rough 50% and therefore more trustworthy.
Bil
on 22 Nov 06The general aviation and experimental aircraft communities have a variant of “up to” in their ads: They advertise maximum cruising speeds. Nevermind that the aircraft has to be pointed straight down to reach it, and if you hit any turbulence, you may loose your wings.
td
on 23 Nov 06I think it would be a lot more honest and effective if they would start using “an average of” instead of “up to”.
josh
on 23 Nov 06It’s all weasle words, designed to make things sound better than they are. Saying “we’re in the top 10” is the same as saying “we’re number 10” but with the weasley possibility that they are maybe really number 4 or 6.
Tower Records/Video recently had a liquidation sale with discounts of “up to 30%”. Well, the DVDs and CDs were 10% off, the books and calendars were 20%, and the magazines were 30%. No wonder they went out of business.
Brian Deeley
on 23 Nov 06Admittedly, many a marketer has used “up to” “as much”, etc. but its too easy to fault the people who use these “weasel words” when too often the real culprits are the litigious trolls who sue. This is especially true with the complexity of today’s products – whether its the true bandwidth you get from your internet connection, the number of songs you can get on your xPod, or the exact price you end up paying for your car. The fact is, there are so many options, variables, and unctrollable conditions that its sucide for any vendor to guarantee an exact number.
The fact is, this practice wouldn’t exist if consumers didn’t demand it. The reason it is so difficult to come up with real alternatives to these practices that consumers would demand is because these “up to” “less than” “more than” etc. is because of all the choices out there, these are the ones that aggregate consumers find the most acceptable.
Also note that in most cases all the details of what “up to” “less than” etc. mean is usually included in some sort of fine print.
So while I wholeheartedly agree that there are plenty of weasly vendors out there, the real culprit is your fellow consumers – especially the lawsuit trolls.
Happy Thanksgiving!
Jon Gretar
on 23 Nov 06I must ask. What should they do instead of saying the top margin you can get? I’m just curious what you would find better. I think the term “up to 12Mb/s” is the best way of describing it. At least they are saying that there is a range.
Steven Aves
on 24 Nov 06My all time favorite hyperbole: “SAVE up to XX% AND MORE!”
Say what? Mututally exclusive event here.
Steve
Scott Murray
on 28 Nov 06“Up to” is bogus, but at least is more specific than “virtually,” my pet peeve in the world of marketing speak. “Virtually” is worse, because it translates to “probably maybe almost but not really.”
At least “up to” specifies a range of performance, even if it starts at zero.
David
on 28 Nov 06“up to” is as bad as its inverse, “as low as”. For example, a “bargain bin” might be labeled as items having prices “as low as” 99 cents – that is, it could be priced at 99 cents, 2 dollars, 5 dollars, 100 dollars, 1000 dollars…..
I don’t agree that it is sue-happy consumers that caused this problem; plenty of things make outlandish claims with the fine print stating “results not typical” or better.
Why not state (accurately) that an average speed of X Mb/s could be expected, but results may vary? Why? Because that would make it seem slower than the competition, and because they might lose profit by being honest.
David
on 28 Nov 06“up to” is as bad as its inverse, “as low as”. For example, a “bargain bin” might be labeled as items having prices “as low as” 99 cents – that is, it could be priced at 99 cents, 2 dollars, 5 dollars, 100 dollars, 1000 dollars…..
I don’t agree that it is sue-happy consumers that caused this problem; plenty of things make outlandish claims with the fine print stating “results not typical” or better.
Why not state (accurately) that an average speed of X Mb/s could be expected, but results may vary? Why? Because that would make it seem slower than the competition, and because they might lose profit by being honest.
Amit Patel
on 30 Nov 06We need a greasemonkey script that turns “up to” into “at most”.
This discussion is closed.