Octopus Energy Ad Banned for Misleading £500 Heat Pump Offer
The UK’s advertising watchdog has pulled up energy firm Octopus Energy over a Facebook advert that promised heat pump installations “from £500”, a claim now ruled misleading.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) stepped in after two formal complaints were made about the promotion, one of which came from the Energy and Utilities Alliance.
The ad, published in September 2024, implied that customers could install a heat pump at a heavily discounted rate thanks to government support.
It read: “Installs from £500,” and went on to claim: “The government grant covers up to 90 per cent of the costs of a new heat pump. Replace your old broken boiler with an award-winning energy supplier and help stop our reliance on gas.”
Sounds attractive. But the ASA said the numbers didn’t add up. While Octopus Energy defended the ad, saying it reflected real customer payments rather than industry averages, the ASA wasn’t convinced. They reviewed the firm’s sales data covering April 2024 to January 2025.
Yes, there were some instances, 13.9 per cent, where customers paid £500 or less, largely thanks to the £7,500 Boiler Upgrade Scheme (BUS). But crucially, at the time the ad ran, in September 2024, only 5.8 per cent of customers paid that low figure.
That wasn’t enough to justify the claim. The ASA’s stance was firm: ‘From’ pricing must not give a false impression of how many people can realistically access that offer. And based on the numbers, they said consumers were likely to be misled.
They explained: “We therefore considered the price did not reflect what a significant proportion of consumers were likely to pay at the time the ad appeared.”
Octopus tried to back their claim by commissioning a survey following the ASA’s probe. In it, 58 per cent of respondents believed the £500 offer was only possible with government funding.
Even so, the ASA concluded that the company hadn’t provided “sufficiently robust evidence” to prove a sizeable proportion of their customers had access to that price.
They weren’t just concerned with the headline number. The ASA also flagged the lack of transparency around the grant and eligibility criteria in the advert. In response, they’ve ordered the ad not to appear again in its current form.
They ruled: “We told Octopus to ensure that suitably robust evidence was held to demonstrate that any claimed ‘from’ price could be achieved by a significant proportion of consumers.”
They also stressed that future ads must clearly outline government grants and other key information.
Octopus Energy, for its part, isn’t backing down. Rebecca Dibb-Simkin, the company’s chief product and marketing officer, stood by their figures, saying: “We disagree with this ruling. 13 per cent of all heat pumps sold by Octopus during the campaign were £500 or less, exceeding the ASA’s guideline of 10 per cent.”
She added: “This clearly has the fossil fuel lobby worried, which is why they are relentlessly pressuring the authorities to undermine the clean energy sector.”
Advertising in the UK must tread a fine line between ambition and accuracy. Octopus Energy’s commitment to affordable clean tech is clear, but the ASA’s decision sends a message, especially in a sector as sensitive as energy.
