Firstly you are comparing performance guarantee of a person vs a router. Secondly employment law is a different from consumer law. It's a separate can of worms, with specific clauses for discrimination, etc.
The reason this is important is to limit fraudulent claims, if my business is selling a 1 GB/s internet connection that actually only reaches the speed once a month, and someone is selling 1 GB/s internet connection that works reliably, our marketing material and contract might look the same. I would be defrauding the consumer and my competitor.
I am comparing 2 situations where laws set the framework and contracts specify the relevant details within that framework. The contract or terms of use usually contain the exact definition of the service and the conditions it's offered in, and the SLAs. So I'm not entirely sure how these being "different" changes anything for the purpose of the discussion. The contract sets some terms within the framework set by the law. This is valid whether it's a router or a person. The only thing you could point at is that the marketing material is misleading. But...
GP's claim was based on the same misunderstanding you make now regarding that marketing material:
> if my business is selling a 1 GB/s internet connection
You're doubling down on the same mistaken assumption. I randomly browsed over ISP websites just now and they all sell "up to xGbps" connections. Marketing material anyway can't cover the breadth and scope of an actual contract. So it's the job of the law to decide what "up to x" can mean (you deliver that speed at least 60% of the time for example), and for the terms for the specifics of that particular contract.
Just because we don't like something doesn't mean they're breaking the law or that there's a moral obligation on one side to satisfy all claims for the other.
No marketing material is 100% accurate because you can't cram all the things that need to be said in one punchline. But if you enter an agreement based on that one marketing claim then surely the problem isn't with the provider.
>"contract or terms of use usually contain the exact definition of the service and the conditions it's offered in, and the SLAs"
I would love to see this fantasy world - I have been with 5 different residential broadband providers in the past 8 years, not a single contract contains SLAs nor do they give any indication of how their speeds or latency stack up in practice. Calling the Virgin Media customer line does not produce any usefull information either, and their sales staff cannot answer basic questions.
Even worshippers of 'mah free market' should be able to see the problem: I was looking for the best provider money can buy, and I ended up stuck in year-long contracts with companies that actually provide a crap service, because the only way to know is trial and error. My money should have gone to the best company instead.
>"Just because we don't like something doesn't mean they're breaking the law or that there's a moral obligation"
I think we have a moral obligation not to defraud others. Casually I define it as misleading people into parting with their money or causing them to suffer losses. To me that includes selling herbal cures that you know are fake, homeopathy, or inviting people to a restaurant telling them you'd pay and then taking off as the tab arrives. None of these activities are actually crimes.
There's no need for condescension especially in this case. I live in that fantasy world where I get exactly what I pay for. It's not a guarantee that every country has the same consumer friendly laws but even here it's perfectly acceptable to sell an "up to 1Gbps" connection that falls shy of the marketing.
> not a single contract contains SLAs
If they didn't it's because you chose to pay less for one that has no SLAs. I have a consumer and a business contract from the same provider at my home address. The consumer one offers higher speed for lower price but offers no guarantees except the legal baseline. The business connection on the other hand lists for example minimum, maximum, and "normal" speeds, clearly states that there is no data cap or throttling, and the SLA for restoring connectivity is within 8h, and more.
The only way for marketing material to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth is to be the contract itself plus the relevant law. Anything else will be concealing some information.
> My money should have gone to the best company instead.
The problem is that you have a low limit for what you're willing to pay for, but a high limit on what you are asking for. It's a typical consumer education issue.
> I think we have a moral obligation not to defraud others.
Look, no offense but this is rant territory. You use your personal definition of "defrauding" to make the case that suits you best. Your SATA interface never actually reaches 6.0Gbps, your SSDs almost never reach the advertised speeds, your electricity isn't exactly 120/240V or exactly 50/60Hz. Your steak isn't exactly 200g. Your car doesn't consume exactly 7.9l/100km. and not all McDonalds chicken nuggets are the same size.
If it helps you understand the point, try to apply the same standards to yourself to see why guarantees cost.
Show me one marketing banner that you consider valid and let me nitpick. We'll either find out that no banner in the whole world is honest, or that you can nitpick anything.
"The problem is that you have a low limit for what you're willing to pay"
You are missing the point: money was never the problem. My current provider is miles better than my previous one, but you could not tell that by comparing contract or marketing material. So I could not select the best firm, so they lost out on business, so the market is not functioning as it should. You brough up SLA, I don't need an SLA for SLA's sake.
I think it is unfair to compare a different market entirely
>"your electricity isn't exactly 120/240V or exactly 50/60Hz"
Your residential internet provider can just throttle you willi-nilly.
On the contrary, electricity gris has to follow very strict rules, and if the voltage drops by half we call ot a brownout. The entire country comes to a halt and executives have to answer some tough questions.
Similarly car milage cones from tests inaccordance with specific methodology, they cant just slap a number that's wrong by a factor of 2 and call it a day, but Virgin Media can.
> On the contrary, electricity gris has to follow very strict rules
The electric grid is regulate as such, to define the acceptable ranges. ISPs are regulated differently but the law still defines acceptable ranges for their service. They either don't prohibit, or even explicitly allow saying "up to 1Gbps" while offering lower for example. If you find the practice bad look to change the law. Internet should be regulated like a utility.
You make a case for having a crappy ISP experience but not for them deceiving you because you bought an "up to 1Gbps" connection and get less than the upper bound. You could get some guarantees but you didn't want to pay. Most things you pay for deliver lower than the upper bound, by how much determines if it's fraud or not, depending on the law.
> car milage cones from tests inaccordance with specific methodology, they cant just slap a number that's wrong by a factor of 2 and call it a day
It's very ironic that until just now you insisted "the consumer is being defrauded with fraudulent claims" and now you justify equally unrealistic numbers in other scenarios like car fuel or pollution numbers (don't get me started on how they measure PHEV fuel efficiency, factor of 2 would be great). So you willingly accept equally fraudulent claims if they're obtained in an irrelevant standardized test. Do you really think Virgin Media couldn't pass a "standardized test" with flying colors? By your own admission it's no longer fraudulent because they did a speedtest against their own servers and it came out great.
How many times will you switch tracks like this and just throw stuff against the wall to see what sticks? It looks to me like your argumentation is very poorly thought out, and you wobble between conflicting ideas, or misunderstood ones. You moved the goal posts around so much neither of us knows where they'll pop up. I get you have a bad ISP but their problem isn't the marketing slogans unless you go for the most superficial of reasoning.
> The business connection on the other hand lists for example minimum, maximum, and "normal" speeds, clearly states that there is no data cap or throttling, and the SLA for restoring connectivity is within 8h, and more
What stops them from providing this information to consumers? They can just measure their network performance and provide these statistics.
Firstly you are comparing performance guarantee of a person vs a router. Secondly employment law is a different from consumer law. It's a separate can of worms, with specific clauses for discrimination, etc.
The reason this is important is to limit fraudulent claims, if my business is selling a 1 GB/s internet connection that actually only reaches the speed once a month, and someone is selling 1 GB/s internet connection that works reliably, our marketing material and contract might look the same. I would be defrauding the consumer and my competitor.