ASA Adjudication on HLC Group Ltd

Ad

A leaflet advertised book-keeping courses: Practical Book-Keeping - Intermediate level and Practical Book-Keeping - Advanced Level.

Text for the intermediate level stated "Train as a book-keeper and learn a skill that's always in demand ... learn the essentials of financial reporting ... take your pick of thousands of jobs ... Qualification: OCR Certificate in accounting (Level 1 and 2) or ICB in Manual Book-Keeping (Level 1 and 2). Target salary on qualification: £35,000 or more a year".

Text for the advanced level stated "Build on your existing Book-Keeping skills ... The perfect way to broaden and deepen your knowledge ... Gain added respect and earning power as a specialist professional. Qualification: ICB Manual Book-Keeping (Level 3). Target salary on qualification: £40,000 or more a year".

Issue

The complainant considered that the target salaries were not realistic for the qualifications advertised. He also said the claim "take your pick of thousands of jobs" was exaggerated.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Home Learning College (HLC) said they had been careful not to mislead when they provided the target salaries for the ad. They said they based the salaries on jobs advertised online and sent web pages containing ten job adverts to substantiate the claims for the target salaries.      

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted HLC's assertion that they based the target salaries on jobs advertised online for book-keepers, and acknowledged that the ten sample job ads they sent offered salaries of £30,000 or more. However, we noted that all of those jobs required significant experience and six of them required knowledge of additional accounting systems such as Sage and Viztopia that did not form part of either of the advertised book-keeping courses.  We examined a sample of online job ads for book-keepers taken from recruitment consultancies throughout the UK.  We noted that the salaries for book-keepers generally ranged from £16,000 to £35,000, and that the high end of that range required a significant  level of experience and a knowledge of additional accounting software.

Because the ad for the intermediate level course said "train as a book-keeper" and listed the target salary on qualification as "£35,000 or more a year" we concluded that it exaggerated the potential earnings available to someone recently qualified in book-keeping and was misleading.  Because the ad for the advanced course listed the target salary on qualification as £40,000 or more we concluded that it was also misleading.  Because HLC had provided a list of ten job ads only, three of which were no longer available, we concluded that the claim "take your pick of 1000's [sic] of jobs" was exaggerated and misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness).

Action

We told HLC not to repeat the claim "take your pick of thousands of jobs" and to remove the target salary claims from the ad.  

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)