ASA Adjudication on Music Trading Online (HK) Ltd

Ad

A TV ad, for CD-Wow, claimed "Log on to cdwow.com now. Millions of titles at incredible prices. Get the latest Pirates Of The Caribbean DVD Dead Man's Chest for only £9.99 including free delivery". On-screen text stated "This week Pirates Of The Caribbean £9.99 + free p&p".

Issue

The complainant, who visited cdwow.com and found the DVD was £14.99, challenged the availability of the item at the advertised price.

BCAP TV Code

Response

CD Wow said the ad was for a promotion and they had no plans to use it again. They explained that the Region 3 version of the DVD was available at £9.99 and said that version was advertised on their website during the TV campaign. They confirmed that versions of the DVD for Regions 1 and 2 were available on their website at the same time for £14.99. They said that, because they were based in Hong Kong and supplied customers worldwide, they sold DVDs for different regions to accommodate their international customer base. They said all promotions were offered in good faith.

The Broadcast Advertising Clearance Centre (BACC) said they received an assurance that the Region 3 version of the DVD was available at £9.99 at the time the ad was broadcast. They argued that, when customers visited CD Wow's website, it was immediately clear that the offer applied to the Region 3 version of the DVD. They believed the offer was available to a fair proportion of CD Wow's customers and that consumers were likely to understand that there might be limits to DVD offers because of differences in compatibility.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted that the Region 3 version of the DVD was available to buy at the advertised price. However, we noted that Region 3 DVDs were manufactured for retail in South Korea, Taiwan, Hong Kong and parts of South East Asia. We noted that Europe was in DVD Region 2 and that the Region 2 version of the DVD was only available at £14.99 on CD Wow's website. Although we noted that some consumers might have multi-region DVD players that allowed them to take advantage of the offer, we considered that, because the offer was limited to Region 3 DVDs, it was not available on equal terms to all UK viewers and the limitation should have been made clear in the ad. We concluded that the ad was misleading.

The ad breached CAP (Broadcast) TV Advertising Standards Code rules 5.1 (Misleading advertising), 5.2.3 (Qualifications) and 5.3.2 (Pricing requirements).

Action

We told CD Wow to ensure that future similar promotions stated any significant limitations on the offer.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Broadcast)