ASA Adjudication on House of Fraser (Stores) Ltd

Ad

An in-store leaflet, for House of Fraser recognition cards, was headlined “DISCOVER A WORLD OF REWARDS”. Text below stated “The most generous rewards programme offered by any UK department store group”. Further text stated “The most generous rewards programme We give our customers more points for every £1 spent than the reward programmes offered by other large UK department store groups”. A table below showed a comparison with two competitors’ reward programmes.

Issue

The complainant challenged whether House of Fraser could substantiate the claim that they offered the most generous reward programme because he believed another department store offered more points per pound spent, which also equated to more vouchers to redeem in store.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

House of Fraser said that when they re-launched their store card in October 2007 they decided to include in the leaflet a comparison with other store cards, which they had not done previously, because they wanted to show how generous it was.  They said that, in addition to the basic points per pound reward, additional benefits included: a quarterly average of £1.74 million in reward vouchers issued to Mastercard and Account Card holders; exclusive discounts at four annual sales events; 11 exclusive national events since the re-launch, at which discounts and points offers were available; up to £10 in vouchers or 500 bonus points issued to nearly 60,000 cardholders in August 2008 as a thank you for which no qualifying spend was required; similarly in September 2008 £3.39 million worth of £10 and £15 vouchers were issued; regular double or triple points offers also took place, which included the opportunity to earn 24 points per pound spent during the 2008 summer event.  

They also said additional offers were planned for the forthcoming months for existing cardholders and that House of Fraser Mastercard holders had earned an average of 5.15 points per pound spent since April 2008.  They provided tables, which showed the average points per pound earned monthly since April 2008 and compared the overall benefits of other loyalty cards, including the card described by the complainant.  They said the leaflet was still available in their stores and they had no plans to amend it.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted House of Fraser cardholders received a number of exclusive offers and had earned an average of 5.15 points per cardholder per month since April 2008.  We also noted however this average was partly the result of special offers, which were not included in the points per pound comparison in the ad.  We noted, without taking into account any special offers that stores offered their cardholders from time to time and which were not mentioned in the ad, the store referred to by the complainant offered more points per pound spent and more vouchers to redeem in store than House of Fraser.    

We considered the text "The most generous reward programme offered by any UK department store group", in conjunction with "we give our customers more points for every £1 spent than the reward programme offered by other large UK department store groups", which appeared under the heading "The most generous reward programme" suggested that the House of Fraser scheme offered more points per pound as standard than all department stores in the UK.  

Because we had not seen evidence to substantiate the claim that House of Fraser had "the most generous reward programme" according to the terms outlined in the ad, "more points per every £1 spent", we concluded that the ad was misleading.    

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 18.1 (Comparative claims).

Action

The ad must not appear in its current form.  We told House of Fraser to ensure they held robust substantiation to support all comparative claims.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)