ASA Adjudication on Future Publishing Ltd

Ad

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Issue

The complainant challenged whether the competition had been administered fairly and efficiently, because he was told he had won after the winner who was initially picked did not respond to the promoters, but he was then told he would not receive the prize and was instead offered a replacement system, which he believed was not of equivalent value to that offered in the competition.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Future Publishing (FP), the publishers of 3D World magazine, said they had arranged for a company called Workstation Specialists (WS) to supply the prize to the winner.  After the competition closed, FP selected a winner (Winner A) and provided WS with that person's contact details.  WS informed that person that he had won and asked him to supply his address for despatch of the prize, but did not give him a deadline for a response.  After a week, when Winner A had not responded, WS asked FP to choose another winner.  Because the competition rules permitted a winner to be disqualified if he/she did not supply additional information on request, FP selected Winner B (the complainant).  Having provided WS with Winner B's details, FP heard nothing further about the competition and believed the prize had been despatched to Winner B until they heard otherwise from the ASA.  They then discussed the matter with WS and learned that after WS informed Winner B that he had won, Winner A contacted them.  Instead of disqualifying Winner A, they told Winner B he would not receive the prize but offered him an alternative system as a gesture of good will.  FP understood that the complainant was dissatisfied with the specification of the alternative system which WS had offered him. They investigated the situation with WS and offered the complainant a replacement system which was as close to the specification of the original prize as they could get: it matched the system originally offered, with the exception of the replacement having an aluminium chassis instead of the original prize's black extended one.  At the time of running the competition, the system offered as a prize was worth £3,695 plus VAT.  Because of advances in technology by the time the prize was offered to Winner B, the replacement system was worth less than that, and to compensate for that FP offered the complainant a free annual subscription to 3D World magazine.  

FP were disappointed that the situation had arisen, and said they would ensure their guidelines and training materials were improved to reflect the lessons learned from the complainant's experience.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA considered that WS ought to have set a deadline for the original winner to respond and ought to have disqualified him when he failed to reply in time, in accordance with the competition's terms and conditions which stated " ... If you are a winner, you may have to provide additional information ... within a specified period.  Failure to provide additional information and/or complete additional documents within the required time period ... will result in your disqualification as a winner and an alternative winner will be selected ...".  

We considered that when WS initially provided the complainant with the specification of the replacement system they were building for him, it seemed that it was not of equivalent value to the prize they had initially told him he had won.  We noted WS did not tell FP that Winner A had eventually got in touch with them. FP were under the impression that WS had despatched the prize to the complainant (Winner B), and became aware of the complainant's dissatisfaction with the replacement system he had been offered only after receiving our complaint notification.  At that point, we noted FP immediately committed themselves to resolving the situation and the complainant was offered a prize of virtually equivalent specification and value to the original.

Because the complainant did eventually receive a reasonable equivalent to the prize he was initially told he had won, we considered that, although the awarding of the prize had not been carried out very efficiently, the competition had ultimately been conducted fairly and the complainant's initial disappointment had been addressed.  We also considered that FP's part in administering the competition was not problematic under the Code, because as soon as they were made aware of the mistakes made by WS, they rectified them.  Although WS had failed to make use of the provision in the competition's terms and conditions to disqualify a winner who did not provide additional information within a set time period, we considered that that did not ultimately disadvantage entrants, because there were eventually two winners instead of one.  We concluded that the competition had not breached the Code.

We investigated the competition under CAP Code clauses 27.4 (Sales promotion rules - Introduction), 31.1. (Sales promotion rules - Administration) and 35.10 (Sales promotion rules - Other rules for prize promotions) but did not find it in breach.

Action

No further action necessary.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)