ASA Adjudication on South Thames Gas Ltd

Ad

A Yellow Pages ad for South Thames Gas stated "NO CALL-OUT CHARGE TO YOUR DOOR".

Issue

Merton Trading Standards objected that the claim "NO CALL-OUT CHARGE TO YOUR DOOR" was misleading, because they were aware of a member of the public who was charged a "fault finding" fee.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

South Thames Gas (STG) said they charged a fault finding or diagnostic fee, which was explained to all customers before their appointment was booked; they said a fee was charged to diagnose any problem. They said, if the engineer could diagnose the problem within the hour, that fee was all a customer was charged; if extra parts or labour were required, the customer would be advised of that and could decide whether to proceed.  

STG offered to remove the term "NO CALL-OUT CHARGE TO YOUR DOOR" from all future ads.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA considered that readers would understand "NO CALL OUT CHARGE" to mean that they would be charged a fee only if repair work was carried out, not that there would be a charge for diagnosing the problem.  We considered that, although the ad stated "TO YOUR DOOR", the overriding impression consumers would have is that they would only be charged for repair work. Because STG charged a fault finding or diagnostic fee, we considered that the ad was misleading. We welcomed STG's offer to remove the claim.

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

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told STG to remove the claim "NO CALL-OUT CHARGE TO YOUR DOOR" and advised them to seek guidance from the CAP Copy Advice team before advertising again.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)