ASA Adjudication on Where Are You Now? Ltd

Ad

An e-mail for holiday deals had the headline "Flights and 2 nights in Budapest for £99". Text underneath listed various holiday offers, including "Budapest for £99. 2 nights bed and breakfast plus flights ... Read more?".

Issue

The complainant, who had been unable to find the advertised Budapest holiday after clicking on the link, challenged the availability of the offer.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

Where Are You Now? Ltd (WAYN) explained that they were a UK-based social network with a travel orientation. They said their newsletter, containing various offers including travel offers, was e-mailed to members on a monthly basis. WAYN explained that monthly travel offers were provided by Apollo Travel and that, following its usual procedure, WAYN had asked Apollo Travel to provide travel deals that would be available for members to book during November for inclusion in the November newsletter. They said Apollo Travel had provided several deals, including the advertised Budapest holiday.

WAYN explained, however, that although the Budapest offer was available for members wishing to travel during November, it was only open to those who booked before 31st October. WAYN explained that the process of sending out the newsletter could take a number of days, starting from 27th October, but that if members had clicked on the relevant link to the Budapest deal after 31st October, the details for that holiday would not have appeared. WAYN said they had received complaints directly from some members in early November about the unavailability of the Budapest offer. They said they notified Apollo Travel about the offer and asked them to provide an alternative offer of flights to Budapest plus two nights bed and breakfast for £99, with a different departure date from the lapsed offer. They said, in an effort to make amends, WAYN customer service personnel had contacted those members who had complained with details of the new Budapest offer.

WAYN said they had reviewed the procedures for their provision of travel offers with Apollo Travel, to ensure that only travel offers that were capable of being accepted during the month to which the newsletter refers were included in it. They explained that both Apollo Travel and WAYN would check to make sure that the expiry date for travel offers was appropriate for the monthly newsletter in question. WAYN said they were also reviewing the general wording of their newsletters to ensure that any necessary terms and conditions for the offer were expressed correctly.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted WAYN's response. We also noted that WAYN members that received the November newsletter after 31st October, such as the complainant who received it on 5th November, would have been unable to take up the Budapest offer. We acknowledged that WAYN had taken steps to rectify the error for members that had contacted them, by providing an alternative holiday to Budapest at the same price and standard as the advertised offer, and we welcomed their assurance that procedures had been put in place to prevent a similar problem occurring in the future. However, we considered that the advertised holiday should have been available for the duration of the month to which the newsletter applied. We also considered that any significant limitations or conditions to travel offers should be made clear in the body copy of the newsletter, for example that advertised offers had to be booked during the month to which the newsletter referred. Because some WAYN members did not have a reasonable prospect of taking up the advertised holiday, we concluded that the mailing was misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation), 7.1 (Truthfulness) and 16.2 and 16.4 (Availability of offers).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We welcomed WAYN's assurance that the expiry date for future travel offers would be relevant to the monthly newsletter in which they appeared, and we told them to make sure that any significant conditions or limitations to travel offers were clear in the body copy of the newsletter.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)