ASA Adjudication on 1st Access Ltd

Ad

An ad in a directory, for household services, claimed "NO CALL OUT CHARGE".

Issue

The complainant objected that the claim was misleading because a relative was charged a fee even though she had not had work done.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

1st Access Ltd explained that they did not have a call-out charge but charged customers for any work done, including diagnostic work.  They explained that if the customer declined to have the work done after the problem had been diagnosed, they would charge for the time it had taken to diagnose the problem.  They said it was their practice to make that clear and to ask the customer to sign a form to agree those conditions before any work was carried out; they said they would send a memo to all staff reminding them of that fact.  They said it was not uncommon for their engineers to travel out to a job and have their services declined virtually on arrival.  They explained that in those cases the form was returned with no signature, stating that no work had been carried out and no fee charged.  They believed that, because they did not charge for travel and because the customer signed the form agreeing to their half hourly rate before any work was carried out the claim "NO CALL OUT CHARGE" was justified. The complainant explained that her relative was asked to sign the form at the same time as the bill was presented for the time spent diagnosing the electrical problem.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA acknowledged that some electrical problems may take longer to diagnose than to fix.  We also noted 1st Access had a policy of informing customers that they would be charged for the engineers time, at a half hourly rate, once the engineer had arrived at the job.  We considered, however, that it would be difficult for some customers, particularly the more vulnerable, to refuse to sign the form once the engineer was at their home.  We considered that customers would generally understand that the claim "NO CALL OUT CHARGE" to mean  they would be charged a fee only if repair work was carried out, not that there would be a charge for diagnosing the electrical problem.  Because 1st Access charged a fee for diagnosis, we concluded that the claim was misleading.

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

Action

The claim should not be repeated.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)