ASA Adjudication on AlertMe.com Ltd

Ad

An Internet ad, for AlertMe home alarm systems, claimed "Burglaries are increasing AlertMe is an intelligent wireless home security service that connects you directly to your home by text, web or phone".

Issue

One complainant thought the claim "Burglaries are increasing" was misleading and could not be substantiated because, according to the Home Office website, burglary rates had been decreasing for some time.

CAP Code (Edition 11)

Response

AlertMe acknowledged that the Home Office website stated "Burglary rates have been dropping for some time thanks to a wide-ranging approach to tackling the problem", and that historically there had been a long term trend of falling burglary rates; however, they said that trend had stalled and reversed, and the statement on the Home Office website, which referred to the document 'Crime in England and Wales 2007-08', was now out of date and had been superseded by more recent Home Office figures. They pointed to a Home Office press release dated 22 January 2009, which stated "When compared with the same period in 2007, police recorded crime figures in July to September 2008 show domestic burglary rose by four per cent ...". They believed that provided reasonable evidence for the claim "Burglaries are increasing" and added that extensive press coverage at the time adopted that interpretation of the data.

AlertMe explained that there were two primary sources of data for crime statistics: the British Crime Survey (BCS) and police recorded crime. They said, for the most recent published quarter at the time of the ad's appearance, police recorded crime figures showed an increase in burglaries whereas the BCS showed no change. They believed the BCS was an appropriate indicator of long-term trends but police recorded crime, which was based on actual crime reports, was a valid source for short-term trends.

They argued that their ad used measured language and therefore did not misleadingly suggest a very high level of increase in burglaries. They also pointed out that Internet ads were brief and did not allow room for detailed explanations of statistics. However, they were of the view that their customers would think it was fair to base the statement "Burglaries are increasing" on recent statistics from the police.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA considered that the information on the Home Office website, that burglary rates had been decreasing for some time, was out of date and noted the ad's claim "Burglaries are increasing" was based on a more recent report showing a four per cent increase in police recorded domestic burglaries over the three-month period from July to September 2008 compared with the same period in 2007. We considered the ad did not go so far as to suggest that burglaries had been increasing for a particularly long period of time and therefore a recorded burglary increase over three months was a sufficient amount of time to support the claim. We also considered the ad made no claims about the level of burglary increase and therefore a four percent increase was sufficient to support the claim. We noted the BCS, which the Home Office thought provided a reliable measure of trends in crime, had shown no change in the level of burglaries but nevertheless considered that police recorded crime figures were an appropriate data source for this particular claim, which did not suggest a long-term trend in burglary increase and was likely to be interpreted as referring to recent, actual cases of reported crimes. We concluded that the claim had been substantiated and was therefore unlikely to mislead.

We investigated the ad under CAP Code clauses 3.1 (Substantiation) and 7.1 (Truthfulness) but did not find it in breach.

Action

No further action necessary.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)