ASA Adjudication on VistaPrint Ltd

Ad

A leaflet, for VistaPrint, that was distributed with orders from an online retailer, stated "End of Season Clearance 99% OFF Pens 4 colours to choose from. Upload your own photo or logo 360 printing 1 was £2.99 Now £0.03." The 'was' price was crossed out. Four pens, with personalised logos, were shown.

Issue

The complainant challenged whether the ad was misleading because it implied that multiple pens could be purchased at 3p each whereas the price per unit increased with the total number of pens purchased.  

CAP Code

Response

VistaPrint disagreed that the leaflet was misleading.  They said it did not state that unlimited quantities of pens were available at 3p each and they did not believe that any reasonable person would infer from the leaflet that they could order an unlimited number of pens, normally priced at £2.99, at the discounted price.  

VistaPrint believed readers would understand from the leaflet that an offer of "99% OFF" was for the purpose of allowing a customer to try one sample of a product at a highly discounted price and would have quantity limitations.   The leaflet directed the reader to the details of the promotion on the website, where pricing information was quickly and readily available.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA considered that readers were likely to infer from the claim "99% OFF" that the selling price of the pens had been reduced from £2.99 to 3p per unit in the context of an "End of Season Clearance" sale.  We noted the leaflet did not indicate that the price per unit would rise according to the total number of pens purchased (two pens cost £2, 10 pens cost £14 etc) and did not qualify the offer claim to make clear to readers that the purpose of the price reduction was to allow customers to trial a single pen at the discounted price.  In the absence of qualifying text to make clear the nature of the offer, we considered that it was not unreasonable for readers to infer that multiple pens could be purchased at a unit price of 3p.  Because that was not the case, we concluded that the leaflet was misleading.

The leaflet breached CAP Code clauses 7.1 and 7.2 (Truthfulness) and 15.1 (Prices).

Action

The leaflet must not appear again in its current form.

Adjudication of the ASA Council (Non-broadcast)