ASA Adjudication on Ebuyer (UK) Ltd
Ebuyer (UK) Ltd
Off Ferry Road
Howden
East Yorkshire
DN14 7UW
Date:
17 October 2012
Media:
Internet (sales promotion)
Sector:
Retail
Number of complaints:
1
Complaint Ref:
A12-203603
Ad
An e-mail and claims on www.ebuyer.com, related to the Seagate 3TB Barracuda HDD hard drive:
a. Tthe website, viewed on 19 July, featured text which stated "£119.99 inc. vat … Save £34.99" and "£154.98" which was crossed out.
b. The website, viewed on 21 July, featured text which stated "£112.99 inc. vat ... Save £41.99" and "£154.98", which was crossed out.
c. The e-mail included text which stated "£112.99 … ". The text "£154.98" was crossed out and further text stated "Save £42".
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the savings claims were misleading and could be substantiated, because they did not believe that the product had been recently available for £154.98.
CAP Code (Edition 12)
Response
Ebuyer did not provide a written response to the complaint.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA was concerned by Ebuyer's lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 1.7 (Unreasonable delay). We reminded them of their responsibility to respond promptly to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.
We noted that we had not seen evidence to demonstrate that the 'was' price of £154.98 was a genuine previous selling price and that the advertised savings of £34.99, £41.99 and £42 were therefore genuine. In the absence of such evidence, we concluded that the savings claims were misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.7 (Compliance), 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.17 (Prices).
Action
The ads must not appear again in their current form. We referred the matter to the CAP Compliance team. We also told Ebuyer not to make savings claims in future unless they were in a position to demonstrate that they were based on genuine previous selling prices.
