ASA Adjudication on DissertationDom
Date:
4 July 2012
Media:
Internet (on own site)
Sector:
Education
Number of complaints:
1
Complaint Ref:
A12-194162
Ad
A website for a dissertation writing service, www.dissertationdom.co.uk, stated "Premium Quality dissertation consultancy for your help". The page displayed a price table according to the time taken to produce the document and the desired grade and academic level of the paper.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the implied claim that the advertiser could guarantee to provide dissertations of the standard of work that would get specific grades in the time periods stated, was misleading and could be substantiated.
CAP Code (Edition 12)
Response
DissertationDom did not respond to the ASA's enquiries.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA was concerned by DissertationDom'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 we told them to do so in future.
Because we had not seen any evidence that the advertiser could guarantee to provide dissertations of the standard of work that would get specific grades in the time periods stated, we concluded the claims were misleading.
The ads breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.11 (Exaggeration).
Action
The ads must no longer appear. We told DissertationDom not to imply they could provide dissertations that could achieve specific grades and be written within set time periods. We referred the matter to CAP's Compliance team.
