Ad description
The website www.richardmackay.co.uk, for Richard F Mackay Ltd, a furniture and carpet company, included a link to a leaflet which was headed "We will pay you £500 for your old 3 piece suite". Further text stated "Trade your old furniture in for the furniture of your dreams, available on everything in store with absolutely no exceptions ... we will pay you £100 per seat for your old sofa ... This could amount to as much as £500 for a traditional three piece suite ... your purchase will be available ... on everything in store, nothing will be excluded, not even the famous brand names: Stressless, Ekornes, Cintique, G-Plan, Hulsta, Wade, Vale, Alstons, Ercol - they are all included, as is the entire Mackay Collection of soft leather sofas".
A table was headed "Look at our fantastic trade-in offers on your old furniture". Text stated "When you buy 2 seater + 3 seater, Trade-in value for your old furniture £500. 2 chairs + 3 seater, £500. 3 seater, £300. 2 seater, £200. 1 chair, £100".
The front of the leaflet showed a suite consisting of a three-seater sofa, a two-seater sofa and an armchair in a room setting with a coffee table, a lamp and a rug. The logos Stressless, Axminster, Ercol, Karndean, Vi Spring, Tempur, G-Plan, Vale, Skovby and Hulsta appeared underneath. The inside of the leaflet showed a corner group and three photographs of different two-piece suites. Text above each stated "We will pay you £500 for your old suite ...". For each, crossed-through original and sale prices were shown, followed by a trade-in price. £500 had been deducted from the trade-in price for the corner group. £300 had been deducted from the trade-in price for each of the sofas. The rear of the leaflet showed three separate photographs of a single, three-seater sofa; a suite consisting of a three-seater sofa, a two-seater sofa, an armchair and two footstools; and a suite consisting of a sofa and an armchair. All were shown in room settings with rugs and/or coffee tables.
Issue
A complainant, who had asked to trade in his sofa against an item of bedroom furniture but was told that was not an option, challenged whether the claim that the trade-in offer was "available on everything in store with absolutely no exceptions" was misleading.
Response
Richard F Mackay said a dictionary definition of a trade-in was obtaining a fixed value for a like-for-like transaction. The offer was intended to operate on a £100-per-seat basis: a chair could be traded in for £100 against a new chair and a two-seater sofa could be traded in for £200 against another two-seater sofa. They believed customers would expect to need to trade-in an item of the same kind as the one they wanted to obtain, but that they would be happy to assist if a customer wanted to trade-in for a different category of furniture. They said that in this case the ad showed an image of a three-piece suite and text stated "£500 trade in on your old suite" and "We will pay you £500 for your old 3 piece suite - and what's more we will take it away for free", all of which they believed explained how the offer worked.
Assessment
Upheld
The complainant had challenged the ad after being told in the store and in subsequent follow-up correspondence with the advertiser that the offer applied only to buying a sofa. The ASA considered that the heading of the ad, "We will pay you £500 for your old 3 piece suite ...", the text "Yes we will pay you £100 per seat for your old sofa ..." and photographs of sofas suggested that sofas were part of the offer. However, other items of furniture, such as armchairs, footstools and coffee tables, were also shown in the ad, as were the logos of furniture companies, some of which were unlikely to be associated with sofas. In addition, other text stated "Trade your old furniture in for the furniture of your dreams, available on everything in store with absolutely no exceptions" and "... your purchase will be available with no deposit and two years to pay on everything in store, nothing will be excluded, not even the famous brand names [brand names followed]". We considered there was likely to be a general expectation among consumers that a trade-in offer normally related to broadly similar products. However, we also considered that the references to "available on everything in store with absolutely no exceptions" and "nothing will be excluded," in conjunction with the photographs of other furniture in addition to sofas and armchairs and the logos of companies unlikely to be associated with sofas, suggested that the offer applied across the broad range of furniture sold by Richard F Mackay, and that it would be possible to trade-in one category of furniture against another category. Although Richard F Mackay had said they would be happy to assist in that situation, we understood that was not the way the offer generally worked. Because of that, we concluded that the ad was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so. (Misleading advertising).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Richard F Mackay Ltd to ensure that future ads did not mislead about what trade-in offers applied to.
