Ad description

An ad on www.amazon.co.uk, seen March 2012, promoting a DVD box set, stated "Star Wars: The Prequel Trilogy (Episodes I-III) - Limited Edition Steelbook [Blu-ray] [1999] ... (94 customer reviews) ... This title will be released on April 8, 2013."

Issue

The complainant challenged whether the claim "94 customer reviews" was misleading, because they understood the box set had not yet been released and the reviews therefore related to different products.

Response

Amazon EU Sarl (Amazon) stated that their website was valued by their customers for, among other reasons, the product reviews provided by fellow customers. They said the more reviews a product had, the broader the opinion base and the more reliable the information offered by the reviews was as a whole for the benefit of prospective customers. They stated that many customers experienced the content of video media well before that content was made available to purchase in a particular physical format and, in this case, the films comprising the box set were first released between 1999 and 2005. As a result, they found that most of their customers used the reviews to talk about the underlying content, as opposed to focusing solely on the attributes of a particular physical format, and for that reason, where a new physical format such as the box set was due to be released, they displayed customer reviews relating to previously released formats of the same underlying content. Similarly, they allowed customers to continue to post new reviews. They stated that, in both cases, to the extent that any prospective customer did not consider a particular review to be relevant or helpful to them, he or she could comment on that review and/or rate that review and thereby influence its prominence on the product detail page. They believed they had provided sufficient context to the reviews to ensure they were not misleading, including specifying the particular physical format for which the review was submitted on the 'Customer Reviews' page (i.e., "This review is from: …") and by providing the date of the customer review on the website, a customer could then determine whether it was posted before the release date of a particular physical format. They felt strongly that to remove customer reviews of related products from the product detail page for the box set or, indeed, to prevent customers from posting new reviews before the release date, would be a serious disservice to customers.

Assessment

Not upheld

The ASA considered that the listing made clear that the product would be released on "April 8, 2013" and noted that, at the time the complaint was referred, the product had not yet been released. We also noted that all customer reviews were dated. We therefore considered that consumers would understand that the comments posted under the "Star Wars: The Prequel Trilogy (Episodes I-III) - Limited Edition Steelbook [Blu-ray] [1999]" listing did not relate to that particular box set or the particular features it offered, but provided reviewers' opinions about the Star Wars (Episodes I-III) films.

Because we considered that consumers would understand that the claim "94 customer reviews" related to the films included in the box set, rather than the then unreleased box set itself, we concluded that the claim was unlikely to mislead.

We investigated under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules  3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.    3.3 3.3 Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
Material information is information that the consumer needs to make informed decisions in relation to a product. Whether the omission or presentation of material information is likely to mislead the consumer depends on the context, the medium and, if the medium of the marketing communication is constrained by time or space, the measures that the marketer takes to make that information available to the consumer by other means.
 (Misleading advertising) and  3.46 3.46 Testimonials must relate to the advertised product.  (Endorsements and testimonials), but did not find it in breach.

Action

No further action necessary.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

3.1     3.3     3.46    


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