Ad description
Two sponsored search ads, and claims on Green Flag's website, viewed in early April 2011:
a. The first sponsored search ad stated "Breakdown Cover from £20 - 88% of roadside Breakdowns fixed Average response time of 30 minutes [website address]".
b. The second sponsored search ad stated "Green Flag Breakdown - Breakdown Cover from £20 88% of Breakdowns fixed Roadside! [website address]".
c. The website stated "We get to you on average in 30 minutes" and "We fix 88% of breakdowns at the roadside". Small print stated "Green Flag's response time and fix rate data based on 919,018 callouts Feb 10 - Jan 11".
Issue
The AA challenged whether:
1. the claims that 88% of breakdowns were fixed on the roadside; and
2. the claims of an average response time of 30 minutes
were misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
Green Flag said they used their Quality Cost Delivery system (QCD) to track response times and roadside repair rates for the majority of breakdowns they attended. They said QCD handled data relating to around 85% of their jobs, and it remained representative of call-outs across all regions nationwide. They said the claims in the ads were based on the QCD data relating to 919,018 call-outs between February 2010 and January 2011.
Green Flag said their website, ad (c), clearly qualified the claims by stating the number of call-outs it was based on, and the relevant time period. They said that ads (a) and (b) contained clear and prominent links to where that information appeared on their website.
1. Green Flag said they excluded road traffic accidents (RTAs) from the roadside fix rates produced by the QCD systems. They said the ASA had previously confirmed that exclusion was reasonable in a previous adjudication about their roadside fix rate claims.
They added that, when calculating repair rates using QCD data, they included 'pre-booked' jobs, and excluded 'continuation' jobs. They explained that pre-booked jobs were where a customer reported a fault but was unable or unwilling to wait with their vehicle, and continuation jobs were a second attendance at a vehicle where it had previously been deemed by Green Flag to be incapable of repair. Green Flag said that continuation jobs were excluded from the repair rate as they would already have been recorded when they first attended the job.
Green Flag said they used various codes when recording jobs. They provided a list of the codes and a brief description of the situation each would be applied to; these included 'fix' codes and 'tow' codes. Green Flag said that some fix codes categorised situations where they fixed the breakdown, and some categorised situations where they attended the breakdown and were in a position to provide a fix but it was not possible to fix the vehicle for reasons outside their control. This could include situations where the fix was no longer required by the customer or it was too dangerous for the vehicle to be fixed where it had broken down. They said those types of codes were included in the QCD data used to substantiate the advertising claim. They said those jobs might not be repaired at the roadside for reasons of customer preference, health, safety or legal reasons. They said that in all cases they attended the incident but were prevented from delivering a roadside fix when they would otherwise have been able to do so.
Green Flag explained that tow codes were not included in the QCD data, because they did not consider those outcomes as roadside breakdowns which were resolved at the roadside. Those codes included situations where they towed the vehicle to another location, for example, a customer's house, a specialist or dealer, a petrol station or scrapyard.
Green Flag said they had been unable to ascertain, in the time given to respond, the proportion of the 88% of roadside fixes that related to outcome codes where Green Flag had been in a position to provide a fix but for some reason had been prevented from doing so. They said they accepted the possibility that the roadside repair claim could be said to be misleading if the QCD data relied upon consisted of a large proportion of jobs with those types of outcome codes.
Green Flag said that the claim was not absolute so it was clear to customers that there would be some incidents when they were unable to provide a roadside fix. They said that customers would understand from the claim that most fixes could be delivered at the roadside but not all.
2. Green Flag said that, when calculating average response times from the QCD data, they excluded pre-booked jobs and continuation jobs. They said they excluded pre-booked jobs, such as where a customer might be at work and want Green Flag to attend during their lunch hour, because the response time could be anything up to 48 hours. They said that continuation jobs were excluded because they would artificially reduce the average response time. That was because the vehicle would already be at one of their service provider's garages and the response time would therefore be zero, and because the job would already have been recorded on their system when it was first attended as a breakdown.
Green Flag explained that the majority of customers were informed during their initial call to Green Flag of which service provider would be attending the call-out, and that the response time was calculated from the point at which the service provider accepted the job. They said they had now decided to introduce a new time measure in relation to response times, which would be calculated from the moment the customer called them to register their breakdown to the point at which the service provider arrived at the breakdown.
Green Flag said they discontinued the advertising which was the subject of the complaint as soon as they became aware of the potential issues with both their response time and fix rate data, and had commissioned a full and independent audit of that data. They added that they were now in the process of developing a revised methodology for calculating their response time based on that audit.
Assessment
The ASA noted that over the period of time on which Green Flag's advertising claims were based, 85% of their jobs were recorded on their QCD system. We considered the QCD data was therefore sufficiently representative of their overall job volume to be used as the basis for substantiating the claims.
Nonetheless, we were concerned that the way in which Green Flag had used the QCD data could be misleading to consumers. We noted that the repair rate and response time claims were based on different sets of data from the QCD system; call-outs to RTAs were included in the response time calculations but excluded from repair rate calculations, and pre-booked jobs were excluded from response time calculations but included in repair rate calculations. We considered that consumers would expect claims relating to response times and repair rates for roadside breakdowns to be based on the same set of data, in other words, that all call-outs to all roadside breakdowns during a particular time period would be included in the calculations for both response times and repair rates.
We considered that consumers who were interested in buying breakdown cover would be particularly concerned about whether, in the event of a breakdown by the side of the road, the company providing the cover would arrive promptly after being called out, and would be able to fix the vehicle by the side of the road so the customer could continue on their journey with minimal disruption. We considered that, in that context, consumers would expect repair rate and response time claims relating to roadside breakdowns to include only those call-outs where a vehicle had just broken down and the customer wanted it to be fixed immediately. We therefore considered that the data on which both claims were based should exclude RTAs and those jobs categorised by Green Flag as pre-booked and continuation jobs.
1. Upheld
Notwithstanding the above, we considered that consumers would interpret the claims that 88% of breakdowns were fixed at the roadside to mean that 88% of all call-outs to roadside breakdowns were fixed at the roadside and the drivers were therefore able to continue their journey without further disruption; and that 12% were not.
We noted, however, that Green Flag excluded from the data instances where they responded to a call-out and the vehicle was towed to another location to be fixed. We considered that consumers would expect such instances to be included in the data used to calculate the percentage of fixed roadside breakdowns, because those were instances where Green Flag had not been able to provide a fix by the roadside. Because we understood that the data used to substantiate the claim omitted such instances, we concluded that the claim that Green Flag fixed 88% of breakdowns at the roadside was misleading in that regard.
We also noted that, in instances where Green Flag had been unable to fix a breakdown at the roadside for reasons outside their control, the instance was recorded as a "fixed" breakdown. We acknowledged that in those situations Green Flag were in a position to deliver a fix but were unable to do so for reasons outside their control, but nonetheless considered it was misleading to include those instances in the data as 'fixes' when the vehicle had not actually been fixed at the roadside and the drivers had therefore been unable to carry on with their journey. Because we understood that there were some instances where breakdowns were recorded as fixed at the roadside when they were not actually fixed at the roadside, we concluded the claim was also misleading in that regard.
We welcomed Green Flag's willingness to review the way in which they calculated their "fix" rate.
On this point, ads (a), (b) and (c) breached CAP Code 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),
3.7
3.7
Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation.
(Substantiation) and
3.9
3.9
Marketing communications must state significant limitations and qualifications. Qualifications may clarify but must not contradict the claims that they qualify.
(Qualification).
2. Upheld
Notwithstanding the above, we considered that consumers would interpret the claims "Average response time of 30 minutes" and "We get to you on average in 30 minutes" to mean that a representative would, on average, arrive at their vehicle within 30 minutes of the time at which they placed their call to Green Flag. We noted, however, that Green Flag did not calculate response times from the time at which the customer called them, but from the time at which the job was accepted by one of their service providers. We understood from Green Flag that the majority of customers were informed of who would be attending the breakdown during their initial call to Green Flag, which therefore meant that a service provider had accepted the job whilst the customer was on the phone. However, we considered it was likely that there would be some instances where Green Flag would be unable to allocate a job to one of their independent service providers during or immediately after receiving a call from a customer, and therefore the QCD data might not accurately represent the amount of time customers would have to wait, on average, between placing their call to Green Flag and a service provider arriving at the breakdown. We concluded the claim was misleading.
On this point, ads (a), (b) and (c) breached CAP Code 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),
3.7
3.7
Before distributing or submitting a marketing communication for publication, marketers must hold documentary evidence to prove claims that consumers are likely to regard as objective and that are capable of objective substantiation. The ASA may regard claims as misleading in the absence of adequate substantiation.
(Substantiation) and
3.9
3.9
Marketing communications must state significant limitations and qualifications. Qualifications may clarify but must not contradict the claims that they qualify.
(Qualification).
Action
Ads (a), (b) and (c) must not appear again in their current form. We told Green Flag that they should base their breakdown repair rate and response time claims on the same set of data, and that that data should reflect consumers' expectations of what the claims would be based on.
