Ad description
A website for flight tickets provider Jet2.com, www.jet2.com, seen on 23 July 2017. The top section of the home page featured a section with an online search form in which users could input details about the flights, such as dates, destinations and number of passengers, that they wished to find availability for, and a yellow ‘Find flights’ button was positioned at the bottom of the search form. A grey banner underneath the yellow ‘Find flights’ button in the search form contained a number of claims, including “22KG Baggage Allowance*”. A section titled “Fantastic flights from …” was in red text, and under the grey banner were four columns that displayed a number of prices for flights to different destinations. Text in small font below the price column on the far right stated “All prices one way including taxes | *Charges apply”.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied that 22 kg baggage allowance was included in the price of the flight.
Response
Jet2.com Ltd said that the claim “22KG Baggage Allowance” in the ad was followed immediately by an asterisk. The asterisked text stated that “charges apply”. They believed that the qualification, along with the use of the wording “allowance”, rather than “included”, in the main claim, made clear that further charges were applicable, (for example, if a customer would like to check-in a bag in the hold, rather than just taking hand luggage) and that not everything would be included within the price of the flight. They stated that should a customer wish to purchase a flight, the addition of checked baggage would be presented as the first option after selecting the desired flight, and before any purchasing decision was made. They stated that the price for checked baggage was dynamic and would vary depending on a number of factors, such as destination, duration and departure dates.
Jet2.com also stated that the ad referred to a 22 kg baggage “allowance”, which they believed was accurate, because Jet2.com passengers could have 22 kg “allowance” in one bag. They pointed out that the ad did not state that checked baggage was included in the cost of the flight. They said their ads highlighted their 22 kg baggage allowance because their competitors typically provided a lower baggage allowance, all of which were available for a separate charge, or by paying a separate baggage inclusive fare, a practice which was universal with low cost carriers in the UK.
Jet2.com, however, stated that they had since made changes to the ad to move the qualification “Charges apply” wording to further up the home page so that it was closer to the main claim “22KG Baggage Allowance*”, and changed the colour of the qualification wording to the same grey colour to match the same grey colour of the main claim, so that it was clearer against the white background.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA noted that the main claim “22KG Baggage Allowance” was directly situated below the yellow ‘Find Flights’ button in the online search form in the top section of the home page. Given its position on the page, we considered that the claim was prominently stated in the ad and that consumers were likely to see the claim when they filled in the online form to search for flight availabilities. We considered that some consumers might interpret the claim to mean that Jet2.com imposed a 22 kg checked luggage limit. However, we also considered that some consumers might not be aware that low-cost airlines generally imposed additional costs for checked baggage, and therefore they were likely to interpret the claim, within the context of the ad, that the 22 kg checked baggage allowance would be inclusive, given the prominence of the claim.
Whilst the main claim “22kg baggage allowance” was followed by an asterisk, we noted that the relevant qualification “*Charges apply” was separated by the section titled ‘Fantastic flights from …’ and located further down the page. In addition, the qualification was stated in grey and in a much smaller font size, relative to the majority of the text on the page, and positioned on the far right-hand side of the page. Further, we also noted that the colour scheme of the web page mostly comprised a bright red colour, such as the search section at the top of the home page and text denoting section titles further down the page. We therefore considered that consumers’ attention was likely to be drawn to the brighter colours on the page. We considered that the fact that consumers would incur additional charges for the 22 kg checked baggage allowance was material information that consumers required in order to make an informed decision, it should, therefore, have been made clear before they clicked on the ‘Find Flight’ button through to the subsequent booking pages. However, we considered that had not been the case and that the qualification could be easily missed by consumers, because of its position on the page in relation to the main claim, its font size and colour.
We acknowledged that Jet2.com had made some changes to their ads. However, we noted that, whilst the qualification was moved further up the page so that it was underneath the grey banner, it was still positioned on the far right-hand side of the page and was still in a very small grey font, and which we considered was still likely to be missed by consumers. We therefore did not consider the changes were adequate. For the reasons set out above, we considered that the ad did not make sufficiently clear that consumers would incur additional charges for the 22 kg baggage allowance, and therefore concluded that it was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules
3.1
3.1
Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.
and
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
3.9
3.9
Marketing communications must state significant limitations and qualifications. Qualifications may clarify but must not contradict the claims that they qualify.
(Qualification).
Action
The ad must not appear in its current form again. We told Jet2.com to ensure that their ads did not misleadingly imply that luggage allowance was included in the price of their flights if that was not the case. We also told Jet2.com to ensure that significant qualifications, such as the fact that consumers would incur additional charges for the checked baggage allowance, were presented prominently and close to the main claim about their checked baggage allowance.
