Ad description
A listing by Menglong Chen, a lighting retailer, on www.ebay.co.uk, seen on 10 January 2017, showed various LED outdoor wall lamps alongside a Union Jack flag. Text at the top of the page stated "High Power, Daylight White Floodlight, UK Stock". Text further down alongside the headings "Postage", "Delivery" and "Returns" stated "Item location: Southall, United Kingdom - Posts to: European Union ... Dispatched within 1 day ... 30 days refund, buyer pays return postage - See details [link]". The link went to a section further down the page where text in a box headed "Business seller information" stated an email address, a UK VAT number and a postal address in China for Menglong Chen. Text in a second box headed "Returns policy" stated "The buyer is responsible for return postage costs" and "Buyer pays return postage".
Issue
The complainant, who noted that the ad featured a Union Jack flag and text which said that the products were sold and dispatched from the UK, challenged whether the ad was misleading because it did not make clear that returns needed to be sent to China.
Response
Menglong Chen did not respond to the ASA's enquiries.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA was concerned by Menglong Chen's lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 1.7 1.7 Any unreasonable delay in responding to the ASA's enquiries will normally be considered a breach of the Code. (Unreasonable delay). We reminded them of their responsibility to respond promptly to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.
We noted that the ad featured a prominent Union Jack flag alongside images of the lights for sale and that text further down, alongside the headings "Postage", "Delivery" and "Returns", stated "Item location: Southall, United Kingdom - Posts to: European Union ... Dispatched within 1 day ... 30 days refund, buyer pays return postage - See details [link]". We considered consumers would understand that merchandise was dispatched from the UK and were likely to assume that any returns would also be made to a UK address. We acknowledged that text further down the page stated a postal address in China for Menglong Chen. Nevertheless, we considered consumers would expect from the overall impression of the ad that orders, including any returns, were dealt with in the UK. We considered that the need for returns to be made to China was significant information that needed to be stated prominently to consumers. Because we considered that information was not sufficiently clear or prominent, we concluded that the ad breached the Code.
The ad breached 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.
3.4.2
3.4.2
the identity (for example, a trading name) and geographical address of the marketer and any other trader on whose behalf the marketer is acting
and
3.4.5
3.4.5
the arrangements for payment, delivery, performance or complaint handling, if those differ from the arrangements that consumers are likely to reasonably expect
(Misleading advertising).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Menglong Chen to ensure their ads made clear that items needed to be returned to China and did not suggest that they were handled in the UK if they were not. We referred the matter to CAP's Compliance team.
