Ad description
Claims on the website roofsolutionsnorwich.ltd, seen on 14 June 2018. The page included several testimonials.
Issue
The complainant, who understood that the testimonials related to work that had been carried out by a different company, challenged whether the ad was misleading.
Response
Roof Solutions Norwich Ltd did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA was concerned by Roof Solutions Norwich Ltd’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 provide a substantive response to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.
We considered that consumers would expect the testimonials in the ad to relate to work that had been carried out by Roof Solutions Norwich. We understood that they had been written in relation to a company that was in some way connected to the advertiser’s business, but in the absence of evidence to explain the connection and that the testimonials related to the advertiser’s work, we concluded that the testimonials were 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. (Misleading advertising) and 3.46 3.46 Testimonials must relate to the advertised product. (Endorsements and testimonials).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Roof Solutions Norwich Ltd not to use testimonials in their ads that suggested these related to work they had carried out unless they could demonstrate that was the case. We referred the matter to CAP’s Compliance team.
