Ad description

Claims on the PBA Refunds Facebook page, seen in September 2015, stated “Our average claim redress is £2,200 per successful agreement”.

Issue

Lloyds Banking Group challenged whether the claim was misleading and could be substantiated.

Response

Thomson Legal Ltd t/a PBA Refunds did not respond to the ASA's enquiries.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA was concerned by PBA Refunds 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 response to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.

We considered that consumers viewing the ad would understand that PBA Refunds had been able to recover, on average, £2,200 per claim. This, it was considered, might encourage consumers to pursue a claim with the company with the expectation that they would receive a figure around that amount. In the absence of any evidence in support of the claim, we concluded it had not been substantiated and 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.  (Misleading advertising) and  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).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told PBA Refunds not to state that their average claim was of a certain value if they could not provide evidence to substantiate it.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

1.7     3.1     3.7    


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