Ad description
An eBay product listing for a charger sold by Your Accessories UK Ltd, seen in June 2016, stated “Genuine Apple 12W Mains Wall Charger”. Text further down the page stated “100% Genuine Apple Product … BEWARE FAKE PRODUCT CAN HARM YOUR DEVICE BUY GENUINE”.
Issue
The complainant, who believed that the charger they received was not a genuine Apple product, challenged whether the ad was misleading.
Investigated under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising) and 3.41 (Imitation and degradation).
Response
Your Accessories UK Ltd did not respond to the ASA's enquiries.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA was concerned by Your Accessories UK 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 response to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.
We noted that the ad stated “Genuine Apple 12 W Mains Wall Charger” and “100% Genuine Apple Product”. We therefore considered that consumers would understand that the charger was a genuine product manufactured by Apple. The ad also stated “BEWARE FAKE PRODUCT CAN HARM YOUR DEVICE BUY GENUINE”, which further reinforced the impression that the charger was genuine. We understood from the complainant that this was not their experience with the charger they received from the advertiser.
We expected Your Accessories UK Ltd to hold evidence to demonstrate that the chargers they sold were genuine Apple chargers. Because the advertiser had not provided any such evidence, we considered that the product listing was likely to mislead consumers about who manufactured the product and we therefore considered 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.
(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
3.41
3.41
Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer about who manufactures the product.
(Imitation and degradation).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Your Accessories UK Ltd to ensure that they did not mislead consumers about who manufactured the products they sold. We referred the matter to CAP’s Compliance team.
