Ad description

An e-mail and claims on www.ebuyer.com, related to the Seagate 3TB Barracuda HDD hard drive:

a. Tthe website, viewed on 19 July, featured text which stated "£119.99 inc. vat … Save £34.99" and "£154.98" which was crossed out.

b. The website, viewed on 21 July, featured text which stated "£112.99 inc. vat ... Save £41.99" and "£154.98", which was crossed out.

c. The e-mail included text which stated "£112.99 … ". The text "£154.98" was crossed out and further text stated "Save £42".

Issue

The complainant challenged whether the savings claims were misleading and could be substantiated, because they did not believe that the product had been recently available for £154.98.

Response

Ebuyer did not provide a written response to the complaint.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA was concerned by Ebuyer's lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 1.7 (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 we had not seen evidence to demonstrate that the 'was' price of £154.98 was a genuine previous selling price and that the advertised savings of £34.99, £41.99 and £42 were therefore genuine. In the absence of such evidence, we concluded that the savings claims were misleading.

The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.7 (Compliance),  3.1 3.1 Marketing communications must not materially mislead or be likely to do so.  (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  3.17 3.17 Price statements must not mislead by omission, undue emphasis or distortion. They must relate to the product featured in the marketing communication.  (Prices).

Action

The ads must not appear again in their current form.  We referred the matter to the CAP Compliance team. We also told Ebuyer not to make savings claims in future unless they were in a position to demonstrate that they were based on genuine previous selling prices.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

3.1     3.17     3.3     3.7     3.9    


More on