Ad description
Claims on www.ctshirts.co.uk promoted a clothing company. Text on the product page for a cotton shirt stated, "£29.95 was £70.00 saving £40.05".
Issue
Two complainants challenged whether the savings claim based on the “was” price was misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
Charles Tyrwhitt LLP said that the product was sold at the "was" price from 1 December 2014 to 12 January 2015. They said they only showed a strikethrough price where a product had been reduced from a previous price they had offered.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA considered that consumers were likely to understand that £70 was the usual selling price of the product at the time the ad appeared, and would expect the savings claim to represent a genuine saving against that price.
We were unable to determine whether the stated “was” price was the usual selling price of the product, because we had not seen any evidence to demonstrate that this was the case, such as the pricing history of the product. However, we noted that Charles Tyrwhitt had indicated that the product had been sold at the higher price between 1 December 2014 and 12 January 2015, which was a period of six weeks, three months before the ad was seen. We therefore considered that, if that was the last time the "was" price had been charged, it was unlikely that the higher price reflected the price at which the product was usually sold at the time the ad appeared or, therefore, that the savings claim represented a genuine saving against the usual selling price.
We therefore concluded that the savings claim had not been substantiated, and 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. (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 ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Charles Tyrwhitt LLP to ensure their future savings claims did not mislead about the benefit available.
