Ad description

A website for Design Tables, www.designtables.co.uk, seen in June 2016 promoted furniture. One product listing was for the "Asprilla Glass Coffee Table". Under the "Delivery" tab, text stated "Delivery information In Stock items are usually delivered in 5-7 working days. Out of stock items purchased by special order are usually delivered in 8-10 weeks. Refer to your order confirmation for more precise delivery time frames. We will contact you confirm [sic] delivery dates prior to dispatch of your item".

Issue

The complainant, who placed an order for three items, including the table, and was only informed of when the items would be delivered on the day itself, approximately four months later, challenged whether the delivery claims were misleading.

Response

Factory Gates Ltd t/a Design Tables explained that the estimates on their site related to each product and that there were three types: products in their warehouse that could be delivered in five working days; products from China that took 10 to 12 weeks to deliver; and products from Italy that took eight weeks to deliver. Having reviewed the complainant’s order, they stated that two of the items had been out of stock. They said few retailers could guarantee delivery times because there were a number of factors that were outside of their control, including freighted items delayed at sea because of weather complications and breakages during transit. In light of those challenges, they said they never guaranteed a delivery time. The time frames stated on their site were indicative only.

In terms of their communication with customers, they said that once an order was placed they created a consignment with an online courier system, which automatically emailed the customer to inform them of a pending delivery. They said they did not have sight of those emails and that the courier company confirmed delivery directly with the client. They said there were some instances that they were aware of where their emails had been directed to a customer’s spam folder.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted that the product listing included general information regarding the likely timescales of delivery depending on whether an item was out of stock or in stock, but did not include any indication of whether the product in question was in stock or not. We considered that while customers would not be able to determine the likely delivery date for the product, they would understand that orders normally took a maximum of ten weeks to arrive but that in some exceptional circumstances it could take longer. We noted that the “Delivery Information” section also stated “Refer to your order confirmation for more precise delivery timeframes” and “We will contact you [sic] confirm delivery dates prior to dispatch of your item”. We considered that consumers would understand those claims to mean that once they placed an order they would be sent an order confirmation which would include an accurate personalised delivery estimate, and that they would subsequently receive another communication when the item was due to be dispatched from the UK, to confirm the actual delivery date.

We understood that the table in question was not in stock when the complainant placed their order and that they did not receive an order confirmation from Design Tables or any communication from the courier company confirming the delivery date until the day itself, approximately four months after the order was placed. While we acknowledged that the complainant’s experience could have been due to exceptional circumstances and that the relevant emails might have been directed to their spam folder in error, we noted that Design Tables did not account for why the delivery was so delayed and, despite our request for such documentation, did not supply any examples of order confirmations sent to other customers, or the communications sent from their courier company to demonstrate the typical number, and content, of their communications with customers who had placed orders for items that were both in and out of stock. Further, we noted that contrary to the claims on the product listing, Design Tables stated that items from China could take up to 12 weeks to arrive, and that they had not provided any evidence to confirm that their claimed typical delivery times for in stock and out of stock items were accurate. In the absence of that evidence, and given how we considered consumers were likely to interpret the claims, we concluded that the ad 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.    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) 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 Design Tables to ensure that their claims regarding the communications that consumers should expect to receive once they had placed an order and claims regarding their typical delivery timescales were accurate.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

3.1     3.3     3.7    


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