Ad description
A paid-for search engine ad for RecordCall, a telephone call recording service, seen on 24 August 2016, the result of a search for 'Sky customer services', stated "Sky - Call Customer Services - Helpline Connection Service - recordcall.co.uk. Contact Helpline And Support Record Your Call from 60p per min. Instant Access. Secure Recordings".
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied the ad would link to the Sky customer services website.
Response
RecordCall said the ad stated that they were a connection service and included their domain name, sky.recordcall.co.uk/. They said the ad also included a description of the service they offered and the cost per minute of calling their number.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA acknowledged that the ad included RecordCall’s domain name, but considered that it was not sufficiently distinct from the other claims in the ad and consumers were unlikely to understand that they would be directed to a third-party website rather than to Sky’s own customer service. We considered that the claims “Sky - Call Customer Services - Helpline Connection Service”, “Contact Helpline And Support Record Your Call” and the click though link “sky.recordcall.co.uk” all gave the impression that consumers would be connecting directly to Sky’s customer service and would be able to record that call. We considered it was not clear that this service was being offered by a third party rather than by Sky themselves.
Although we understood that consumers would be connected to Sky Customer Services via RecordCall, we considered that the ad suggested that consumers would be dealing directly with Sky Customer Services by clicking on the link in the ad. Because that was not the case, 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.
and
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).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told RecordCall to ensure that their advertising did not create a misleading impression that consumers would be connecting to Sky Customer Services.
