Ad description
A website for a dissertation writing service, www.dissertationdom.co.uk, stated "Premium Quality dissertation consultancy for your help". The page displayed a price table according to the time taken to produce the document and the desired grade and academic level of the paper.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the implied claim that the advertiser could guarantee to provide dissertations of the standard of work that would get specific grades in the time periods stated, was misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
DissertationDom did not respond to the ASA's enquiries.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA was concerned by DissertationDom'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 respond promptly to our enquiries and we told them to do so in future.
Because we had not seen any evidence that the advertiser could guarantee to provide dissertations of the standard of work that would get specific grades in the time periods stated, we concluded the claims were misleading.
The ads 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 3.11 3.11 Marketing communications must not mislead consumers by exaggerating the capability or performance of a product. (Exaggeration).
Action
The ads must no longer appear. We told DissertationDom not to imply they could provide dissertations that could achieve specific grades and be written within set time periods. We referred the matter to CAP's Compliance team.
