Background
Ad description
A website, for an online retailer, stated "Foehn & Hirsch Portable WiFi Internet Radio (Black)" and showed four and a half stars. Further text stated "17 reviews".
Issue
The complainant, who saw the ad on 17 September, challenged whether the claim "17 reviews" alongside the four and a half stars were misleading, because they believed the reviews displayed were selected to create a favourable impression.
Response
Ebuyer (UK) Ltd (Ebuyer) said reviews were submitted by customers and approved by project managers. They said current filters were pre-set to show those ratings which were most useful but that this could change and that, unless they showed the lowest rating first, reviews would always be more positive than negative.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA noted Ebuyer said the reviews were submitted by customers, approved by project managers and pre-set to show ratings they believed would be most useful to consumers. However, we considered that negative reviews were likely to be as useful to consumers as positive reviews and understood that the complainant had submitted a negative review which had not been displayed. We also considered most readers would understand the claim "17 reviews", alongside the four and a half stars out of five, to mean that the reviews displayed were representative of the subjective opinion of customers and that, by omitting negative reviews, Ebuyer created a favourable impression that was likely to mislead consumers into purchasing the product. We noted they said four and a half stars was an actual score but did not receive any information as to how this score was calculated. We concluded that the claim was materially 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.
and
3.6
3.6
Subjective claims must not mislead the consumer; marketing communications must not imply that expressions of opinion are objective claims.
(Misleading advertising).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Ebuyer not to mislead consumers by selecting material to create a favourable impression.
