Ad description

An ad on www.reed.co.uk for Global Edulink, which stated “PRINCE2® Foundation & Practitioner Course Package + Including Both Official Exams”. The previous price of £949 was crossed out and stated “£60 Save 94%- Ends soon”.

Issue

The complainant, who understood that an additional exam fee of £380 was required in order to take the official exams, challenged whether the ad was misleading.

Response

Global Edulink Ltd did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA was concerned by Global Edulink’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 provide a response to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.

We considered that consumers would understand the claims “PRINCE2® Foundation & Practitioner Course Package + Including Both Official Exams” and “£60 Save 94%- Ends soon” to mean that the quoted price covered the costs of the official exams. We understood that once the initial offer was clicked on, the following page stated that there would also be a £380 fee for the official exams. We considered that the omission of this additional fee from the offer price on the previous page was misleading.

Because the ad gave the misleading impression that the official exams were including in the advertised offer price, which was not the case, we concluded 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),  3.9 3.9 Marketing communications must state significant limitations and qualifications. Qualifications may clarify but must not contradict the claims that they qualify.  (Qualification) 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 Global Edulink Ltd not to state that the price included both official exams if that was not the case and to ensure that their future ads clearly stated all the applicable costs for the course and official exams. We referred the matter to CAP’s Compliance team.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

1.7     3.1     3.17     3.9    


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