Ad description

The website www.widowdating.co.uk was headed "WIDOW DATING - FIND NEW ROMANCE". Text stated "JOIN WIDOW DATING TODAY FREE", "We try to help single Widows and widowers in the UK meet someone special. It's not easy to lose a loved one and you can never replace that person, but it can ease some of the pain when you can share your life again with a new friend" and "Widow dating is the [sic] one of the largest dating websites for single widows and widowers in the UK".

Issue

A complainant challenged whether the repeated claims that the website was for widows and widowers were misleading and could be substantiated, because she had joined the site and had discovered that most of the members did not meet that criterion.

Response

Widowdating.co.uk (Widow Dating) believed the site did not claim that it was exclusively for widows and widowers. They pointed out that text alongside the challenged claims on the home page stated "We also open the site to others that may have divorced or may not have met that special person yet". They said individuals with the status of single, divorced, separated or widowed could join the site and could see members who had joined their other sites using the status “widowed,” but not those from other sites who had given a different status. They said the members the complainant had met who were not widowed must have joined direct to Widow Dating. Widow Dating said they had tested the site as both a male and a female member and found that the default search showed members who were predominantly, but not exclusively, widowed. They said that in practice, however, the results of a search would depend on other criteria selected by the enquirer, such as age and location.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA considered that the prominent heading "WIDOW DATING" and the text that stated "We try to help single Widows [sic] and widowers in the UK meet someone special. It's not easy to lose a loved one and you can never replace that person, but it can ease some of the pain when you can share your life again with a new friend" and "Widow Dating is one of the largest dating websites for single widows and widowers in the UK" suggested that the members of the site would be widowed people looking to meet other widowed people. From Widow Dating's response, however, we could see that people with other statuses could join the site and would show up in the results of searches conducted by people who had joined the site with "widowed" status. We acknowledged that text stated "We also open the site to others that may have divorced or may not have met that special person yet", but we considered that was insufficient to counteract the overall impression that the site was for widowed people looking to meet other widowed people. Because Widow Dating had not supplied evidence that showed that was the case, we concluded that the claims had not been substantiated and were misleading.

The claims 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),  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  3.9 3.9 Marketing communications must state significant limitations and qualifications. Qualifications may clarify but must not contradict the claims that they qualify.  and  3.10 3.10 Qualifications must be presented clearly.
CAP has published a Help Note on Claims that Require Qualification.
 (Qualification).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Widow Dating not to imply that their dating site was for widows and widowers unless they had evidence that showed all the members of the site had that status.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

3.1     3.10     3.3     3.7     3.9    


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