Background
Summary of Council decision:
Three issues were investigated, one of which was Upheld and the second Not Upheld. The third was resolved after the advertiser agreed to amend their advertising.
Ad description
A website for a grocery delivery site, www.gopuff.com, seen on 2 January 2025:
a. The first webpage featured the heading “Aldi Price Match”. Text below stated, “Top picks” and displayed product listings for grocery items, each with a roundel that stated “Aldi £ Match”. Each product’s price was next to a more expensive struck-through price and was displayed below each image.
b. The second webpage featured the heading “Aldi price match. Rapid Delivery. Gopuff” next to an image of tinned tomatoes and the product’s price. Further text stated, “We price match Aldi on your essentials. Find out more here”. That text featured a hyperlink to another webpage titled, “How Aldi Price Match Works”.
Issue
Aldi challenged whether:
- the claim “Aldi Price Match. Rapid Delivery” in ad (b) was misleading, because they understood additional fees applied; and
- ad (a) was misleading because it was not clear if the struck-through price represented a discount or a price comparison claim.
Response
1. GoBrands Euro Intermediate Holdings SARL t/a GoPuff said their “Aldi price match” claim was not misleading because it referred to their individual product prices being matched at Aldi’s prices for the same or equivalent items. The price claim did not include the total overall cost which included delivery or other service-related fees. They also stated that Aldi had not challenged the accuracy of individual product price comparisons.
Because they were an online-only retailer, GoPuff said that consumers would expect to pay a delivery fee, similar to other well-known online-only, delivery companies and online supermarket transactions. They believed it was clear to consumers that delivery fees were separate and not included in product price comparisons. They believed those fees were clearly stated on their website and during the checkout process, which they said was standard e-commerce practice. They further stated it was standard industry practice to calculate the total cost after information such as the delivery speed and address were known and not at the time a product price was displayed. Therefore, they believed consumers would not generally expect displayed product prices to include the delivery cost and it would be unfair to expect it to be part of the price comparison.
2. GoPuff said that ad (a) appeared on a page titled “Aldi Price Match” and included a red roundel for each product with the words “Aldi £ match”, which made clear that the prices reflected an ongoing comparison with Aldi.
They said the crossed-out prices represented their own previous selling prices for the products, and the new, lower prices were the result of a permanent price reduction to match Aldi, rather than a temporary discount.
They believed that consumers were familiar with a crossed-out price indicating an old price. They said their website featured a clear and prominent explanation of how the price match worked.
Assessment
1. Upheld
The CAP Code required that marketing communications that stated prices must also state applicable delivery charges or, if those could not reasonably be calculated in advance, state that such charges were payable. The ASA considered that information about fees and delivery costs was likely to impact consumers’ decisions about whether to seek out more information about an offer and whether to make a purchase.
We therefore assessed whether ad (b) gave the impression that additional fees were included in the Aldi Price Match. We understood ad (b) was the first ‘Aldi Price Match’ page that consumers would typically engage with when navigating the GoPuff website. The ad featured the heading “Aldi Price Match” followed immediately by the text “Rapid Delivery”. Further text stated, “We price match Aldi on all your essentials”. We considered the use of the claim “Rapid Delivery”, which appeared in conjunction with the claim “Aldi Price Match”, implied that in addition to products being price matched to Aldi, the added benefit of GoPuff’s service was that those products could quickly be delivered to consumers. However, there was no information to state that the delivery fee and the potential small order fee (SOF) would significantly increase the overall cost of an order. Instead, we considered that the ad created the impression that the cost of delivery had already been taken into account as part of the price match claim. In addition, the following claim “We price match Aldi on all your essentials” again provided no information to state that, despite the ‘essentials’ being price matched, the overall cost of a shop was likely to be significantly higher than Aldi due to the additional fees.
GoPuff was a goods company that did not have their own retail premises and instead had facilities from which orders were delivered. We considered consumers shopping with GoPuff would be aware that they were an online-only retailer and that all orders would need to be delivered. We acknowledged that some consumers would understand that online grocery deliveries typically incurred delivery fees. We understood that GoPuff charged £1.99 delivery and also a SOF, that varied depending on the overall cost of the order. That fee was £4.99 for orders under £12.50. We considered most consumers were not likely to assume that a SOF could be applied to their order. Aldi was an in-person supermarket only and consequently did not charge additional fees. Because GoPuff charged additional fees, which Aldi did not, we considered ad (b), which was likely to be viewed by a consumer before progressing through the GoPuff website, should have made it immediately clear that their Aldi Price Match applied to individual prices only.
We therefore considered the claim “Aldi Price Match” alongside the claim “Rapid Delivery”, in the absence of a clear disclaimer stating that additional fees applied, created an overall impression that would have led some consumers to understand that a shop at GoPuff was equivalent in price to the same in-person shop at Aldi. Because GoPuff charged delivery and in some cases, a SOF, that impression was misleading. We considered the ad should have made sufficiently clear, for example, by featuring a prominent disclaimer, that Aldi Price Match was for individual products and excluded delivery fees and other additional charges.
Because ad (b) misleadingly created the impression that the ‘Aldi Price Match’ included all non-optional fees, we concluded that it breached the Code.
On that point, ad (b) breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.9 (Substantiation), 3.10 (Qualification), 3.17, 3.20 (Prices).
2. Not upheld
Ad (a) featured the heading “Aldi Price Match” above a list of products. Each product listing was displayed alongside a roundel that included the claim “Aldi £ Match” and two prices. One price was a higher, struck-through price in grey text, whilst the other price was lower and displayed in larger, green text.
We considered the presentation of those prices was a format commonly associated with a price reduction or a promotional discount with which consumers were likely to be familiar. We considered it was clear that the struck-through prices were the previous GoPuff prices and the lower ones were the new, GoPuff prices. We therefore considered the higher, struck-through prices would be interpreted by consumers to mean that GoPuff had reduced their prices for those products to match Aldi’s prices.
We understood that the explanation of how the price match worked plus the price comparisons was available via the site’s FAQ section as well as other Aldi price match pages on the website. While the information was not directly visible on the product page itself, we considered the combination of the “Aldi Price Match” heading and the accompanying roundels gave sufficient contextual information to indicate the new lower prices resulted from a comparison with Aldi’s pricing. Because we considered that consumers were unlikely to be misled by the presentation of the pricing information, we concluded the ad did not breach the Code.
We investigated ad (a) under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising), and 3.39 and 3.40 (Price comparisons), but did not find it in breach.
Action
Ad (b) must not appear again in the form complained of. We told GoBrands Euro Intermediate Holdings SARL t/a GoPuff not to imply all non-optional fees were included in a price match when that was not the case.
