Background
Summary of Council decision:
Two issues were investigated, both of which were upheld.
Ad description
Claims on www.dsshousinguk.com, a website listing properties that accepted tenants who received housing benefits, stated "Find a property in your area" followed by a drop-down menu. Further text stated "By registering on DSS Housing you will receive the direct contact numbers for all the LANDLORDS and AGENTS that accept Housing Benefit. Rent Property. HB. Registration is just £4.99 for unlimited access, you can keep using the site until you have found your property ... DSS ACCEPTED ...".
On selecting an area from the drop-down menu, users were taken to a search results page with properties available in that area. Below each listing, text stated "Register ONLINE. For just £4.99 gain unlimited access today for this and all DSS contacts in your area ... new properties are added daily".
Issue
The complainant challenged whether:
1. the claim "Registration is just £4.99 for unlimited access" was misleading and could be substantiated, because after registering and paying the fee she discovered that she only had access to the contact details of landlords in one particular area and would need to pay additional fees to access contacts in other areas; and
2. the properties listed on the website were genuine, because when she contacted some of the landlords, they were all unaware of the website.
Response
Horizon Housing (HH) responded verbally to the ASA's enquiries initially, but did not respond to further enquiries.
1. They thought their website made clear that the £4.99 registration fee was payable for each geographical area but said they were willing to remove the reference to "unlimited access" if the ASA decided this was problematic.
2. They said the properties listed on their website were genuine at the time they were posted, although they acknowledged that some properties may have already been rented and no longer available. They explained that approximately 800 letting agents had access to their website and could update their own properties. A number of them chose instead to e-mail HH to ask them to update the agent's properties on their behalf. They said their website contained specific ads which related to actual properties for rent, but the scroll bar at the bottom of the registration page related to general details of houses and flats for rent. They explained that by clicking on one of the properties on the scroll bar, this would link to a web page containing properties that were available to rent in that particular area. They said the website was updated daily. They pointed out that they had 50,000 customers a year and there had only been one complaint.
Assessment
1. Upheld
The ASA understood that consumers had to pay a £4.99 registration fee for each of the geographical areas listed in the drop-down menu on the website. We noted that the claim "Registration is just £4.99 for unlimited access" appeared on the home page of the website and was followed by text stating "you can keep using the site until you have found your property". We considered that consumers would interpret this to mean that for £4.99 they would have unlimited access to all of the properties listed on the site. We noted HH's willingness to remove the reference to "unlimited access". However, we considered that it would not, in itself, resolve the complaint. We considered it would not make it sufficiently clear to consumers that they would have to pay a £4.99 registration fee in respect of each of the geographical areas they wanted to search.
We considered that although text appeared on other pages of the site under property listings which stated "For just £4.99 gain unlimited access today for this and all DSS contacts in your area", this contradicted the text on the home page which gave the impression that a consumer could view all the properties on the site for £4.99. We considered that because that was not the case, the claim had not been substantiated and was misleading.
On this point, the claim 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), 3.11 3.11 Marketing communications must not mislead consumers by exaggerating the capability or performance of a product. (Exaggeration) 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).
2. Upheld
We noted that the properties listed in the scroll bar of the home page were not actual properties available for rent, but were simply examples. We also noted that HH had not provided any evidence to show that the property listings on the rest of the website were genuine. We invited HH to provide us with a selection of the letting agents who had listed properties on their website with a view to us contacting them, but HH did not provide that information. We considered that because we had not seen evidence to show that the properties listed on the website were genuine, it was misleading.
On this point, the website 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 claims must not appear again in their current form. We told Horizon Housing to amend their website to make clear that a £4.99 registration fee is payable for each of the areas listed and to ensure that they only list properties on their website which are genuinely available for rent.
