Background
This ruling forms part of a wider group of investigations on Black Friday price promotions. The ad was identified for investigation following intelligence gathered by our Active Ad Monitoring system, which uses AI to proactively search for online ads that might break the rules. See also related rulings published on 20 May.
Summary of Council decision:
Two issues were investigating, both of which were Upheld.
Ad description
Two ads for John Lewis:
a. A paid-for Facebook ad for a MacBook Air, seen on 13 November 2025. The ad included a video with on-screen text that read “All thin, all fast. MacBook Air. For less. MacBook Air with M2 from £699. Price includes £150 saving. While stocks last”. Text in the caption stated, “Save £150 on Macbook Air this Black Friday [Laptop emoji] Available now with 2 year guarantee”.
b. An online display ad for an ASUS Zenbook, seen on 12 November 2025. The ad included a video featuring an image of the product alongside the text “BLACK FRIDAY […] Knowing it’s price matched […] Save £450 on ASUS Zenbook A14 Copilot+ PC”.
Issue
The ASA challenged whether the :
1. £150 savings claims in ad (a) were misleading; and
2. “Save £450” claim in ad (b) was misleading.
Response
1 & 2. John Lewis stated the claim “Price includes £150 saving” in ad (a) related to the previous price of £849, and was intended to refer to the price at which the device was sold by John Lewis immediately before the price was reduced to £699. They said that as part of their price match promise their prices were checked against 25 other leading retailers for electricals. They understood from third-party sources that in 2025, the average price for a new MacBook Air 13-inch M2 was approximately £999, which represented a significantly larger saving than claimed in ad (a). They also highlighted that, although the price claim was not specifically based on the average price, the average price at which they had sold the product over the preceding twelve months was close to £849, at £840.54.
John Lewis stated that, prior to the price of the product being reduced to £699, there were some limited sales at £849. Immediately before that the product had been out of stock. The product had been sold for a range of prices between £779 and £999 in the twelve-month period before the ad was seen on 13 November. They considered that, when considering all the available information, and taking into account third-party sources which suggested other retailers sold the same product for a significantly higher price in 2025, the savings claim was not materially misleading.
In relation to ad (b), John Lewis said the ad first appeared on 11 November 2025, which was the day on which the price of the advertised product was reduced from £1,099 to £649, reflecting the £450 savings claim in the ad. Before 11 November, the product had been sold for £1,099 for 47 days. John Lewis believed this was sufficient to establish the price of £1,099 as the reference price in line with the CTSI Guidance for Traders on Pricing Practices; they also considered that they had sold a significant number of products at this price. The product had first been sold by John Lewis on 7 March 2025, and had been offered for a range of prices between £1,099.99 and £749.99 between March and November.
John Lewis said they were not in a position to share specific sales data for the products featured in the ads with the ASA, as they did not believe they had an obligation to do so legally or under the CAP Code.
Assessment
1. Upheld
The Chartered Trading Standards Institute Guidance for Traders on Pricing Practices (the Guidance) offered practical advice to traders on consumer protection laws and associated practices. While we noted that the guidance provided a set of principles rather than statutory rules, we took the Guidance into account when making our assessment.
The Guidance stated that it was important not to make unfair or misleading price comparisons. It said that if a pricing practice explicitly or implicitly indicated a saving against another price, advertisers should be able to demonstrate that the quoted saving was genuine. How long the product was on sale at the higher price compared to the promotional price was an example given in the guidance of an issue that should be considered when assessing whether a reference price was genuine.
The ASA considered consumers would understand the claims “[…] from £699. Price includes £150 saving” and “save £150” to mean that if they purchased the advertised product for £699 they would achieve a genuine £150 saving against the price at which the product was usually sold by John Lewis. We considered that consumers would infer from the ad that the usual selling price of the product was therefore £849. Subsequently, we expected to see evidence in the form of pricing and sales data to demonstrate that £849 was the genuine established usual selling price of the product. For £849 to be established as the usual selling price of the product, we expected John Lewis to demonstrate the product had been sold at that price for a significant period of time. We considered that selling a product for a higher price immediately before a promotional period would not necessarily establish the higher price as the usual selling price for the product if it was only sold at the higher price for a short period of time.
We reviewed the information provided by John Lewis. They told us that approximately 12 months before the ad was seen, the product had been sold for £999. It was then sold at a number of different prices between £999 and £779 until there was a period where the product was out of stock. Some limited sales were then made at £849 before the product was reduced to £699 as part of the Black Friday offer. They did not provide any information that demonstrated how long the product had been sold at each price for, or how many units had been sold at each price. Consequently, we were unable to comprehensively assess whether £849 had been established as the genuine usual selling price of the product. However, we noted that third-party price tracking websites suggested the product had only been sold for £849 for one day in July 2025. In the absence of detailed pricing history data, we considered the information provided by John Lewis alone was insufficient to demonstrate that £849 was the established selling price of the product against which a genuine £150 saving could be made.
We acknowledged John Lewis’ comments that the average price at which the product had been sold was close to £849 at £840.54. In the absence of any sales data, we were unable to assess how that figure had been calculated. Regardless, we considered that the average price at which the product had been sold over the previous 12 months was not relevant to how consumers would understand the savings claims made in the ad.
Because we had not seen sufficient evidence that the £150 savings claims represented a genuine saving against the usual selling price of the product, we concluded the ad was misleading.
On that point, ad (a) breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.17 (Prices).
2. Upheld
The ad stated “BLACK FRIDAY […] Save £450 on ASUS Zenbook A14 Copilot+ PC”. We considered that consumers would understand the ad to mean that, if they purchased the product during the Black Friday promotional period, they would make a £450 saving against the usual selling price of the product. We therefore expected to see evidence, in the form of pricing history and sales data, to demonstrate that was the case.
We understood that the product was first sold by John Lewis in March 2025. The product had been offered for a number of different prices between £1,099 and £749 until 25 September 2025, when the product was priced at £1,099 and remained at that price for 47 days (approximately seven weeks). On 11 November, the date the ad was published, the price of the laptop was reduced to £649, representing a £450 saving against the price £1,099. We therefore assessed whether £1,099 was the genuine usual selling price of the product.
We understood John Lewis believed that selling the product at £1,099 for 47 days had established that price as the genuine usual selling price of the product. However, the information they had provided us with covered the pricing history of the product for approximately seven weeks before the ad was seen. In order to be able to assess whether £1,099 was representative of the price at which the product was usually sold, we expected to see at least three months of pricing history for the product, including information about how long the product was sold at any intervening prices. As we had not been provided with that information, we were unable to make our own assessment of whether the usual selling price of the product was genuinely £1,099. We understood that between March 2025, when the product was first offered for sale, and 11 November 2025, when the price was reduced for the Black Friday promotion, the price of the product had fluctuated significantly and the product appeared to have been discounted several times. The product had been offered for several different prices, including £1,099, £999, £899, £829 and £749. In the absence of information indicating how long the product had been offered at each intervening price, we were unable to assess whether £1,099 was genuinely the price at which the product was usually sold.
Because the product appeared to have been discounted several times and we had only been provided with limited pricing history, we considered we had not seen sufficient evidence that the claim “Save £450” represented a genuine saving against the usual selling price of the product and concluded the ad was misleading.
On that point, ad (b) breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.17 (Prices).
Action
The ads must not appear again in the form complained of. We told John Lewis plc to ensure that future savings claims did not mislead and that they substantiated any savings claims against the usual selling price of the product.
