Background
Summary of Council decision:
Three issues were investigated, all of which were Upheld.
Ad description
A website for Green Deal Funding, http://greendealfunding.net, seen on 11 February 2018, promoted a window replacement scheme. Text on the page stated “REPLACEMENT WINDOWS FUNDING SCHEME, CLICK TO SEE IF YOU QUALIFY NOW. Limited Funding Available Act Now To Avoid Disappointment! Limted [sic] funding available - Find out if your eligible now…”. Further text stated “You shouldn’t have to miss out on making energy efficient improvements to your home just because you didn’t qualify for the Government’s Green Deal so we’re offering you a much better deal”. Further down the page, text stated “We are the UK’s number one green deal funding provider”.
Issue
The complainant challenged whether the following claims were misleading and could be substantiated:
1. “ Limited funding available”;
2. “… we’re offering you a much better deal”; and
3. “We are the UK’s number one green deal funding provider”.
Response
Person(s) unknown t/a Green Deal Funding did not provide a substantive response to the ASA’s enquiries.
Assessment
The ASA noted that there was no registered legal entity behind the website http://greendealfunding.net and the registrant of the website had used a domain privacy service to set up the website which concealed their identity. We were concerned by Green Deal Funding’s lack of a substantive response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 1.7 (Unreasonable delay). We reminded them of their responsibility to provide a substantive response to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.
1 & 2. Upheld
The ASA noted that the web page was offering a replacement windows funding scheme. In that context, we considered that consumers would interpret the claims “Limited Funding Available” and “we’re offering you a much better deal” to mean that there was a limited amount of funding available from Green Deal Funding and that their deal was more competitive than the official energy grants offered by the government.
In the absence of any evidence in support of the claims, we concluded that the claims had not been substantiated and were misleading.
On those points, 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) and 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. Upheld.
We considered that consumers were likely to interpret the claim “We are the UK’s number one green deal funding provider” to mean that they had the largest turnover in comparison to their competitors in the UK. Because we had not seen comparative evidence to demonstrate that, we considered the claim had not been substantiated and was misleading.
On that point, 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), 3.7 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 3.31 3.31 Marketing communications must not falsely claim that the marketer is about to cease trading or move premises. They must not falsely state that a product, or the terms on which it is offered, will be available only for a very limited time to deprive consumers of the time or opportunity to make an informed choice. and 3.33 3.33 Marketing communications that include a comparison with an identifiable competitor must not mislead, or be likely to mislead, the consumer about either the advertised product or the competing product. (Comparisons with identifiable competitors).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Green Deal Funding to remove the claims “limited funding available”, “we’re offering you a much better deal” and “we are the UK’s number one green deal funding provider” unless they held evidence to substantiate the claims. We referred the matter to the CAP’s Compliance Team.
