Ad description
Three product listings on Reliable Medicare’s website, www.reliablemedicare.co.uk, seen on 21 May 2026.
a. The first product listing for “Mesoestetic Cosmelan Pack” featured a product image with two rectangular red labels in the upper left corner that stated “Sale” and “-50%”. Text stated “£198.00 Excl. Tax” next to a price of £396 which had a line crossed through it, and “£237 Incl. Tax”, next to a price of £475.20 which had a line crossed through it.
b. The second product listing for “Mesoestetic Cosmelan 2” featured a product image with two rectangular red labels in the upper left corner that stated “Sale” and “-50%”. Text stated “£95.00 Excl. Tax” next to a price of £190.00 which had a line crossed through it, and “£114.00 Excl. Tax” next to a price of £228.00 which had a line crossed through it.
c. The third product listing for “Mesoestetic Mesoprotech Melan 130 Pigment Control” featured a product image with two rectangular red labels in the upper left corner that stated “Sale” and “-50%”. Text stated “£29.00 Excl. Tax” next to a price of £58.00 which had a line crossed through it, and “£34.80 Incl. Tax” next to a price of £69.60 which had a line crossed through it.
Issue
Mesoestetic UK & Ireland Ltd, who understood that the products had not been sold at the crossed-out reference prices, challenged whether the savings claims were misleading and could be substantiated.
Response
Reliable Medicare Ltd said that they had reviewed the price listings in ads (a), (b) and (c) and made amendments where they considered it was appropriate to provide greater clarity for consumers.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA noted that the ads included labels that stated “-50%” and “Sale” and featured crossed-out reference prices, alongside featured promotional prices, which were 50% less than the relevant crossed-out prices.
We considered consumers would understand that the crossed-out prices represented the usual selling prices at which Reliable Medicare sold the products at the time the ads appeared, and that they could achieve a genuine saving of 50% against the usual selling price of each of the products featured in the ads.
Because we had not received any evidence of the pricing history of the products from Reliable Medicare, we were unable to determine whether the crossed out prices represented the price at which each product was usually sold by Reliable Medicare. We therefore concluded that they had not substantiated that the savings claims represented a genuine discount against the usual selling price of the products at the time the ads appeared, and that the ads were misleading.
The ads 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 Reliable Medicare Ltd to ensure their savings claims did not misleadingly imply savings against the usual selling price of a product.
