Ad description
A website for a PPI claims specialist, www.thefairtradepractice.co.uk, seen on 23 May 2016. The FAQs page stated “On average our customers receive a refund of £3,400*. *As at January 2016”.
Issue
Lloyds Banking Group challenged whether the claim ‘On average our customers receive a refund of £3,400’ was misleading and could be substantiated.
Investigated under CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.11 (Exaggeration).
Response
The Protection Specialist Ltd t/a The Fair Trade Practice stated that £3,400 was the average sum recovered by their successful clients (those who had recovered money from lenders). They said that they took on all customers who had types of finance where they could have been mis-sold PPI. In the period between April 2010 and June 2016, they had had 78,226 successful and 58,532 unsuccessful clients. They provided data on the cumulative amount in PPI claims recovered by each of their successful clients during that period, which they said substantiated the average figure of £3,400.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA noted that a large number of people who had contacted The Fair Trade Practice about potential PPI claims had not been successful in recovering any money. While individuals did not have to pay a fee unless their claim was successful, we considered that consumers would understand “customers” to refer to all of those people who had engaged the company’s services to recover PPI claims. Therefore, we considered that they would understand that £3,400 was the mean amount of money received in claims by all individuals who contacted The Fair Trade Practice to pursue possible PPI claims within the stated period.
The data provided by The Fair Trade Practice demonstrated that the average sum recovered by their successful clients was approximately £3,400. However, as there were 58,532 customers in the same period who had not been successful in recovering any PPI claims, and as consumers were likely to understand the claim as applying to all customers regardless of success, we considered that the claim had not been substantiated and was therefore misleading.
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 3.11 3.11 Marketing communications must not mislead consumers by exaggerating the capability or performance of a product. (Exaggeration).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained about. We told The Fair Trade Practice not to use objective claims in their advertising unless they were able to substantiate them.
