Ad description
Claims on www.carjet.com and in a follow up e-mail, seen on 30 November 2011, advertised a car hire company.
a. A website gave a quote for car hire in Malaga and stated "WHAT'S INCLUDED? Unlimited Mileage All required insurances (with NO excess value) ...".
b. An e-mail that followed up the quote stated "What's Included? ... All car hire insurances with No excess value! Our car hire rates are inclusive of all required car hire vehicle insurances like 3rd party responsibility, CDW (Collision Damage Waiver), TW (Theft Waiver) and Bail Bond (where applicable) at Malaga Airport and have no car hire insurance excess, this means that there is no credit card deposit on arrival at Malaga Airport against damage to the car hire vehicle's bodywork and in the event of body work damage to the car hire vehicle (like dented panels not : tyres glass wheels etc see below) there is no renter responsibility".
Issue
A complainant challenged whether the claims "WHAT'S INCLUDED? All required insurances (with NO excess value)" and "Our car hire rates are inclusive of all required car hire vehicle insurances" were misleading, because they did not make clear that customers were required to purchase additional insurance or pay a substantial deposit.
Response
Travel Networks Europe Ltd t/a CarJet.com (CarJet.com) said "All required insurances" meant all compulsory insurances required in order to drive the car from the rental station. They said they did not include the optional insurances that the renter might be offered at the car collection point or those that CarJet.com might attempt to sell online. CarJet.com said tyres, wheels and glass were common insurance exclusions in the industry. They said they offered the customer the chance to purchase "Top-Up" insurance to cover those items.
CarJet.com provided an example car rental voucher, and pointed out that the voucher stated "... DEPOSIT REQUIRED Advantage will pre-authorize a deposit 200.00EUR for items that are not included in the standard rate (e.g. tyres/glass etc). This can be eliminated by taking their optional extra insurance (6.00EUR per day + VAT). DEPOSIT REQUIRED Con't [sic]: If you have chosen to take out CarJet.com's optional extra "Top Up" insurance seperately [sic] then you will still be required to leave this deposit - but can claim back anything that is not refunded from this deposit on your return ...".
CarJet.com stated that many of their suppliers insisted that customers presented a credit card for check-in, which allowed them to pre-authorise a value to cover any damage that occurred to excluded items. They said if customers presented a debit card instead of a credit card for that purpose, the card would be charged rather than pre-authorised. They added that their suppliers often sold their own "exclusion insurance" locally, and waived the deposit requirement if customers purchased that insurance.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA noted CarJet.com's statement that it was common in the industry to exclude tyres, wheels and glass from car hire insurances, and noted a customer could drive a hire car without taking insurance to cover those exclusions. However, we considered the claims "WHAT'S INCLUDED? All required insurances (with NO excess value)" and "Our car hire rates are inclusive of all required car hire vehicle insurances" implied customers would be completely covered and not need to purchase any extra insurance to cover them for any incident that might occur while they had the car.
We also considered the claims implied that the quoted rate would be the total that would be charged to a customer's card for the hire, when they would also be charged either additional insurance or a deposit if they paid by debit card.
Because the ad implied customers would not need to purchase any additional insurance, and implied they would not be charged anything on top of the quoted rate, we considered the claims had not been substantiated, and concluded they were 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.
and
3.3
3.3
Marketing communications must not mislead the consumer by omitting material information. They must not mislead by hiding material information or presenting it in an unclear, unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner.
Material information is information that the consumer needs to make informed decisions in relation to a product. Whether the omission or presentation of material information is likely to mislead the consumer depends on the context, the medium and, if the medium of the marketing communication is constrained by time or space, the measures that the marketer takes to make that information available to the consumer by other means.
(Misleading advertising).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told CarJet.com not to claim that all required insurances were included.
