Ad description
A claim on the website www.theaa.com, promoting the AA driving school, stated "We're the only national driving school exclusively using fully qualified instructors. The green badge in the windscreen of your AA Driving School car assures you that your instructor is a fully qualified expert".
Issue
Bill Plant Ltd (Bill Plant) challenged whether the claim "We're the only national driving school exclusively using fully qualified instructors" was misleading and could be substantiated, because they considered they were also a national driving school using only fully qualified instructors.
Response
The Automobile Association Ltd, trading as the AA (the AA), said they had used competitor research to substantiate their claim. They stated that the phrase "fully qualified driving instructors" referred to the Approved Driving Instructor (ADI) qualification administered by the Driving Standards Agency (DSA). They explained that, under the DSA's system, only those registered as an ADI or PDI (Potential Driving Instructor) were allowed to charge a commercial fee for providing driving lessons. They said to become an ADI it was necessary to pass a series of exams covering driving theory, driving ability and instructional ability, whereas PDIs were able to teach whilst still in training. The AA said they had never allowed PDIs to operate under their branded franchise business, so their pupils were always guaranteed of having lessons with a fully qualified instructor (an ADI). They explained that they required all new instructors to provide a copy of their ADI licence along with other documentation when applying to join the AA Driving school, that they monitored the expiry dates of all licences and contacted instructors to remind them when they needed to be renewed. Every year they sent their entire database to the DSA to be checked against their system. They said they took immediate action to terminate any franchise where the ADI licence had expired.
The AA said most driving schools were small businesses and therefore could not be described as "national". They named two other large competitors, which they explained used a mix of ADIs and PDIs and for that reason would not fall within the term "national driving school exclusively using fully qualified instructors". They acknowledged that, around the end of 2011, Bill Plant had converted to an "ADI exclusive" position. However, they did not consider that Bill Plant could claim to be a "national" driving school. Although they accepted that it would not be necessary to provide instructors in every UK postcode area in order to justify a claim for "national" coverage, they considered that Bill Plant's coverage fell below the minimum level of acceptability; they therefore argued that the claim "We're the only national driving school exclusively using fully qualified instructors" was not misleading.
In relation to the claim "national driving school", the AA stated that they had over 1,800 fully branded AA Driving School ADIs covering the UK, including Northern Ireland. They said they took on around 90,000 new students every year and had approximately 40,000 active students at any one time. They provided a breakdown showing the number of instructors they had in each UK postcode area. They considered that the number and spread of their driving instructors across the UK justified a claim of "national" coverage. They stated that, on the other hand, they believed Bill Plant could not claim national coverage because they had too few instructors and did not cover significant parts of the UK. The AA said they understood that Bill Plant had between 500 and 700 ADIs and provided a screenshot from Bill Plant's Facebook page which stated that they had "over 500 cars".
The AA stated that they had carried out checks on Bill Plant's website to establish instructor availability in each postcode area in the UK. They said that had resulted each time in messages that no instructors were "available", or that the instructors were "fully booked up", in a significant number of areas and that had led them to understand that Bill Plant had no instructors in those places. They provided screenshots of the results of their latest exercise, which they considered demonstrated that there were no Bill Plant instructors in 15 postcode regions throughout the UK. They also provided a copy of research data obtained through a mystery shopping exercise, which they said had found largely similar gaps in Bill Plant's coverage. They stated that their research gave them reason to believe that Bill Plant was unable to serve a minimum of 11% of the UK population; they considered that figure was too high to warrant a claim to be a "national" driving school.
Further, the AA considered that a business claiming to provide "national" coverage should demonstrate that it provided services in Northern Ireland. They noted that, despite Bill Plant's website featuring an image of the UK, only the parts of it which fell within Great Britain were clickable. They said Bill Plant had no coverage in Northern Ireland and for that reason, as well as because of their lack of coverage in other postcode areas, could not challenge the AA’s claim to be the only "national" driving school exclusively using fully qualified driving instructors.
Assessment
Not upheld
The ASA understood that the AA was a large driving school with over 1,800 instructors spread throughout the UK. We noted from the data provided to us that they had multiple instructors in almost every postcode area within the UK, and considered that that fact was sufficient to justify their claim to be a "national" driving school. We also noted that all AA instructors held ADI status and understood that that status reflected an official qualification administered by the DSA in Great Britain and the Driver & Vehicle Agency (DVTNI) in Northern Ireland. We considered it was therefore reasonable for the AA to refer to their business as exclusively using fully qualified instructors.
We noted that Bill Plant believed that the AA's claim was misleading, because they were also a national driving school exclusively using fully qualified instructors, which they confirmed meant that all of their franchisees were ADIs. Bill Plant provided a copy of their full instructor database and an accompanying list of names of instructors whom they said would serve the postcode areas identified by the AA as being without coverage. However, we noted that some of those names did not appear on the full instructor database and in other cases, one person had been designated by Bill Plant as being able to cover a very large postcode area on their own.
In relation to Northern Ireland, Bill Plant argued that the fact that they did not cover that area was irrelevant, because the qualification for driving instructors was different and was administered by a different licensing authority. Although we acknowledged that the ADI licence was issued in Northern Ireland by the DVTNI rather than the DSA as in Great Britain, we understood from the DVTNI that the qualification process itself was identical and that licences were easily transferrable between the two areas.
We considered that, in the absence of clear qualification, most consumers would be likely to view the claim "national driving school" as relating to the entire UK, rather than only to England, Scotland and Wales, and that their likely expectation would be that there would not be significant areas of the country for which tuition was not available. We noted the AA's evidence that searches on Bill Plant's website for driving lessons in around 15 UK postcode areas returned the result that all driving instructors were fully booked, and that a mystery shopping exercise had found similar apparent gaps in Bill Plant's coverage, which they stated amounted to 11% of the UK population. Because in our view the "national" claim implied coverage in Northern Ireland, and Bill Plant did not have any instructors in that area, and because the AA's evidence indicated significant gaps in Bill Plant's ability to serve other areas of the UK, we concluded that the AA's claim "We're the only national driving school exclusively using fully qualified instructors" was not misleading.
We investigated the ad under 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),
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
3.35
3.35
They must objectively compare one or more material, relevant, verifiable and representative feature of those products, which may include price.
(Comparisons with identifiable competitors), but did not find it in breach.
Action
No further action necessary.
