Ad description

A national press ad for Jumpstar, a car accessory designed to help restart a car engine, was headed "FLAT BATTERY? Restart your engine - anytime, anywhere and from the comfort of inside your car. JUMPSTAR. JUMP START YOUR CAR. Safe, simple and easy way to start your car in minutes!". Further text in the body of the ad stated "The ingenious JUMPSTAR uses your car's internal wiring to charge the battery enough so that it has sufficient power to start the engine - then gets recharged itself while the car is running! According to a leading Motoring Organisation, a flat battery is the most common reason for breakdown call-outs with more than *450,000 motorists stranded - so why wait for a problem that can be sorted by Jumpstar". Small print towards the bottom of the page stated "Please be aware that the JumpstarTM works only on flat batteries. It may not work on defective, old or outdated batteries. In certain, very rare circumstances it may not work on cars installed with anti-theft and advanced navigation systems".

Issue

The complainant challenged whether the claims that the product could restart a car engine were misleading and could be substantiated.

Response

Winning Deals Ltd submitted three test reports, which they believed showed how Jumpstar worked and substantiated the claims that the product could start a car engine in a live environment. They said cars were essentially the same with different styling and capabilities and that they all ran on the same principles and used the same basic technologies. They said testing one car or several cars on a generic function was not utilised in the motor industry.

Winning Deals sought advice from a mechanical engineer with specific automotive experience. The engineer commented that the device could always be connected to the cigarette lighter socket or accessory power point. They said that current would always flow from Jumpstar to a car battery due to the difference in voltages. They further said the circuit tested in the laboratory test submitted by Winning Deals represented a typical car electrical circuit and proved that Jumpstar would provide adequate charge to a flat battery in 15 minutes. Furthermore, they believed it was not necessary to test the product on multiple vehicles.

Winning Deals also sought advice from a chartered engineer and Visiting Professor in Automotive Electrical Systems. The engineer stated that, based on the laboratory test data, during the charging cycle Jumpstar was theoretically capable of delivering to the car battery three to four times the amount of energy required to start an engine. They said large sample testing was not performed to validate products in the motor industry and explained that, providing all test samples met the test criteria, high confidence could be achieved using relatively small sample sizes, with six or seven being a typical number for low cost components. They said the number of tests conducted by Winning Deals was consistent with the type of sample size used in that methodology, but more data may be required to justify the statistical confidence achieved in the testing conducted and there may be a requirement to validate the analytical information. They said it was common practice for testing to be conducted in laboratory conditions rather than vehicles and that it was reasonable to assume that the starting systems across the majority of mass market vehicles would share common characteristics and therefore did not all need to be tested individually. They said they had reviewed the supporting material submitted by Winning Deals and were in broad agreement with the statements made in those documents, particularly with the observations made by the mechanical engineer.

Winning Deals also provided comments from a motor vehicle wholesaler. The wholesaler acknowledged that a battery that had been discharged for many weeks would require a longer charge with a mains charger. However, they believed the average motorist would find that Jumpstar provided sufficient charge into the vehicle's battery to allow them to start the engine within 15 minutes.

Winning Deals said they held evidence of the product's capabilities as described in the ad, but withdrew the ad following receipt of the complaint.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA noted that the ad stated "FLAT BATTERY? Restart your engine - anytime, anywhere and from the comfort of inside your car. JUMPSTAR. JUMP START YOUR CAR" and considered that that implied that Jumpstar could start most cars from a flat battery. Although we noted that small text in the ad stated that there were circumstances where Jumpstar might not work, including with defective, old or outdated batteries, we noted that it also stated "Please be aware that the JumpstarTM works only on flat batteries" and considered that that reinforced the impression given by the rest of the ad that Jumpstar could restart most cars from a flat battery. We considered that, in order to substantiate that claim, we would need to see evidence that demonstrated that the product achieved that performance in a representative sample of vehicles.

We sought expert advice on the evidence submitted by Winning Deals. We understood that, to start a vehicle, the battery must have sufficient voltage and charge to operate the starter motor and provide a high enough voltage to run essential electronic systems. We considered that, in this instance, in order to test the efficacy of the product it would be necessary to test only a typical petrol engined vehicle and a typical diesel engined vehicle because cranking speeds for starting, starter motor sizes and the additional electrical loads associated with starting were similar for a range of diesel and petrol engines.

We noted that the laboratory test showed that current could flow between a 30-volt Jumpstar battery and an absolutely flat 12-volt battery and understood that about 5.25 Watt hours of electricity would have passed into the flat battery, but noted that the test did not assess whether or not that amount of energy transferred to such a flat battery would be adequate to start an engine. We noted that the second test report appeared to identify that Jumpstar would start a vehicle under the conditions used, but there was no test protocol provided to test the conclusions reached. We further noted that the test did not describe how flat the test battery was or how and when its charge had been depleted and therefore did not demonstrate whether or not Jumpstar was applicable to all, most, some or only a few cases of a flat battery. We understood that there was a range of degrees of battery flatness that might account for the vehicle engines not starting, ranging from only just flat enough for the engine to not quite reach its critical cranking speed to flat to the point where the battery might need regeneration as well as recharging to enable it to give an adequate output. We noted that the third test carried out some tests on a mixture of petrol and diesel engined cars and demonstrated that, providing it was used for long enough (which in those cases appeared to be 15 to 20 minutes), Jumpstar permitted the test vehicles to be started. However, the condition of each battery was unknown and we considered that, to deduce the time for which Jumpstar needed to have been connected, the test should have been carried out on a battery with a known level of discharge.

We noted that only the laboratory test had controlled the degree of the flatness of the battery in a scientific way and considered that it was therefore logical to surmise that in some instances Jumpstar was likely to work, but in other instances it might not. We further understood that, if the socket through which Jumpstar was connected was wired through the ignition switch, it was possible that the drain current could approach the charging current supplied by Jumpstar and therefore reduce or even prevent charging of the vehicle battery. We considered that the testing supplied by Winning Deals had not been rigorous or scientifically-disciplined enough to show the limit of flatness of a battery above which the product would be effective and below which it would not be effective. Although we acknowledged the opinions expressed in the reports submitted by the mechanical engineer and the chartered engineer that in theory Jumpstar could work, we considered that there was no evidence to indicate in which cases it would work and in which cases it would not. We therefore considered that there was insufficient evidence to be able to conclude that Jumpstar would restart a dead or flat battery for the average consumer.

We considered that, because only one of the tests submitted had controlled the flatness of the batteries tested and because the evidence did not demonstrate in which cases Jumpstar would be able to restart a car and in which cases it would not, the evidence we had seen was not sufficiently robust to demonstrate that Jumpstar could restart most car engines from a flat battery. We therefore concluded that the ad breached the Code.

The ad breached the 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).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Winning Deals Ltd to ensure that they held robust substantiation to support objective claims in future.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

3.1     3.7    


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