Ad description

A website for an online clothes retailer, www.daisystreet.co.uk, featured a page entitled "Customer Service". Text on the "FAQ'S ON RETURNS" section stated "Do I have to pay for returns? No, we provide a fully tracked pre-paid returns label on your returns form".

Issue

The complainant challenged whether the ad was misleading, because they believed there was a charge for returns.

Response

Virtual Insanity Ltd t/a Daisy Street did not respond to the ASA's enquiries.

Assessment

Upheld

The ASA was concerned by Daisy Street's lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 1.7 (Unreasonable delay). We reminded them of their responsibility to respond promptly to our enquiries and told them to do so in future.

We noted that text in the ad stated "Do I have to pay for returns? No, we provide a fully tracked pre-paid returns label on your returns form". We considered that consumers would understand this to mean that they would not have to pay any charges for returns. We had not seen any evidence from Daisy Street that this was the case and we therefore concluded that the ad was 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.    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) and  3.24.1 3.24.1 the consumer has to pay packing, packaging, handling or administration charges for the "free" product  (Prices).

Action

The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Daisy Street not to claim there was no charge for returns if this was not the case. We referred the matter to CAP's Compliance team.

CAP Code (Edition 12)

3.1     3.24.1     3.3    


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