Ad description
A TikTok video for Team RH, posted on 25 July 2023 on the teamrh.uk TikTok account featured a man responding to the question “Do you do a free trial before committing?” to which he responded “No, it’s £6.99. If I give you a trial it’s like giving you your calories, your macros, your full training programme, access to all the recipes, and you could be like oh yeah that was a nice trial that I’ve got the full plan now I’m gonna fuck off.” The caption stated “no trial, it’s £6.99 #weightlossplan #dietplan”.
Issue
Two complainants challenged whether the ad made it clear that the subscription was for a minimum term of 12 months.
Response
Team RH Fitness Ltd t/a Team RH did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries.
Assessment
Upheld
The ASA was concerned by Team RH’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 considered that consumers would interpret the claim “No, it’s £6.99” together with the caption “no trial, it’s £6.99” to mean that the price they would pay for access to the product was £6.99. The ad did not include any references to that being the price per month or to the minimum term required to sign up for the subscription. We understood, however, that Team RH subscriptions required a minimum commitment of 12 months. We further understood that to download the programme, consumers were asked to waive their right to a 14-day cooling off period. Therefore, the minimum price consumers would pay for the Team RH programme was £83.88.
Because the ad did not make clear that the minimum period for the subscription was 12 months, we considered that the ad was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.9 (Qualification), and 3.17 (Prices).
Action
The ad must not appear again in its current form. We told Team RH Fitness Ltd t/a Team RH to ensure that they did not mislead consumers by omitting to mention that the subscription was for a minimum period of 12 months. We referred the matter to CAP’s Compliance team.
