Ad description
A website for Treat Assignment Help, www.treatassignmenthelp.co.uk, an essay writing service, seen in February 2023, included a page headed “Assignment Help in Scotland. Assured Success with Customized Assignment Writing” followed by a tick list that included the claims “100% plagiarism free”, “Special discounts and referals [sic]”, and “24/7 Support”. Alongside that was a box where consumers could enter their details to receive a “free quote” for a bespoke essay.
A section on the page titled “Top-Notch Assignment Writing Help in Scotland” featured text that stated, “The impact and recognition of research-based higher education at Scottish universities is second to none. Treat Assignment Help takes pride in providing assignment help services to scholars from the world’s top-ranking universities […] We, at Treat Assignment Help, put efforts to guarantee the expected excellence by providing different assignment writing services … The intensive research, for which the higher education of Scotland is world-famous, is practiced by our pool of writers. Besides, we use the most credible references and plagiarism check software to win b [sic] trust of students pursuing academic excellence in Scotland. Our offered services for Academic Writing Services is [sic] widely recognized and demanded by scholars from varied academic disciplines in the following universities” after which was a list of Scottish universities.
Another section titled “Why Choose Treat Assignment Help”, featured a bullet point list and included the claims “Round the clock support”, “100% plagiarism free work”, “Credible and up to date references”, “Error-free citation and referencing”, and “Stop worrying about the mind-numbing due papers, give us a call and get your work delivered before the deadline”.
At the foot of the page was text in a smaller font that stated, “Disclaimer: Our services are only purposely for the help [sic] and students are suggested to use them as guide papers only in order to avoid any sort of law violation of the university or education sector”.
Issue
The ASA challenged whether the ad misleadingly implied that students could submit an essay they had bought as their own.
Response
Treat Assignment Help said that they were a tutoring service, were no longer using the website complained about, and would remove any problematic claims.
Assessment
Upheld
The ad included claims such as "Assignment Help in Scotland. Assured Success with Customized Assignment Writing”, “100% plagiarism free”, “we use the most credible references and plagiarism check software”, “Credible and up to date references”, and “Error-free citation and referencing”.
We considered that the overall impression of the ad was that students who used Treat Assignment Help’s service could submit an essay they had bought as their own and that there was no risk in doing so, particularly because the essay would be plagiarism-free, and referenced correctly.
Small, faint grey text in the ad’s footer stated “Disclaimer: Our services are only purposely for the help [sic] and students are suggested to use them as guide papers only in order to avoid any sort of law violation of the university or education sector”. We considered consumers would have only been aware of the disclaimer if they scrolled to the bottom of the webpage, which was not necessary in order to submit a request for a quote from the advertiser. In addition, it was in smaller text than the wording of the page generally and disconnected from the body copy such that it could easily be overlooked. We also considered the information provided was insufficient to counteract the overall misleading impression given by the ad that consumers would be able to submit purchased essays as their own work without risk.
For those reasons, we therefore concluded that the ad was misleading and welcomed Treat Assignment Help’s willingness to amend it.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1, 3.3 (Misleading advertising), and 3.9 (Qualification).
Action
The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. We told Treat Assignment Help to ensure their advertising did not imply that students who used their service could submit an essay they had bought as their own without risk.
