ASA raps Play.com over price savings claim

 

Gallery

Posted on 8 Jan 2009 at 10:47

The Advertising Standards Authority has rapped Play.com for making unsubstantiated claims about the price savings available for CDs on sales at its website.

It is the second time in the past 12 months that the ASA has had to tell the online retailer not to make false claims about the the size of its discounts.

In this instance, a national press advertisement for Play listed a number of CDs under a headline saying “save up to 50%”, based on a stated recommended retail price of £15.99.

Diverse Music alerted the ASA, disputing both the savings and RRP claims.

Play said that the RRPs reflected the prices at which they expected the products would be sold if they were not subject to a promotional offer. It said the RRP often also reflected the manufacturer's list price; on that basis they believed the RRPs in the ad genuinely reflected the prices at which the products would normally be sold. It also said that other websites had quoted the same RRPs.

In its adjudication, the ASA noted that while in some instances the RRP may in some case be accurate, the promotion included CDs that had yet to be released.

Because the albums by Glasvegas, Roots Manuva, The Automatic and The Verve were not on general release at the time the ads appeared, we concluded that the RRPs, and therefore the ‘savings’ based on those RRPs, were unsubstantiated, because they could not reflect the prices at which the products were generally sold,” the adjudication says.

“Although some of the CDs were on general release when the ad appeared, we considered that the inclusion of a product and RRP taken from a competitors’ website did not necessarily constitute evidence that that was the price at which the product was generally sold.”

The ASA ruled that the ad must not appear again.

Author: Simon Aughton