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Bulletin: 16/2
Batch: 233
Reference: 25580
Product: Leisure
Advertiser: Pigsback.com
Agency:
Medium: Internet (Company Website)
ASAI Code 6th Edition: 1.6(c), 2.9, 2.22, 2.24
The advertisement on Pigsback.com offered the following:
“Offroaddriving.ie
Get ready for the white knuckle drive of your life with today’s Exclusive offer from offroaddriving.ie
€55 for one 1 person Off Road Driving (normally €115)…”The complainant said that when he went to the website of offroaddriving.ie the price for the voucher was not in fact €115, it was €59 + 3.8% booking fee. He considered therefore that the offer advertised on Pigsback.com was misleading.
The advertisers said that the offer in question ran originally in 2014 and was accurate and correct at that time. In 2015, however, one of their new account managers contacted the client in question to ask if they would like to run the offer on their site again and they agreed that they would like to offer the voucher for sale again under the same terms. The account manager prepared the contract and the offer page for the website and provided proofs and a contract to the client. The Client then approved the offer and contract terms including the stated savings and all other commercial aspects of the offer and signed the contract and approved the offer for publication. The account manager in question then assumed that it was safe to proceed and published the offer.
In reviewing the offer and details of the complaint, however, it then became clear that the client had amended the normal voucher price on their own website and the savings stated on the contract and the subsequent published offer page were not accurate and were in fact wrong. Pigsback.com accepted that an error had occurred in this case.
Pigsback.com also accepted that they had not followed their normal procedures in this case which required their account managers to provide independent verified proof that the saving advertised to consumers are in fact correct. In view of what happened in this instance they have since reviewed their internal procedures to ensure that all account managers are aware that a second sign off on commercial communications is essential before publication.
In conclusion Pigsback.com accepted that they had made an error in this case and that the advertisement would not run in its current format again.
Complaint Upheld.
The Complaints Committee considered the details of the complaint and the advertisers’ response. The Committee accepted that a genuine error had occurred in this case, but nevertheless, the advertisement was not correct and they considered that it had breached Sections 2.9, 2.22 and 2.24 of the Code.
Action Required:
As the advertisers had removed the advertising in question and had put procedures in place to prevent similar happening again, no further action was deemed necessary in this case.