UK’s ASA set to tell Amazon to drop next day delivery claims in Prime advertising
The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) is set to tell online retail giant Amazon that its adverts for the Prime service must not include claims for next-day delivery guarantees.
According to reports published by UK newspapers including The Times and The Guardian, the ASA is responding to complaints from customers regarding late deliveries in the Christmas run-up.
It has been reported that the ASA will rule that Amazon’s claims to be able to operate an “unlimited one-day delivery” service are misleading in the case of some items.
“[A] significant proportion of Prime-labelled items were not available for delivery the next day … because consumers were likely to understand that, so long as they did not order too late, all Prime items would be available for delivery the next day … we concluded that the ad was misleading,” the ASA’s ruling will say, according to the Times.
Update on 16 August 2018
The ASA yesterday (15 August) published its ruling regarding Amazon’s advertising.
In its overview of the issued, the ASA noted: “We reviewed the figures for the dates One-Day Delivery orders were forecast to be delivered by. We acknowledged that the majority of orders were forecast to be delivered by the next day (and indeed were delivered on time). However, a smaller but significant proportion of orders at each of the time slots, including before 2 pm, were not forecast for delivery the subsequent day, meaning that a significant proportion of Prime labelled items were not available for delivery the next day.
“Because consumers were likely to understand that, so long as they did not order too late or for Sunday delivery, all Prime labelled items would be available for delivery the next day with the One-Day Delivery option, when a significant proportion of Prime labelled items were not available for delivery by the subsequent day with One-Day Delivery, we concluded that the ad was misleading.”
The ASA therefore concluded that “the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.9 (Qualification)” and ruled that “the ad must not appear again in its current form”.
The ASA also told Amazon to make clear that some Prime labelled items were not available to be delivered by the next day.
