Vodafone and Supervalu rapped over truthfulness of ads

Confusion over wine prices, mobile phone contracts and membership terms saw Supervalu, Vodafone and a dating website respectively rapped across the knuckles in the latest report published by the Advertising Standards Authority of Ireland.

All told, the authority fully upheld 10 complaints in its latest report with truthfulness - or the lack of it - being the single biggest cause of concern.

Vodafone attracted the ire of one phone user who signed up to one of its services which promised a “new phone every year”. The complainant said he was unaware when he signed up to the offer that a clause in the terms and conditions meant that if he wanted a new phone every year he would automatically be tied into a new 24-month contract.

He claimed this fact was buried too deeply in the terms and conditions. Vodafone disputed this but the ASAI sided with the consumer largely because the mobile phone operator had made it unnecessarily hard to find the relevant rules governing contract extensions.

Another complaint about dating website anotherfriend.com was upheld because the company failed to fully engage with the ASAI over a complaint about how free its standard membership was.

Supervalu, meanwhile, fell foul of the authority because of a French wine sale which offered a variety of wines for half price. One of the wines included in the offer was Excellence Saint Chinian which had a price tag of €8.49. However a shopper contacted the ASAI because they recalled buying the wine for €8.50 per bottle months early when it was not on sale.

Supervalu said there had been a mix-up between their trading and marketing departments. “They had intended to issue the promotion as being “half suppliers recommended price” but unfortunately the advertising material had not said this, and had only contained a bubble with the words ‘Half Price’,” according to the ASAI report.

Supevalu said that word “recommended” had been omitted “at some stage in the process” and it said that the wine did have a supplier’s recommended price of €16.99 “and their understanding was that it had been on sale in other European countries for this price, once taxes were equalised”.

The ASAI accepted that an error had occurred but the complaint was upheld because the wine had not been on sale at the higher price for a required period of time prior to the sale.

The Dublin Airport Authority, meanwhile, fell foul of the agency for not giving someone using its parking facility a free coffee as a radio ad appeared to promise. He booked his car into the DAA car park from a Monday to a Friday and did not receive his free cup of coffee or free fast track access as indicated in an ad.

The DAA said that its offer was valid for those parking from Sunday to Thursday only. The complain was upheld because this keyfact was buried too deep in the terms and conditions.

Companies in breach of ASAI rules are not fined but are ordered to change the offending ads and breaches are identified in their reports.