Dusk has been chastised by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) for running four statements on its website last summer offering discounts ranging from 15-70%.
Complainant Simba Sleep challenged whether the savings claims were misleading, because it understood that "a number of the products to which the claimed savings applied had not been sold at the higher, undiscounted prices for a sufficient time period", reports the ASA.
Dusk provided sales data for three mattress products raised in the complaint, which included the reference prices, the actual selling price, and the quantity of mattresses sold. It said that at the time the ads appeared, the reference prices reflected the established usual selling prices of the products.
Dusk said a significant number of customers bought the mattresses at or above the reference prices displayed for the products at the time the ads were seen. It also said that, across the review period, the on-site reference price was usually equal to or higher than the reference price featured at the time the ads were seen.
It noted that where customers paid less than the advertised prices, that was mainly because time-limited promotional codes reduced the price. It said some promotions were advertised site-wide, were not permanently available, and applied against the reference price, and that discount codes were available across 116 days in the six-month review period, and around 95% of discounted purchases required customers to manually enter a code at checkout.
With the ads featuring various discount claims, and codes which consumers could use to apply a discount, the ASA felt that consumers would understand the discounts to represent genuine saving against the usual selling price of the products: "The Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) Guidance for Traders on Pricing Practices offered practical advice to traders on consumer protection laws and associated practices. While we noted that the guidance provided a set of principles rather than statutory rules, and advertising claims were ultimately assessed under the CAP Code, we took the guidance into account when making our assessment.
"The guidance stated that any specific price advantage claimed by advertisers must not be misleading or unfair. It required that advertisers who used pricing practices, which indicated a saving against another price, to be satisfied that their quoted saving was genuine and therefore not unfair. The guidance stated that advertisers should consider for how long the product was on sale at the higher price, compared to the period for which the price comparison was made, and advised that a practice was less likely to comply if a comparison was made for a materially longer period than the higher price was offered.
"The guidance did not give specific advice on situations where promotions were available through using discount codes. However, we considered it was relevant to consider the discount code in the context of the consumer understanding set out above, primarily that the non-discounted price would be the usual selling price of the product."
Simba provided example baskets for three different mattresses, which showed the discounted prices and crossed-out reference prices at the dates the ads were seen, and the ASA considered those examples when assessing whether the reference prices represented the usual selling prices.
"We assessed the sales data provided by Dusk," says the ASA. "We understood that the reference prices for the products varied over the review period.
"We further considered the availability of discount codes across the review period. We also understood that different codes often ran back to back, meaning the actual selling prices did not return to the higher level between promotions.
"Based on that data, we considered consumers were unlikely to consider that the higher, undiscounted prices were the usual selling prices of the products.
"Because consumers were likely to understand the savings claims represented genuine savings against the usual selling prices of the products, and because the evidence did not substantiate the savings claims in the ads or demonstrate that the reference prices were the usual selling prices of the products, we concluded the savings claims were misleading."
The ASA ruled that the ads must not appear again in the form complained of, and told Dusk to ensure that future savings claims were substantiated against the usual selling prices of products.
