A complaint made by Simba Sleep against rival Otty Sleep regarding pricing claims has been upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
A product page for a mattress on the Otty Sleep website, seen in September 2025, featured the product’s price next to the claim '2 Free Pillows or Discount'. Underneath the heading 'Choose your offer' were two clickable tiles. The first featured the text '2x Free Deluxe Pure Pillow', and the second '£75 Off Mattress'.
When the first tile was selected, the product price '£799.99' was displayed. When the second tile was selected, the product price '£799.99 £724.99' was displayed. Further text underneath read 'Choose one option per mattress – offers cannot be combined. Select either 2 free pillows (RRP £139.98) or a £75 discount. This is an ongoing offer and is not time-limited'
Simba Sleep, which believed that £799.99 was not the established usual selling price for the product, challenged whether the reference price and associated savings claims were misleading.
Otty responded that its '2 Free Pillows or Discount' offer was an established pricing model rather than a time-limited promotion which had been in place since March 2025. The purpose of the offer was to benefit consumers who would not need additional pillows with a mattress and preferred a discount instead.
It said the use of the word 'free' was intended to make it clear to consumers that the pillows were additional items which would not be included with the mattress if they opted for the discount. Similarly, the crossed-through reference price, which was displayed when the discount was selected, was intended to demonstrate the price consumers would pay for the mattress if they opted to purchase it with the pillows included.
The ASA says Otty provided two spreadsheets containing sales data for the product since the introduction of the '2 Free Pillows or Discount' offer. Since the introduction of the offer, Otty believed it had sold approximately 255 mattresses with additional pillows and 342 where consumers had opted to receive the £75 discount. It said it could not provide definitive figures, as its sales data did not record whether a customer had chosen to receive additional pillows or the discount.
Otty said the mattress had been sold for a range of prices due to discount codes sometimes being applied to the final cost, and that it used the price that the customer paid for the mattress to make a reasonable assumption about which offer they chose. It said the data demonstrated that a number of customers had paid the full price of £799.99 for the product, as they had opted to receive the additional pillows.
Otty did not believe that the reference price and associated savings claims were misleading. However, in order to address the concerns raised, it had removed the reference to 'free', and the crossed-through reference price for the discount offer, from its website.
The ASA considered consumers would understand from the ad that £799.99 was the usual selling price for the mattress, and that they could either achieve a genuine saving of £75 by receiving a discount on the mattress or opt to pay the full price and receive two free pillows with their purchase. It therefore expected to see evidence, in the form of pricing and sales data, that £799.99 was the established usual selling price of the mattress alone, and that consequently the associated £75 discount represented a genuine saving against that price.
The ASA assessed the data Otty provided, and says the sales data Otty collected had not clearly distinguished between consumers who received a £75 discount and those who received additional pillows. Consequently, it was not possible to state conclusively how many customers had purchased the mattress alone, and the price at which they had done so.
The ASA also had not received any information from Otty demonstrating the price the mattress was sold at before the introduction of the '2 Free Pillows or Discount' offer. However, it understood that the offer was not time-limited and had been in place since March 2025. The mattress alone had therefore been sold at the discounted price of £724.99 for approximately six months at the time the ad was seen. Moreover, the ASA understood that during the offer period it had been possible to purchase the mattress alone for less than £724.99 because other discount codes had been made available.
The data provided had indicated that a significant number of consumers had done so. Although the data provided by Otty was not definitive, it suggested that 66 of the 597 mattresses had been sold for £799.99 since March 2025, highlighting that the majority of customers had purchased the mattress for less than the advertised reference price. Given the length of time that the mattress had been sold for £724.99, and the lack of sales demonstrated at the higher price, the ASA considered that £724.99 was effectively the usual selling price of the product at the time the ad was seen.
Given that, and the lack of data showing the price at which the mattress had been sold prior to the offer, it concluded that Otty had not demonstrated that £799.99 was the genuine usual selling price of the mattress, and that the reference price and associated savings claims were misleading, so the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising) and 3.17 (Prices).
The ASA ruled that the ad must not appear again in the form complained of, and told Otty Sleep to ensure that future savings claims were not misleading, and that it was able to demonstrate that savings claims made against reference prices reflected genuine savings.
