An estate agent in Essex was banned from promoting a competition to win a car by the UK's Advertising Standards Authority (ASA). The advert encouraged customers to appoint Churchills Estate Agents Ltd in the sale of their property for a chance to win a car worth £7,000 or more. Following a single complaint, the ASA upheld the complaint, banning the agent from using the ad in its current form.

According to the ASA's notice, the press ad stated that “by appointing Churchills as your trusted Estate Agent in the sale of your property you will also give yourself an excellent opportunity of winning a beautiful car worth £7,000 plus! … for further details about how simple it is to win a car, please contact your local branch as below".

The complaint challenged whether the ad was in breach of the ASA's Code because it "did not provide the terms and conditions of the prize promotion". In particular, the ad omitted details on how consumers could participate in the promotion, the relevant eligibility criteria and the closing date. These are key requirements of the CAP Code.

Unfortunately, Churchills Estate Agents did not respond in time to the ASA's enquiries. As a result, they breached the CAP Code clause 2.6 (Non-response), in addition to 34.1 and 35.9 (Sales promotion rules).

In their assessment, the ASA add that it "was concerned by Churchills lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code".

A good reminder to carry out the proper due diligence before setting up this type of competition. Interestingly, it only took one complaint for the ASA to take action in this case.

Read the full notice on the ASA website.

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Muppets

Another argument in favour of saying that most estate agents are muppets!

cynicalmonkey , August 02, 2010

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