Discount websites in the dock - DecisionMarketing

Discount sites including Groupon and Lastminute.com have triggered more than 50 separate complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority over the past six months alone, sparking a warning from legal experts.
The ASA said that it had examined 53 cases against coupon advertisers in the period spanning less than six months, with 29 cases involving Groupon, which has more than 6 million UK customers. The watchdog said: “The ASA will not hesitate to clamp down on those companies who mislead consumers.”
Since March, the authority has made five adjudications against Groupon and informally resolved 24 cases against the company. One complaint against Last Minute Network, another voucher advertiser, was upheld in the same period. There were a further 23 informally resolved cases against Last Minute Network (seven), and other voucher operators LivingSocial (11) and Kgb (UK) (5), the ASA said.
Advertising expert Iain Connor of Pinsent Masons said voucher operators should pay particular attention to advertising rules on the availability of products. He said: “The fact that users of these ‘group purchase’ vouchers know that there will be conditions attached does not mean that they will not still have a reasonable expectation of getting what they want at the advertised price without having to study the small print in detail.”
In its most recent Groupon adjudication, the ASA found that an email for a ‘deal of the day’ voucher for teeth bracing and whitening was misleading. The email offered voucher recipients a deal to pay £98 to trigger a £1,650 discount on the treatment. In small print it explained that those taking up the offer would also have to pay the remaining balance for the £3,500 treatment. The ASA said that the email was unclear and confusing and therefore misleading.
“We work closely with the ASA and other regulatory bodies to ensure all our deals adhere to all the relevant regulations and are a fair reflection of the customer’s experience,” a Groupon spokesman said.
Earlier this year the OFT forced Markco Media – the company behind group-buying website Groupola – to sign pledges not to advertise products where there is “a disproportionately inadequate supply”.
Groupola advertised £499 iPhones for £99 for people who signed up to its scheme and agreed to receive daily email alerts. Just under 15,000 people did sign up, however, the company failed to mention that only eight phones were available for the advertised price.
“Bait pricing is one of the practices the OFT has identified as having the greatest potential to cause harm and one which it has prioritised for enforcement action under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations,” the OFT said at the time.