The ASA received two complaints over claims made on repair aggregator Servicing Stop’s website.
One complainant, who believed that Servicing Stop continuously charged the ‘sale’ price for their services and that the savings were therefore not genuine, challenged whether the savings claims quoted within the ads were misleading and could be substantiated, while the other complaint challenged if the prices were misleading because their vehicle required a specific oil with VM approval that incurred an extra charge.
On the first complaint, the ASA looked at a series of complex savings offered on the website that were promoted as being ‘up to 60 percent off’. In response, Servicing Stop stated that at certain points throughout the year, they ran sales during quiet periods. It provided the ASA with dated and undated invoices showing the price history of the Kia Sedona vehicle servicing. It said that the period of time for which the new lower discounted price was available was not longer than the period of time that the item was listed for at the previous higher price.
It provided a spreadsheet of the sale dates for the servicing of the Kia Sedona and Honda CRV vehicle models over a six-month period from April 2017 to October 2017. There were variations between the ‘previous’ prices stated over this period. Its data showed that the Honda CRV services were on sale for a total of 37 days over a six-month period and the Kia Sedona had a sale period of 41 days over the same six-month period. It explained that there were fluctuations between the previous prices due to the many variants in price between the number of makes multiplied by the number of postcodes.
The ASA disagreed, noting that the ‘previous’ price varied when the discounted price remained the same. It told Servicing Stop to ‘ensure savings claims are genuine’. However, on the price of VM specific oil, the ASA noted that the aggregator put a disclaimer in saying that the price of such oil can vary. As a result, it was not in breach on this complaint.
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