Series of Groupon discount ads banned in UK

A series of internet advertisements promising heavily discounted deals have been banned by the British advertising watchdog for being misleading.

Discount website Groupon has been warned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) “not to advertise sales promotions if they could not demonstrate they were genuine” after receiving several complaints about the company’s online banner promotions.

The website, which gives users “50 to 90% off the best stuff your city has to offer”, has had five advertisements censored after members of the public and two companies challenged the credibility of the discount offers.

Complainants challenged whether one advertisement claiming “All you can eat in London £3” and another showing a bouquet of roses with a “from £8” price tag attached were genuine after being unable to find the deals when they followed the link to the website.

Upholding the complaint, the ASA ruled: “We noted that the ads claimed that consumers could buy a bouquet of flowers for £8 and that they could take advantage of an ”all you can eat in London for £3“ offer.

“We considered that consumers would understand those offers to be genuine and available to subscribers of the Groupon scheme.

“We noted that Groupon did not provide evidence that the offers were available or that they had been taken up by consumers. Because we had not seen any such evidence, we concluded that the ads were misleading.”

A further three advertisements which claimed to offer a discount of 70% off train tickets from various UK cities also fell foul of the ASA’s codes when complainants stated they could not find any offer of train tickets for sale.

The watchdog said: “We considered that consumers would interpret the claims in the ads to mean that, on following the links to Groupon’s website, they would be able to get up to 70% off train tickets.

“We noted that we had not seen any evidence that those offers were available on Groupon’s website, or that they had been taken up by consumers. Because we had not seen any such evidence, we concluded that the ads were misleading.”

In response to the complaints, a spokesman for Groupon said: “This problem arose because our banner adverts are produced in Germany, where online regulations differ to the UK, especially since the introduction of the new CAP (Committee of Advertising Practice) code.

“Until we were notified by the ASA, Groupon UK had no involvement in the creation or execution of these online banner ad campaigns.

“In order to prevent this issue from arising again, all of our ad designers are being trained in the new UK code.

“In addition, all future adverts will be specific to the UK market, and their content will reflect whether they relate to current, past or upcoming deals,” he added.

The ASA ruled that the advertisements must not appear again in their current form.