The news follows Lloyds Banking Group launching a complaint against two claims management companies back in March, one of which was found to be misleading consumers.
The Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) has now ruled that a claim made by www.thefairtradepractice.co.uk in May 2016 was found to be unsubstantiated and therefore misleading.
The advert
The Protection Specialist Ltd, trading as The Fair Trade Practice, had claimed that on average its customers received a refund of £3,400 as of January 2016.
The firm claimed that they took on all customers who had the types of finance where they may have been mis-sold PPI, and that between April 2010 and June 2016 they had had 78,226 successful and 58,532 unsuccessful clients.
The £3,400 figure was based on the cumulative amount in PPI claims recovered by each of their successful clients during that period.
Misleading
Though customers did not have to have pay a fee unless their claim was successful, the ASA ruled that consumers would interpret ‘customers’ to mean anyone who had engaged the company’s services.
As a result, consumers may have assumed that the £3,400 figure applied to all clients, rather than simply those that had been successful.
As the company had 58,532 unsuccessful ‘customers’, the ASA determined that the claims made on the website had not been substantiated and were misleading.
The verdict
The ASA upheld Lloyds’ complaint and ruled that the advert must not appear again in the form complained about.
The Fair Trade Practice was also warned not to use objective claims in their advertising unless they were able to substantiate them.
In June, the ASA banned an estate agent’s advert after it was also deemed to be misleading.
Leave a comment