Amazon misled online shoppers in Britain by saying its paid-for service Prime offered ‘free’delivery, the country’s advertising regulator has ruled.
The issue of “free delivery” is being closely watched by many postal, parcel and expresscompanies who fear that consumers are being educated to believe that delivery costs can be absorbedwithout any impact on prices, according to observers.
The UK’s Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) decided that Amazon EU Sarl, the US group’sEuropean subsidiary based in Luxembourg, must not describe delivery with its paid-for service Primeas ‘free’.
The regulator referred to a directive prohibiting marketers from ‘describing an element of apackage as free if that element was included in the package price’. In its ruling, the ASA said: “We understood that Prime was a paid-for service which costs £49 per year and that, for thatpayment, members could then make use of the one-day delivery service, on selected items, for nofurther charge.”
The ASA highlighted claims promoting Amazon’s membership programme via www.amazon.co.uk including “Get your stuff fast UnlimitedFREE One-Day Delivery on all eligible orders” and “Try Amazon Prime FREE for one month: UnlimitedFree One-Day Delivery … After your free trial, Amazon Prime is just £49/year”.
The authority explained it considered the claim that one day delivery was “free” to bemisleading because members had to pay £49 before they could use the service even though Amazonwanted to point out that one-day delivery could be used without charge after subscription.
As a result, ASA ruled that Amazon has breached the CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 3.1 (Misleadingadvertising) and 3.25 (Free). “The claim must not appear again in its current form. We told Amazonnot to describe Prime one-day delivery as free,” it stated.
In response, Amazon EU Sarl explained that Prime offered various benefits to its members with aclear indication that the membership fee was £49. Among the benefits was the free one-day deliveryto a Prime member as it would usually cost between £3.95 and £7.99, the company said in itsdefence.
Amazon stressed that the word ‘free’ used in the context of the claim “Get your stuff fastUnlimited FREE One-Day Delivery on all eligible orders” made it clear that it related to annualmembership fee payment highlighting the benefits. It said members of the programme had theguarantee that their eligible one-day deliveries would be made free of charge. Amazon believed thatomitting the word “free” from the messaging would lead to more confusion for the customer, whowould be left wondering whether there would be any charge payable for the one-day delivery, orindeed any other of Prime’s services.
According to the ASA ruling, the online retailer did not believe that the wording of the claimbreached the Code “because it contained no false or untruthful information nor was there any on thepage”.
“Since the cost of Prime membership was clearly shown as being £49, the presentation of theinformation was not likely to deceive the average consumer or lead them to take a transactionaldecision they would not have taken otherwise,” Amazon concluded in its response to the ASA.
