ASA rules Halfords' ad misleading

Following a complaint by the SMMT, an advertisement in which Halfords Autocentres claimed that customers would save up to 50% over dealer pricing has been held by  the Advertising Standards Authority to be misleading.  The company has been ordered not to run the advertisement again, and has been instructed to ensure that in future "if it made a comparative claim that was not on a like-for-like basis, it clearly communicated the significant differences between the products or services being compared and did not select the elements of the comparison to give themselves an unrepresentative advantage".

In the complaint, the SMMT argued that the claimed savings were misleading and could not be substantiated.  The advert did not make clear the basis of comparison, nor did it take into account the class of vehicle or regional pricing variations.  It was also doubtful whether the advertiser was comparing services on a like-for-like basis.  According to Halfords, the research had been carried out by a third party which had arranged for a team of mystery shoppers to contact 190 dealerships and get quotes for a full service on a three year old vehicle.  Data were collected for six different classes of vehicle.  Dealers were randomly selected from a database, and there was a quota for each region.

The callers were asked to collect data from the dealers which included the price of a full service, the checks carried out as part of our service, whether a courtesy car was provided, and any promotional offers.

According to Halfords, the make selected for each individual comparison was matched with the garage's franchise.  The results were matched with the nearest Halfords Autocentres by postcode, to ensure the the comparisons with geographically sound. Halfords provided the ASA with all the results that they had collected, but despite all this care, the ASA was not impressed.  According to their spokesman:

We understand that Halfords compared its web prices with the dealers' prices which had been quoted over the telephone.  However, the terms and conditions listed on Halfords website stated " before booking is made directly with the Autocentres, either by telephone or in person, prices may differ".  We also understand that the prices for Halfords for service, as stated in the comparison table supplied, included a £30.00 discount which was available only if the service was booked online and for a limited time only.

We acknowledged that Halfords was willing to amend the claim further, but considered that in its existing form, the comparison Halfords and made between its own time-limited, on-line prices and the non-promotional prices quoted by the car dealerships surveyed was not made on a like-for-like basis.  We therefore concluded that the claim was misleading.

Grasping at the straw relied on by so many independents who don't seem even to have read it, Halfords argued that the block exemption "regulations" gave aftermarket service providers "every right" to advise motorists have the savings they might make by going to a non-franchised workshop. The regulation does no such thing, although - importantly - it does not prohibit such comparisons. But it certainly doesn't override the ASA's jusrisdiction over misleading advertisements.