Sports Wear

The email stated

“Need a little Pick Me Up?

GET 25% OFF ALL ORDERS OVER €100

This offer is automatically applied to all orders across all products.
The choice is yours.”

The complainant stated that they received a promotional email from Lifestyle Sports offering 25% off all orders over €100. They said they selected items to bring the total over the required €100 to avail of the discount. They said they did not receive the discount as advertised. They said on contacting the advertiser they were told the offer was over and that no expiry date was included in the advertisement.

The advertisers said the customer attempted to avail of the offer 8 days after receiving the email which was 7 days after the promotion had expired.

The advertisers stated that customers were offered a 25% discount on orders placed online where the total value exceeded €100 before the discount was applied. They said discounts for qualifying orders were added immediately at the time of purchase and included in the total order value. They said the promotion was communicated via email, social media and at www.lifestylesports.com The offer excluded delivery charges; although all deliveries at the time of the promotion were free of charge and that no products were excluded from the offer. They said the promotion was very straightforward, it did not mandate any conditions other than a minimum purchase value with discounts immediately applied before the customer was asked to commit to purchase.
The advertisers said they did accept that an “end date” was not communicated in the email promoting the offer, at that point of communication, no end date was set. They said they did not accept that the exclusion of an end date was in any way misleading as all references to the offer were removed from www.lifestylesports.com once the promotion had ended. They said they have now ensured all promotion-based communications now include an end date.

Complaint Upheld

The Complaints Committee considered the detail of the complaint and the advertisers’ response. They noted that the advertisers had undertaken to include an end date for all future promotions.

The Committee noted that the Code required promotions to state a closing date and that at the time of the advertising, an end date had not been included in the advertising material (email, social media, or website).

In the circumstances they considered the promotion was in breach of 4.1, 4.4 and 5.15(c) of the Code.

ACTION REQUIRED:
As the advertisers had undertaken to include a closing date in future promotions, no further action was required.