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ASA shakes finger sternly at naughty eBuyer over hard drive promo

Toothless watchdog gives web shop vicious gumming

Gummy mouthed watchdog the Advertising Standards Authority has again told web shop eBuyer to stop misleading customers over hard drive promos.

This is the fourth time in less than a year that the toothless independent regulator has put Huddersfield-based eBuyer on the naughty step for making unjustified savings claims.

The complaint centres on an ad for the Seagate 3TB Barracuda HDD, which boasted of savings on the product in separate sales blurbs.

In a sales promo, eBuyer said it had slashed the HDD's price tag from £154.98 to £119.99 and then again £112.99.

But this was "challenged" by a disgruntled shopper who "did not believe that the product had been recently available for £154.98".

On this occasion eBuyer did not respond to the complaint and the lack of chatter "concerned" the ASA, along with the firm's "apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition 12 rule 1.7 (Unreasonable delay).

The ASA said it had seen no evidence to demonstrate the original ticket price that would substantiate savings claims.

"In the absence of such evidence, we concluded that the savings claims were misleading," it said.

The ad must not appear again in its current form, the matter has been referred to the CAP Compliance team and eBuyer was told "not to make savings claims in future" unless they are based on genuine previous selling prices.

So that's eBuyer told then. Another mildly embarrassing tap on the wrists for the company. Deja vu? Anyone? Anyone? ®

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