Amazon told to pull 'misleading' one-day delivery advertisement
Amazon has been banned from advertising its one-day delivery service for Prime members after the UK's advertising regulator labelled it misleading.
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After receiving nearly 300 complaints, mostly from Prime users, the Advertising Standards Authority said the advertisement "must not appear again in its current form" and Amazon must be transparent that "a significant proportion" of Prime items were not available for next-day delivery.
The e-commerce behemoth claimed the "overwhelming majority" of one-day orders arrived on time, as it argued the "period of extreme weather" last year resulted in "a small proportion of orders" being received after the deadline.
The watchdog stated the adverts led customers to believe the "one-day delivery" tag applied to all Prime items, and despite Amazon explaining eslewhere on the site that delivery time was actually "one business day after dispatch", the ASA ruled that it was highly unlikely that customers could easily find this information before signing up for an Amazon Prime account.
"Because consumers were likely to understand that, so long as they did not order too late or for Sunday delivery, all Prime-labelled items would be available for delivery the next day with the One-Day Delivery option, when a significant proportion of Prime-labelled items were not available for delivery by the subsequent day with One-Day Delivery, we concluded that the ad was misleading," the ASA said on Wednesday.
Indepent charities netork Citizens Advice has called for online retailers to provide easy access to compensation if they are unable to deliver items on time.
As of 1120 BST, Amazon shares were up 0.23% in pre-market trading to $1,919.65 each.