Amazon one-day delivery ad banned for misleading customers

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) banned an Amazon ad that promises one-day delivery for Prime members, on the basis that customers were misled.

280 people complained to the ASA after not receiving their goods within one day.

On the Amazon website, customers are told: “Depending on the time of day that you place your order and your delivery address, if in stock it’ll be dispatched that same day and delivered the next day.”

However, the ad promised “One-day delivery for Christmas” without clearly indicating these conditions.

The ASA said it banned the ad because the one-day delivery promise was likely to cause consumers to sign up for Prime membership, and told Amazon that any future ads must “make clear that some Prime labelled items were not available to be delivered by the next day.”

Amazon asserted that the ad “did not promise a particular speed of delivery of a particular product”, that “a customer’s later disappointment about the speed of a one-day delivery order should not render their marketing misleading” and that the speed of delivery “could not form part of the consumers’ decision about whether to sign up for Prime”.

The retailer also claimed that nearly all next day parcel deliveries were made on time. “The expected delivery date is shown before an order is placed and throughout the shopping journey and we work relentlessly to meet this date,” said a spokesperson.

“The overwhelming majority of one-day delivery orders are delivered when promised. A small proportion of orders missed the delivery promise last year during a period of extreme weather that impacted all carriers across the UK, and we provided support to impacted customers at the time.”

(Source: The Independent)