Ocado has been rapped by UK regulators over a national press and email advertising campaign that claimed the online retailer matched Tesco’s prices.
The Advertising Standards Authority ruled against Ocado after Tesco issued a complaint insisting that its own price monitoring found that, out of a sample of 3,811 products, the UK’s largest retailer offered 601 products cheaper that Ocado.
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The ASA found that, although Ocado had attempted to monitor Tesco prices for comparability, the internet retailer failed to substantiate its claims.
“At the time the ads appeared, because a significant number of products had been omitted, Ocado’s price match claim had not been substantiated,” the ASA concluded.
The advertising watchdog said that Ocado could not use the adverts again in their current form.
“We told Ocado not to make the price match claim again until they had addressed the factors which had caused them to fail to price match a large number of items when the price match policy was launched,” the ASA said.
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By GlobalDataNevertheless, a spokesperson for Ocado insisted that the retailer has refined its system for tracking prices.
“The ASA was looking at prices from last year and examined two specific adverts from when the Tesco Price Match policy was first launched. The price match guarantee has been running on a new comparison system for over a year now,” the spokesperson said.
