Amazon Prime’s ‘Free trial’ offer advert has come under fire after the advertising watchdog deemed the advertisement to be a misleading one.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), has imposed a ban on Amazon Prime’s ‘free trial’ advert for misleading consumers on actual cost of subscription fees.
The direct advert mail sent to Amazon customers included a plastic card stating “30-day free trial” of Amazon Prime and a letter which read “Dear (recipient’s name), I’m sending you this letter because I want you to know that you are eligible for a free trial of Amazon Prime … Start your 30-day free trial today and watch as much as you want … That’s all there is to it …”
At the bottom of the letter, small text in the offer terms stated “Paid subscription starts automatically after free trial unless cancelled”.
Six of the complainants to the advert claimed that the Amazon Prime’s ad was not sufficiently clear that a paid subscription would start automatically if not cancelled during the trial. Furthermore, they also complained about the ad not stating Amazon Prime subscription costs.
Defending the ad, Amazon Europe said the ad repeatedly said the “free” element of the trial was time-limited and, on all but one of the occasions on which the word “free” was used, it was preceded by “30-day”.
The company also noted that it was common practice for free trials for services to convert to a paid subscription unless cancelled, and that consumers would understand and expect that they had to cancel within the free period if they did not want to start a paid subscription.
The ASA rejected the argument saying that it found that the ad was misleading as it did not mention that a subscription to Amazon Prime cost £79 a year or that the charge for Amazon Prime Instant Video was £5.99 a month.
It said, “A paid subscription starting automatically at the end of the trial was a commitment and a significant condition of the ‘free’ offer, and should therefore be made clear to consumers. Although we acknowledged that the small print stated ‘paid subscription starts automatically after free trial unless cancelled’, we also considered that the text in the main body of the ad stressed the ‘free’ nature of the offer and noted it did not refer to the automatic paid subscription.
“We did not consider that it was sufficient to include the information about the automatic paid subscription in the small print of the ad only and therefore did not consider that that information was sufficiently prominent to make clear the extent of the commitment consumers must make to take advantage of the offer.
“We concluded the ad was likely to mislead.”
The ASA has ruled out that the ad must not appear again in its current form.
