Today the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) published a ruling against Coral Interactive (Gibraltar) Ltd. A promotional offer of the company was banned after a complaint against Coral’s advert has been filed earlier.
A total of three customers have initiated the investigation after filing a complaint against Coral. They have reported receiving an e-mail with a promotional free bet offer in June 2016. The e-mail advert’s text read that players could bet £/€20 on any team to win the Euro 2016 to get a free bet of £/€10 every time a British or Irish football team scores over the first round of the tournament’s matches.
According to the complainants, the promotional offer was misleading due to implying that all recipients could take advantage of the offer. All three of them reported they had received the e-mail bet offer and after placing their wagers, they had been informed they had not been eligible for participating in the offer.
The company responded to the accusations saying that the promotion referred to by the complainants had been active for certain customers only. Coral Interactive (Gibraltar) Ltd also explained that the offer had been sent via e-mail to some customers who were not eligible for getting any free bets due to human error. As the company stated in its response to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), they had done everything possible to make things right after they realised the error. Coral Interactive claims that another e-mail had been sent in order to inform such customers they were not eligible for taking advantage of the promotion.
However, the accusations of the complainants were upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority that found that the ad breached CAP Code rules 3.1 and 8.2 regarding Misleading advertising and Promotional Marketing, respectively.
The Authority said that e-mails were addressed to the name of the recipient, which means they had been aimed at certain individuals. According to the ASA, however, anyone receiving the e-mail could be considered eligible for the free bet offer as implied by the advert. This is why the regulatory body considered the e-mail promotional offer as misleading. Still, it praised the company’s attempt to make the error right.
The Advertising Standards Authority banned the advert, saying it must not appear in its current form any more. The watchdog also recommended Coral Interactive to make sure their promotional offers are not misleading to customers from now on.
- Author
Daniel Williams
