Mortgage News
Purplebricks receives another slap on the wrists for mis-leading adverts
Online estate agent Purplebricks has been ordered to change its website to remove or amend claims made about how much customers could save with the firm, after a complaint from a rival firm was upheld by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The Purplebricks website included a number of testimonials from customers, which detailed “fees saved”. For example, it claimed that Mr Penfold from Edington had saved £7,302.
This was challenged by Arun Estate Agencies, an independent estate agent firm based in the South East, which suggested the claims were misleading and could not be substantiated.
The ASA upheld the complaint, arguing that the evidence supplied by Purplebricks “was not adequate” to support the claims it made on its website.
The ASA judgement said: “In the absence of information in the ad about the basis for the savings claims, including the type of estate agents against which the “fees saved” comparison was being made, the differences between the services offered by Purplebricks and the comparator estate agents, and because the evidence was not adequate to support an assumed comparator fee of 1.8% of the sold price of a property, we concluded the “fees saved” claims in the ad were misleading to consumers and had not been substantiated.”
Last September Purplebricks suffered another slap on the wrist from the ASA over “misleading” claims around how much customers can save.
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Purplebricks has agreed to change its website.