The original complaint was against website www.comparelettingagents.co.uk, which said it offered ‘fair and impartial’ listings of the best letting agents from over 8,000 spread across, England, Scotland and Wales.
But a complaint was made because the website is operated by Rentify, whose details appear in the results that are returned to website users.
Publishing its ruling on the complaint today the ASA said: “We considered consumers would interpret the claim ‘fair and impartial’ to mean that the organisation that ran the website was entirely independent from the lettings industry and had no commercial interest in the ratings of the agents.”
It added: “While we noted text at the bottom of the page stated ‘Brought to you by Rentify’, we considered the impression a consumer would get from the claim “fair and impartial” contradicted that fact.”
Upholding the complaint against Rentify the ASA said it had ordered the firm: “To ensure that marketing communications made their commercial intent sufficiently clear and did not misleadingly imply they were independent from the letting agent industry.”
The ASA requires changes detailed in its ruling to be made immediately and as they were not, the ASA has passed the issue over to its compliance team. At the time of writing Rentify UK had not responded to inquiries from Mortgage Solutions.
