Groupon in hot water over misleading savings claim for Google Nexus 5
A promotion seen on Groupon, which offered consumers a 27 per cent saving on a Google Nexus 5 Quad 4G smartphone, has been banned after the Advertising Standards Authority found the claim could not be substantiated.
MyCityDeal, which ran the promotion on the Groupon website, explained that they had calculated the discount on the deal by taking an average of the market prices of five reputable online retailers.
They said those prices had been checked prior to the deal going live.
Groupon added that when the deal went live, they had “had a conversation with a large distributor of IT products to retailers” who confirmed that the phone's pre-discount value was an accurate reflection of the market price.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) noted in its ruling that the evidence provided by Groupon did not demonstrate that the online retailers selected fairly represented the market and concluded the savings claim was misleading.
The ad must not appear again in its current form and Groupon was told to ensure they held evidence to substantiate their savings claims in future.