‘Misleading’ Odeon discount offer banned
Odeon has been rebuked by the Advertising Standards Authority for running a promotional discount offer which carried hidden costs.
The cinema chain advertised a “15% online discount” to members of its Odeon Premiere Club to mark reaching the 2m member mark – but neglected to mention that a 75p handling fee was applied to all online purchases.
In their defence Odeon maintained that they believed the ad made clear that the 15% discount applied only to the advertised ticket price but the ASA deemed that the average consumer would infer that the headline claim applied to the full cost of purchasing a ticket.
As a result the ASA concluded that the offer was ‘misleading’ and must not appear again in its current form.