A customer who bought a kitchen table on the final day of Harvey's '8 Day Sale' in January complained to the ASA when the furniture retailer ran a further promotion offering an additional 10% off selected products the very next day.
The 'up to half price 8 day sale' ran until January 2, and in its defence Harvey's said the 'up to 10% off the half price sale' which began on January 3 was "not an extension of the 8 day sale but the start of a new promotion."
Homestyle Operations Ltd, the retailer's parent company, was ordered by the ASA not to broadcast the ad again in its current form. Taking into consideration that the complainant had bought the table on the understanding that it would not be on sale the next day, the ASA ruled that the promotion was 'misleading.'
The ASA said: "Because we considered that consumers would understand from the claim 'sale ends Monday 8pm' that promotional prices would not be available after that deadline, but because we noted that the advertisers continued to offer promotional prices after the end of the advertised sale, in which the price on selected products decreased further, we concluded that the ad was misleading."