An advert for Amazon’s Prime service – which includes free film & TV streaming as well as free next day deliveries – have been banned by the UK’s advertising watchdog.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) says the ad was misleading because it failed to make clear customers taking up a 30 free trial would be automatically billed unless they cancelled the service.
Amazon said small print at the bottom of ad explicitly stated that “Paid subscription starts automatically after the free trial unless cancelled” and that this was re-iterated during the sign-up process.
However the ASA ruled the advert was “misleading” because it failed to state how much customers would pay unless they cancelled.
In its ruling, the watchdog said: “We did not consider that it was sufficient to include the information about the automatic paid subscription in the small print of the ad only and therefore did not consider that that information was sufficiently prominent to make clear the extent of the commitment consumers must make to take advantage of the offer.
“We concluded the ad was likely to mislead.”