Ambiguous advertising has placed Hirsch’s on the wrong side of the Advertising Regulatory Board (ARB), which has ruled against the appliance store’s advertising for Black Friday.

The board received a consumer complaint lodged about a Hirsch’s brochure promoting Black Friday deals, in which the advertisement created the impression that a SMEG “special” comprised both a retro kettle and retro two-slice toaster. 

When the customer attempted to purchase the products, she was informed that – despite the placement of an ampersand (&) between the descriptions for the kettle and toaster, the word “each” underneath the price meant that each item was being sold separately at R2,599.99.

Hirsch’s insisted that because the advert was qualified with the word “each” beneath the price, it was not misleading.

In assessing the complaint, the ARB cautioned that advertisers should not make statements or visual presentations – either ambiguous or exaggerated – which are likely to mislead customers about the advertised product. Clause 19 of Section II of its Code says that if reference is made in an advertisement to more than one product, or more than one version of a product, it should be clear to which product or version any quoted price relates. And if a product is illustrated, with a price quoted alongside the illustration, advertisers should be explicit about their pricing. 

The ampersand created the impression that this was a bundle deal, where if a customer bought both appliances they would pay R2,599,99. The advert also created confusion in that another reading could mean that to qualify for the advertised price of R2,599,99, the individual products would have to be bought for that price. 

The Black Friday promotion also included a Russell Hobbs special, the ARB noted, in which a toaster and a kettle were depicted as individual items, clearly listed as separate items sold at R699 each.

Its code, the ARB said, required that if reference was made in an advertisement to more than one product, or more than one version of a single product, it should be clear to which product or version any quoted price related to. 

It ruled that the advertisement was ambiguous at best, and therefore misleading in terms of Clause 4.2.1. The advertisement is also in breach of Clause 19.3 of Section II, as it fails to unambiguously clarify that the quoted price relates to each advertised item individually and not to both, as a set.

The advertiser was requested to amend future advertising by removing the ampersand (&) in cases where there was not a bundled deal.

The ARB does not have the jurisdiction to enforce a ruling and can only issue rulings for the guidance of its members, so even if the board rules against an advertiser, customers cannot expect that the advertiser will honour the offer. And in this case, Hirsch’s didn’t.

CEO of the ARB Gail Schimmel says consumers are made aware of this in the first letter of acknowledgement that they send them.

“It is actually always our hope that when we forward a complaint like this, the advertiser will come back and just honour the offer. In that case, we can close the file – it’s the best outcome as the consumer is happy, the offer is honoured and we don’t have to use our resources making a decision.” DM