The UK Advertising Standards Authority Ltd. (ASA) today issued a ruling on a complaint against an ad by Paypal (UK) Ltd.

An email from PayPal, received in September 2020, featured the subject line “[Name] long time no see. Here’s a £10 reward for you!”. The headline claim in the body of the email stated “We’re giving you £10 to use online with PayPal” followed by a clickable “Save Offer” button.

Small text below stated “Limited to first 28,527 to save offer. Expires 30/09/2020. Terms apply.”

One complainant, who was unable to claim the £10 reward, challenged whether the subject line and headline claims were misleading because they did not make sufficiently clear that the offer was available only to the first 28,527 customers.

PayPal said that the text “Limited to first 28,527 to save offer. Expires 30/09/2020. Terms apply” appeared after the “Save Offer” button which drew the customer’s attention to the significant conditions associated with the offer. The text had been intentionally placed in close proximity to the “Save Offer” button in order to make the conditions attached to the offer prominent.

PayPal therefore did not believe that it would be possible for a customer to click on the “Save Offer” button without being aware of the limitation of availability.

PayPal believed that they had complied with the CAP Code which stated that where the medium of a marketing communication was constrained by time and space, appropriate care should be taken to ensure that any material information is made available to the consumer by other means. As the subject line and heading were constrained by space, they felt that they had communicated the limited availability of the offer in the body of the email clearly and that the ad did not create the impression that the offer was unlimited.

The ASA upheld the complaint. The Authority explains it considered consumers would understand from the subject line “long time no see. Here’s a £10 reward for you!” that they were eligible to receive a reward worth £10 from PayPal, and that anyone who received the email was being given a reward, or would receive one if they chose to claim it.

The headline of the body of the email stated “We’re giving you £10 to use online with PayPal” which ASA considered would be understood by consumers in a similar way as the subject line.

“We did not consider that a cap on the number of consumers who would receive the reward would be in line with consumer expectations of those claims”, the Authority noted.

ASA concluded that the ad was misleading and breached the CAP Code. In particular, the ad breached CAP Code rules 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading Advertising), as well as 3.9 (Qualification).

The ad must not appear again in the form complained of. ASA told PayPal not to imply that all recipients of emails promoting customer rewards would receive those rewards, if that was not the case.