Bury-based ABT Law LLP has had an advert banned by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The website www.evolvedconveyancing.co.uk, promoting conveyancing services, contained an online quote tool. The tool returned a quote of £390.80 when a £125,000 purchase price with no mortgage was entered.
The complainant challenged whether the online quote was misleading, because his final bill was significantly more.
ABT Law did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries.
The ASA was concerned by ABT Law’s lack of substantive response and apparent disregard for the Code, which was a breach of CAP Code clause 1.7 (Unreasonable delay). It reminded them of their responsibility to provide a substantive response to its enquiries and told them to do so in future.
The ad watchdog noted that the complainant had received an online quote for £390.80 for conveyancing services but understood he had been charged significantly more. Because the ASA had not received any substantiation from ABT Law to demonstrate that their quotes were accurate, it concluded that the online quote was misleading.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 1.7 (Unreasonable delay), 3.1 and 3.3 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation) and 3.17 (Prices).
The ASA ruled that the ad must not appear again in its current form and it referred the matter to CAP’s Compliance team.