Advertising watchdog ruling for estate agency after misleading office claims

An advert by a Yorkshire estate agency that claimed it had offices in Wakefield and Bradford has been pulled by the advertising watchdog.

A regional press advertisement and website for Yorkshire’s Finest featured an image of a map with the locations Leeds, Halifax, Huddersfield, Wakefield, Bradford, Denby Dale and Holmfirth.

However, the estate agency did not have offices in Wakefield or Bradford, and a complaint was filed to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), challenging whether the website and press ad were misleading.

Yorkshire’s Finest Ltd said that they would remove the Bradford listing and phone number and said it was included because they had intended to rent a small office in the area which did not materialise.

The company said that the Wakefield phone number was genuine as there was an employee of the company who worked from an office at their home in the Wakefield area.

The ASA said that consumers were likely to interpret the area listings shown under the headings, “contact your local office” and “our offices”, which appeared in both ads, together with phone numbers, to mean that there were physical offices in those locations.

“We noted that Yorkshire’s Finest said that they did not claim to have premises in any locations. However, we considered that the listing of the locations in the ads was a strongly implied claim that there were offices in these areas,” it said.

“We considered consumers would understand from the ads that there was a physical office in Wakefield in the style of a traditional estate agent. Because that was not the case, we concluded that the ads were misleading.”

The ASA said the ads must not appear again in their current form.

“We told Yorkshire’s Finest Ltd not to imply that they had a physical office in locations where no such office existed,” it said.

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