Amazon ad banned for ‘misleading’ one-day delivery promise

The advertising watchdog has banned an Amazon ad promising one-day delivery for Prime members, after receiving hundreds of complaints from customers.

The ad promised “One-day delivery for Christmas”, and under the terms of Amazon Prime laid out on the website, customers were told: “Depending on the time of day that you place your order and your delivery address, if in stock it’ll be dispatched that same day and delivered the next day.”

Most of the 280 people who complained to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) had not received their goods within one day of placing their order.

Amazon told the ASA that the later in the day a customer ordered, “the greater the possibility that the forecast delivery date would not be the day after the order”.

The retailer said the ad “did not promise a particular speed of delivery of a particular product” and that “a customer’s later disappointment about the speed of a one-day delivery order should not render their marketing misleading”.

Amazon also said that the speed of delivery of a future order “could not form part of consumers’ decision about whether to sign up to Prime”.

The ASA found that the claim “one-day delivery” was “likely” to cause consumers to decide to sign up for Prime membership.

The watchdog told Amazon its ad must not appear again in the same form, and said the retail giant must “make clear that some Prime labelled items were not available to be delivered by the next day”.

A spokesperson for Amazon said: “Amazon Prime offers fantastic benefits to members including one-day delivery on millions of eligible items at no extra cost. The expected delivery date is shown before an order is placed and throughout the shopping journey and we work relentlessly to meet this date.

“The overwhelming majority of one-day delivery orders are delivered when promised. A small proportion of orders missed the delivery promise last year during a period of extreme weather that impacted all carriers across the UK, and we provided support to impacted customers at the time.”