Scratch card operator punished for having too many prizes available

Mediaprom sold four scratch cards which offered cash prizes of up to £50,000, holidays, digital cameras and MP3 players.

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has said that the cards broke its rules because the text on the cards indicated that specific numbers of the prizes were available, and in fact the company had more prizes available than that.

"We considered that the claims '20k x Family Haven Holiday', '1000 x Digital Camera' and '1500 x MP3 Player' implied that there were a specific number of each of those products available to be claimed as awards," said the ASA's ruling. "We understood that that was not the case and that Mediaprom allocated awards from an unlimited rolling stock."

"We considered therefore that, because the number of each product stated was not the number of awards specifically allocated to each scratch card, and Mediaprom had a much greater number of each product, the claims were misleading, because they implied that respondents were luckier than they were in terms of the award they were being invited to claim," it said.

Mediaprom was asked to produce evidence that it actually possessed the prizes advertised on the cards at the time of the cards' sale, and that the prizes were attached to specific cards.

"We noted Mediaprom said they held a stock of the products available as awards in their promotions. We also noted the invoice for 1,000 digital cameras was placed in May 2008, after the ads appeared and that Mediaprom had not been able to send evidence to show that they held the exact number of each product as stated in the ads," said the ruling.

Mediaprom had said that it always awarded claimed prizes and when a prize was not in stock it was bought in.

"They said, for every promotion they ran, they fulfilled all correct claims with the relevant prize or award, whether that was from current stock they held or from new stock they ordered in to fulfil them; they said they had constant access to any products that were required," said the ruling.

The ASA, though, said that the scratch cards had broken its rules on the substantiation of claims in an advert, on truthfulness and on rules for prize promotions.

The watchdog said that the scratch cards had broken sections 35.2 and 35.3 of its sales promotions rules. These read:

35.2 Promoters should not overstate consumers' chances of winning prizes. If promoters include consumers who have not won prizes in lists of those who have won prizes, they should distinguish clearly between the two.

35.3 Promoters should not claim that consumers are luckier than they are. They should not use terms such as 'finalist' or 'final stage' in a way that implies that consumers have progressed, by chance or skill, to an advanced stage of promotions if they have not.

The ASA said that the scratch cards had also breached its Code on grounds of truthfulness in the way that it advertised its customer help line. That phone line was operated on an 0844 number, which is slightly more expensive than a normal phone number.

Mediaprom said that calling the number for the average call duration of two minutes would cost 5p from a BT landline rather than the 4p it would cost to call a normal geographic number.

The ASA, though, said that it could cost more because of the set-up cost of a call as well as the price per minute call.