- The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) ruled that major high street retailers John Lewis, Boots, and Debenhams misled customers with their Black Friday promotions last year.
- The watchdog found that these companies overstated advertised price reductions, lacking sufficient evidence to prove genuine savings against the products' usual selling prices.
- Specific examples included John Lewis's MacBook and ASUS laptop deals, Debenhams' “44 per cent savings” on home products, and Boots' Hugo Boss fragrance promotion.
- The ASA concluded that the advertised deals did not represent genuine savings, thereby misleading consumers, and stressed that promotional events are not exempt from advertising rules.
- This ruling is part of the ASA's ongoing use of AI-powered monitoring to tackle misleading advertising, with consumer group Which? calling for tighter laws to ban deceptive pricing.
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