Is charging postage for ‘free’ goods misleading?

QCan Gtech ( www.gtech.co.uk) advertise free replacement blades for garden strimmers as ‘free for life’ if you actually have to pay £3.99 for a box of 50 to be delivered? I know the price is good value but it’s not free, so surely this is false advertising? Pete Stubbs

AIt depends on the exact wording of Gtech’s advert. He’s not told us where he saw the advert, but an online review of the strimmers submitted two years ago states there’s a postage cost involved ( www.snipca. com/28209), so it’s been public knowledge for a while. Because delivery is generally accepted to be a separate cost from the actual goods, we feel Gtech isn’t guilty of being misleading, although it is rather odd that it told Pete the £3.99 charge is an admin fee.

Generally, consumers can take legal action about misleading adverts only if they believe the company was being intentionally deceitful. Pete would need to prove this if he wanted to take the case further, and make a complaint to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA, www.asa.org.uk/contact-us.html). We would be surprised if it acted because it’s widely assumed that products sent in the post will incur a delivery charge.

Lots of adverts are accidentally misleading, but these are normally dealt with by a small fine or a telling-off by the ASA. Many adverts are simply reworded to avoid a fine.

Some consumers feel like they’ve been tricked because retailers mention the postage costs of an offer at the checkout stage, rather than in the advert – which, of course, is what catches the buyer’s eye in the first place.