Complaints upheld against GatEx and Eurostar ads

Gatwick Express and Eurostar have fallen foul of the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).

Two complaints were made against GatEx, claiming that a poster stating trains took half an hour and ran every 15 minutes was misleading and could not be substantiated.

The poster stated: “Non-stop to Victoria station in half an hour, every 15 minutes.”

Smaller text at the bottom of the poster stated: “Gatwick Airport to London Victoria, 30 minutes, every 15 minutes average timetabled journey time in normal service (journey times and frequencies may vary for planned engineering works).”

In its response to ASA, Govia Thameslink Railway (which operates GatEx) said its trains were scheduled to take 30 minutes and that between April 30 2017 and May 26 2018 some 79.1% of scheduled trains arrived on time.

ASA upheld the complaint, stating passengers would “interpret the claims ‘non-stop to Victoria station in half an hour’ and ‘in just 30 minutes’ to mean that the journey time between London Victoria and Gatwick Airport on the Gatwick Express was 30 minutes”.

It added: “While we acknowledged that consumers would appreciate that train services were occasionally subject to unforeseeable delays, we nevertheless considered that consumers would expect that the Gatwick Express achieved the stated journey time barring exceptional or unforeseeable circumstances outside of their control.

“We understood that at the time the ad appeared, the Gatwick Express timetable scheduled trains between London Victoria and Gatwick Airport with a journey time of 30 minutes.”

GatEx must now remove the claims.

For Eurostar, a complaint was received regarding its £29 London-Paris offers. A passenger complained that this could be not found.

Eurostar said in its response to the Advertising Standards Authority: “The availability of £29 fares was reviewed weekly by the Revenue Management team, who loaded additional capacity into the booking system for the targeted booking horizon, which was the period six to 18 weeks in advance of travel.

“They considered that customers would not expect to find the lead-in £29 fare available for departures within the immediate six weeks, and would instead expect this fare to be available for bookings made further in advance.”

ASA upheld the complaint, stating: “We considered that consumers would understand the claim to mean that fares were available at £29 from the date of booking onward. We also considered that consumers would expect to find the tickets available at the ‘from’ price across a range of dates and times within that period.”

In the future, when advertising its £29 fares, Eurostar must add ‘from’ in adverts.