Crashes: Adverts misled consumers
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned misleading adverts aimed at victims of car accidents as part of a new crackdown on claims management companies (CMCs).
In each case, the online adverts were found to misleadingly imply that they were from well-known car insurance providers through which consumers could report non-fault accidents – so-called Google-spoofing.
They linked to webpages for consumers to make a report – and receive help with repairs and replacement vehicles – that were also misleading.
Adverts from Report Incident, a trading name of Dean Harrison, indicated they were from E-sure, Hastings Direct and Churchill. Freedom Debt Ltd’s adverts implied a connection to Hastings Direct and Admiral (the URL was the similar looking ‘adminall’), while lst Central Insurance Claimline’s adverts (using a capital ‘I’ instead of the numeral one) looked like they came from 1st Central.
The ASA described Freedom Debt as “an online leads aggregator that obtained consumers’ information for passing on to accident recovery, car hire and damage repair companies, in the case of non-fault accidents”. The other two were accident CMCs.
None of the companies had any direct connection to the insurers they advertised against “and therefore could not assist customers of those companies in making a claim on their insurance policy following an accident”.
In each case, the ASA said, consumers were “likely to be unaware of the nature of the service being offered in the ads, by a company who operated in the accident claims sector, and of the potential costs and risks of not contacting their insurer”.
Small text at the bottom of the Report Incident page stated: “The services we provide are completely independent from your own insurance company. Our aim is to help keep your insurance costs from rising.” Further text – ‘Contact us’, ‘Privacy policy’ and ‘Terms and conditions’ – was not hyperlinked.
Dean Harrison did not respond to the ASA about Report Incident. The ASA said it was concerned by this and its “apparent disregard” for the advertising code.
Freedom Direct did engage with the ASA through a lawyer, who argued that Hastings Direct did not have any trade mark rights over the name ‘Hastings’, given that town’s history.
But they had advised their client to stop running the adverts and the web addresses and websites would not be used to run any campaigns in future.
A digital advertising management agency responded on behalf of lst Central Insurance Claimline and said that automated keyword features had “unintentionally caused the term to appear in the ad when consumers searched for it”.
The company had now permanently disabled the automated feature for branded searches and all adverts now stated: “We are not an insurer – claims support services only.”
They also said the websites had been taken offline and would be amended to remove any suggestion that insurer contact was unnecessary and to include the statement: “We are not an insurer. You must still notify your insurer of any accident. Our role is to provide additional support and assistance.”
The ASA ordered that the adverts must not appear again in the form complained of. The companies had to ensure in future that “they did not falsely imply they were acting for purposes outside of their trade”, while marketing communications must make clear the nature of their businesses.
The ASA said the rulings formed part of “a wider piece of work on misleadingness and imitation in ads for accident claims management companies”.
The regulator has become more active in the legal market of late. Last September, it upheld complaints against three law firms over misleading websites and online advertising for group actions – again as part of a wider project on the issue.
The following month, it joined forces with the Financial Conduct Authority, Solicitors Regulation Authority and Information Commissioner’s Office to tackle misleading advertising and inadequate information provided by some law firms and CMCs working on motor finance claims.
In 2024, the High Court ruled that ‘Google-spoofing’ by CMCs did not necessarily involve “anything illegal” in the absence of misrepresentation or fraud.
In that case, immediately after being in a road traffic accident, a man attempted to notify his insurer, Hastings. He Googled its name and rang the first number in the list of search results, which unbeknownst to him was actually a CMC.
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