BBC Watchdog: The never-ending Dreams sale...

Tony

What Consumer Founder
Apr 7, 2008
18,307
3
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Bolton
A new day, a new sale, it's the Dreams way. Because when one offer ends on the Monday, Dreams launch a whole new sale the very next morning! And guess what? They've done this over - and over - again.

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In fact in the last 12 months we could only spot 6 days where there wasn't a sale, event or offer being advertised nationally at Dreams. Imagine how unlucky you'd be to pop in and buy a bed on one of those days.

Ok, so Dreams would argue - the sales and discounts are all different. With more beds, less beds, different ranges and different prices.

But while we've been monitoring their website since February - and looking back over their press and TV ads for the past year - we've discovered they're up to something that seems a little sneaky.

Let's begin with the phrase 'final days to save...

This 'Biggest Ever Bed' sale ended on March 7th. But the ad - claiming 'final days to save' - ran on February 16th. That's twenty days before the sale ended.

We asked some member of the public what they made of this...

"Maximum I would say final days should be no more than a week."

"Final days to save is misleading - if it's twenty days to save."

"It certainly doesn't mean twenty days. I would say 'final days' is two to three days."

Four days later - Their website warned "last few days to save". Still a full fourteen days before the sale ended. Again, we asked the British public whether 'few', can mean fourteen:

"Last few days is like couple of days two three days I'm sure. Yeah."

"The last few days of a sale to me would mean you've one or two days left to make your purchase."

So why do Dreams do it? Vince Mitchell, Professor of Marketing says:

"It scares consumers into thinking that this price would not be available for very long. What that means is they don't search as much - because they think that this is only going to be available for a very short amount of time - and if they don't search as much they don't necessarily get the best deal.

From a professional, marketing point of view, any reasonable interpretation of final and few would be few is a small number - certainly in single figures and final, of course, suggests the very last."

Dreams have already been ticked off about their website. Last November the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint against the Dreams website that ran a banner saying 'Final Days to Save' for more than seven days.

The ASA said that, because it didn't display a clear end date, the ad was misleading.

But, Watchdog has found Dreams doing this again.

Their 'Comfort for Less Offer' ran from March 8th until April 4th. That's a total of 28 days. And guess how many days before the offer ended Dreams claimed were final days to save? Twenty-one.

But you wouldn't know it because there was no end date on the front page. And when you clicked through to the Terms and Conditions the end date was wrong, and it stayed that way until the very day that Watchdog contacted them: the 13th of April, when all of a sudden the terms and conditions have been updated and an end date added to the front page.

But what about that 'final days to save' claim when there's still 21 days to go?

Advertising lawyer Mark Weston says:

"Final days to save a quarter of the sale doesn't mean to me final days - final days in a month long days is probably the last three or four days maybe a week at the outside. But a quarter of the way into it? Certainly not!

So is that breaching regulations?

If the words final days to save don't mean what they say - and I don't think they do - yes it does breach regulations."

Watchdog have scrutinised over 400 Dreams adverts from the last 15 months, and found out something else, not only confusing but rather naughty. We've found that within the super long sales period there are also offers that come and go.

This enables them to use phrases such as 'Last Few Days' when there's no intention of finishing the overall sale.

Such as one from the 5th August last year that advertised 60% off thousands of beds. It carries in large letters the words 'Last Few Days'. But if you look closely - it seems to us that 'Last Few Days' only applies to the smaller print offer relating to extra savings on the VIVA Collection. The overall sale still has well over a month left until it ends.

And what does advertising lawyer Mark Weston say about that?

"I would also think 'Last Few Days' refers to the sixty per cent off- but what it actually refers to is the particular savings in the Viva Collection. That's confusing and ambiguous. The fact that it is ambiguous is not allowed legally - things are not allowed to be unclear, misleading or ambiguous and this clearly is."


Dreams company response:

As Britain's biggest bed retailer, we constantly seek to offer great value to our customers through our promotional events in store and online. It is our mission to help everyone in the country get a great night's sleep and we want to ensure customers have access to the best possible quality, choice and value.

Our customers typically take two to three weeks to choose a new bed and our promotional advertising includes precise end dates to give plenty of notice when an offer or sale finishes, so they do not miss out.




The never-ending Dreams sale...