New debt ad gets slammed by watchdog

25/06/2009

The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has upheld complaints regarding yet more promotional material from a debt firm.

According to the watchdog, Claim Management UK shouldn't have told potential customers that they could use the law to wipe out their debts.

The ads, which were sent through SMS text messages, were found by the watchdog to not state the complicated nature of the service being touted.

Claim Management UK said in the message: "Due to new government legislation you can get your debt wiped out."

However, in reality being able to successfully using the law in this way is far from a guarantee.

What's more, the debt firm was not able to prove that the text messages were solicited by the customers.

"We noted Claim Management had not been able to demonstrate that the complainants had explicitly consented to receive the SMS text messages that they were sent," the watchdog said.

"Furthermore, we noted they acknowledged the problem could have been due to the complainant's data being old and stored unintentionally."

Claim Management UK is the second debt firm to be criticised by the ASA in a week.

A print ad from Debt Free UK had previously been found to be misleading.

Tags; Housing Debt and Bills, Credit Card Lifestyle,

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