The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has banned a pair of We Buy Any Car commercials after upholding complaints from rivals Motorway and Carwow, ruling that the ads were misleading and made unsubstantiated claims about the speed and certainty of its service.
The complaints focused on a television and YouTube ad that both featured a character named Robbie, who shares his experience of trying to sell a car through another, unnamed online service. In the TV ad, Robbie is shown waiting by his front door in vain, expecting a buyer who never arrives. In contrast, his sale with We Buy Any Car is completed with ease, in what is portrayed as a guaranteed and immediate transaction.
The YouTube version included an added line: “I tried to sell my car online – nightmare. So I went to We Buy Any Car instead. Sold it in minutes, job done.”
While no competitor is named directly, the ASA concluded that both ads amounted to comparisons with identifiable rivals – specifically Motorway and Carwow – by inviting viewers to contrast We Buy Any Car’s process with that of other online platforms.
The problem, according to the regulator, is that We Buy Any Car’s claims of superior speed and certainty were not supported by comparative data, and therefore breached advertising standards.
In its ruling, the ASA stated that We Buy Any Car failed to provide sufficient evidence to substantiate the implication that its service was quicker or more reliable than competitors. Instead, the company had only supplied data on its own performance, such as internal customer processing times and average deal durations.
“We … considered that the information provided was not adequate to substantiate the comparative claim that sales to We Buy Any Car were guaranteed, but sales via other car-buying sites were not,” stated the ASA.
“With regard to the speed of purchase, We Buy Any Car cited information from CarWow and Motorway’s websites. While the Motorway website indicated the process could take nine to 17 days, the CarWow website did not state a time period. We considered the information provided was not adequate to substantiate the comparative speed claim.”
As a result, the ads were found to breach rules around misleading advertising, substantiation, and comparative claims under both its advertising codes.
We Buy Any Car has been instructed not to show the ads again in their current form and told that future comparative claims must be based on clear, verifiable, and adequately substantiated evidence.