Octopus Energy has been rapped by the advertising watchdog for misleading customers with claims about how much money they could save by switching, following a complaint by rival British Gas.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld several complaints against Octopus Energy’s ads, which ran across social media, radio and billboards and claimed: “Most homes would save with Octopus.”
An email campaign also told customers: “We’ve been notified by another supplier that you’ll be switching to them… Will they really save you money? We’re generally the cheapest or near enough: in fact, nine out of ten Octopus customers pay less than they could with any other large supplier on the same product.”
British Gas challenged the claims, arguing that only customers on standard variable tariffs (SVTs) with another supplier were likely to see any saving.
The ASA agreed.
In its ruling, the regulator said: “Because the ads did not make clear that the claims that most homes ‘could’ or ‘would’ save applied only to consumers on non-Octopus SVTs who chose to switch to an Octopus SVT, we considered they were likely to mislead.”
Octopus defended the ads, saying they were meant to highlight how customers on expensive standard tariffs could benefit from switching to their own SVT.
However, the ASA said this wasn’t made clear in the messaging and failed to reflect the full picture.
The ads must not appear again in their current form. We told Octopus Energy Ltd to ensure that they included adequate substantiation to support claims, including comparisons with identifiable competitors, in their marketing materials and to make the basis of any claim clear in their advertising.
“We also told them to ensure that any comparative claims were verifiable.”
Advertising Standards Authority
The ASA said: “Because the ad did not make clear the basis of the claim, we considered that it was misleading.”
Octopus has amended the wording of the adverts which are still running but now have the additional line “Based on more than 50% of homes currently being supplied by another large energy supplier on a default tariff.”
