The Sun - Superbreaks

Compers News reader Mrs M was delighted to win a competition listed on Chatterbox to win a weekend break in conjunction with The Sun and the company Superbreaks. Mrs M received a winning email to congratulate her in June 2014, and then Superbreaks phoned to confirm receipt of the email, and this is when things started to go wrong. Whilst on the phone, Mrs M asked when she needed to book the break by (as this was not mentioned in the email) and was told 31/03/15. Due to personal circumstances, Mrs M left it until February to contact Superbreaks again, but was then told it should have been booked by 31st July 2014 and taken by 31st October 2014. They said the this was in the original terms and conditions, and therefore they wouldn't honour the prize. Mrs M was very upset, but Superbreaks wouldn't budge. This was obviously human error, and someone had made a mistake about the booking date when Mrs M asked. Surely all the relevant dates should have been detailed in the winning email.

After consulting Mr Mutton, he advised contacting The Sun and appealing to them to make a goodwill gesture. Would they really want a life long Sun reader to be so disappointed over a genuine mistake? I started a campaign of emails and Recorded Delivery letters to the appropriate sections of the Sun. When these appeared to be being ignored, I decided to make an ASA referral on behalf of Mrs M in case we breached the ASA time limit. I noticed that The Sun also have a page where they investigate consumer problems, so I thought it would be quite ironic to refer The Sun to themselves! That backfired on me when they emailed back to say they were so overwhelmed with complaints that they weren't taking on any more cases - how convenient!

Finally, a month later - success! Mrs M received a telephone call from The Sun saying that she could have her break, and it was all booked and sorted within 24 hours. About a week later, we received the ASA ruling, which was not in our favour.

Having looked at this ad, we understand that the ad clearly stated “Weekend must be booked by 31 July 2014 and taken by 31 October 2014.” Although I understand this time wasn’t appropriate for you and subsequent communications with the company gave you a different understanding, because it made the terms clear at the time consumers would have entered the competition, it is unlikely we would consider the ad likely to mislead consumers into making a transaction decision they otherwise wouldn’t have, to consequently breach the Code for this reason. Without a breach of Code, it’s unlikely we would have been able to take any further action.

Luckily, we already had the result we wanted. Full marks to The Sun and Superbreaks for doing the right thing.