An IKEA New Zealand promotional email offering customers a $10 voucher has drawn a complaint with the Swedish retailer then admitting its terms and conditions didn't match how the offer actually worked.
The Advertising Standards Authority's (ASA) Complaints Board ruled the case had been settled after IKEA acknowledged the error and agreed not to use the advertisement in its current form again.
The email advertisement, headed "Something special, from us to you", offered loyalty members a $10 voucher when they spent a minimum of $100 in a single transaction along with a specific discount code to use at checkout.
The complainant said the clear implication was that the code would act as a point-of-sale discount and reduce the cost at checkout.
"However, when I tried to use the code, IKEA support informed me it wouldn’t reduce my current total," the irate customer said. "They pointed to a vague line in the fine print stating the voucher must be 'activated', which they defined as requiring me to pay full price for my current shop first."
They said "using ambiguous wording in the fine print to completely contradict the main headline of a '$10 off discount code' is deceptive advertising", adding it misled consumers about the price they expected to pay.
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IKEA said an investigation found its terms and conditions "did not accurately reflect the intended activation parameters" of the offer.
The retailer said its system excluded certain categories of products — including discounted offers, newly reduced price items, IKEA Family offers and clearance items — from counting towards the $100 spending threshold, without this being properly reflected in the advertised terms.
"We sincerely apologise for this discrepancy and any inconvenience it may have caused," IKEA said. "Going forward, we will implement stronger controls to ensure that our terms and conditions precisely align with system configurations."
The ASA Board chairperson accepted the complaint for consideration.
Under the ASA's self-regulatory process, advertisers could choose to amend or remove advertising after a complaint was lodged, rather than have the matter formally heard.
"Given the advertiser’s co-operative engagement with the process by acknowledging the error and the commitment to implement stronger processes around communicating accurate terms and conditions going forward, the chair ruled the complaint was settled."
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