A leaflet for Domino’s offered a free pizza by entering a code into an app. Unsurprisingly, lots of people tried to get a free pizza using their code, but when they tried to redeem the promotion, they were told the offer had been withdrawn. Seven very hangry people complained to the ASA on the basis that the promotion had not been administered fairly...

The CAP Code states that promoters must conduct their promotions equitably, promptly and efficiently and be seen to deal fairly and honourably with participants and potential participants. The Code also states that promoters must avoid causing unnecessary disappointment and that phrases such as “subject to availability” did not relieve promoters of their obligation to do everything reasonable to avoid disappointing participants. Promoters often run into problems with promotions when they miscalculate demand and so it was in this case.

An agency was running the promotion on behalf of Domino’s and they said they’d run the promotion before with a redemption rate of 0.2%. However, this time around, the offer had a redemption rate of 2%, which was ten times larger than for the previous wave of the promotion. It was just too darn popular!

They thought the higher redemption rate this time round was due to the promotion being abused. They said they had intended for one voucher to be distributed per household, but for some reason this hadn’t happened and in fact the same people were redeeming the promotion multiple times. As a result, they said they “had to” prevent further abuse of the promotion. They acknowledged that it may have caused disappointment among some consumers, but considered that it was necessary to ensure that their stores were not overwhelmed with orders resulting from the promotion, which they argued would potentially affect their wider customer service.

They highlighted that the small print of the terms referred out to Domino’s general terms and conditions, which allowed them to update, amend or withdraw the offer at any time. They re-iterated that if the promotion had been redeemed as it was intended, that they would not have withdrawn the promotion. They said they had tried to mitigate the disappointment by offering a 60% discount to customers who tried to redeem the offer.

The ASA identified a number of issues in upholding the complaints:

Free claims: Quite apart from the above issues, the offer breached the CAP Code simply because the “free pizza” claim wasn’t true. Although the pizza would be free, there was a minimum spend requirement for deliveries. The CAP Code says that marketing communications must not describe a product as “free” if the consumer had to pay anything other than the unavoidable cost of responding and collecting or paying for delivery of the item.

Limits on redemption: Neither the ad nor the promotional terms and conditions detailed that the offer was limited to one per household, nor that there was any other limitation on the number of pizzas that could be claimed. As such, the ASA did not consider that the promotional terms had been breached by participants using multiple vouchers. They should have been allowed to redeem the offer as many time as appetites allowed.

Withdrawing the offer: By withdrawing the offer, anyone who had not yet had a chance to redeem the promotion was unable to receive their free pizza, and therefore had not been dealt with fairly. Although the terms stated that Domino’s could withdraw the offer at any time (as is quite common), the CAP Code is clear that such terms do not relieve promoters of their obligation to avoid disappointing participants. In reality, these sorts of provisions should only be relied on in an emergency situation where something has happened that is genuinely outside the control of the promoter. That wasn't the case here. The ASA also said that the 60% discount was not equivalent to offering a free pizza, as promoted in the ad, and genuine participants should have been able to take up the advertised offer. Because they did not honour the promotion, the ASA considered that reasonable steps had not been taken to avoid disappointing participants.

Key takeaways (apologies...)

It is normal - and very much advisable - for promotional offers to include a term to say that they can only be redeemed once per household. Even where the promoter is happy to allow multiple uses of an offer it is usually always a good idea to impose some sort of cap (especially when offering something for free), because things can go wrong and you don’t always know how that might happen. In this case, it seems multiple leaflets were delivered through the same doors.

However, you slice it, this decision is also noteworthy for its reminder that when an offer says something is free, it has to be free. Absolute free claims can be very tricky to get right. It is vital for promoters to think through their promotions step by step to make sure there isn’t some kind of payment involved along the way. Here, it was a minimum order value for deliveries, which undermined the “free” claim. However, it did not necessarily need to be fatal – you might still be able to offer a free pizza if you make it a “collection only” offer or otherwise make it very clear that it's a free pizza on orders over the minimum amount.