Amazon will be told to end it’s guaranteed next-day delivery service by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA).
The UK advertising regulator has reported that Amazon’s guarantee for next-day delivery is misleading after customers made complaints of not receiving packages in the run-up to Christmas.
According to the Times, the ruling will say: “[A] significant proportion of Prime-labelled items were not available for delivery the next day … because consumers were likely to understand that, so long as they did not order too late, all Prime items would be available for delivery the next day … we concluded that the ad was misleading.”
Amazon’s Prime page for the UK states that members who pay the £7.99 monthly subscription can enjoy is “unlimited one-day delivery to UK addresses on millions of eligible items at no extra cost.”
The firm was also criticized by the regulator in 2016 when the ASA ruled against Amazon over its free delivery claims. The regulator said the ads “did not make sufficiently clear which items were eligible for free delivery, and under what terms, and that they were therefore misleading”.
Responding to the most recent criticism from the ASA, a spokesperson from Amazon told the Times: “The expected delivery date is shown before an order is placed and throughout the shopping journey and we work relentlessly to meet this date.
“A small proportion of orders missed the delivery promise last year during a period of extreme weather that impacted all carriers across the UK.”
The group has also come under fire for its tax affairs after it was revealed last week that the firm had almost halved its UK corporation tax bill while tripling its profits.
Philip Hammond, the UK chancellor, said: “We want to ensure that the high street remains resilient, and we also make sure that taxation is fair between business doing business the traditional way, and those doing business online. We may have to look at temporary tax measures to rebalance the playing field until we can get international agreements sorted out.”
Shares in Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) are currently trading at 1886.30 (1338 GMT).