MCL Manchester Claims has had two issues investigated by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), both of which were upheld.

The website www.manchesterclaims.net, a PPI claims handling company, seen in November 2015, contained text making various claims about the company’s service.

Lloyds Banking Group challenged whether the following claims were misleading and could be substantiated: 1. “Our average PPI refund is £3,000”; and 2. “Over 90% success rate”.

Manchester Claims Ltd (trading as MCL Manchester Claims Ltd) did not respond to the ASA’s enquiries.

The ASA was concerned by the lack of response and apparent disregard for the Code by Manchester Claims, which was a breach of CAP Code (Edition 12) rule 1.7 (Unreasonable delay). The ad watchdog reminded them of their responsibility to respond promptly to its enquiries and told them to do so in future.

The ASA said it considered consumers were likely to understand from the ad that the average PPI refund Manchester Claims obtained was £3,000, and that they had a 90% success rate in making successful PPI refund claims. However, the ASA had not seen any evidence to demonstrate that was the case and therefore concluded that the ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising) and 3.7 (Substantiation).

The ad must not appear again in its current form. The ASA told Manchester Claims Ltd not to make “average pay out” and success rate claims in future if they were not in a position to substantiate them. We referred the matter to CAP’s Compliance team.