The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has ruled against an advert from rentchecks.com of Salford.
Claims on www.rentchecks.com which promoted a checking service for tenants and landlords stated “Rentchecks.com has been a leading provider of pre tenancy & lease intelligence to landlords and agents for the past 10 years. Rentchecks’ fair but in depth tenant vetting process removes much of the risk from both the residential and commercial property letting process”.
One complainant challenged whether the claim that Rentchecks.com had been providing “pre tenancy & lease intelligence to landlords and agents for the past 10 years” was misleading, because she believed the company had been established in 2012.
Rentchecks.com stated that it vetted prospective tenants. They added that the limited company Rentchecks (Europe) Ltd supplied Rentchecks.com with IT capabilities, virtual contact services and temporary staff to assist with the vetting, but Rentchecks (Europe) Ltd had no legal connection to Rentchecks.com. Rentchecks.com said the website correctly reflected that Rentchecks.com had been supplying tenant referencing services for the past 10 years.
The ASA acknowledged that the complainant had noted, based on information she had seen on Companies House, that the company Rentchecks (Europe) Ltd had been incorporated in 2012. It noted that Rentchecks.com maintained it was a separate entity which had no legal connection to Rentchecks (Europe) Ltd. The ASA nonetheless noted we had not seen any evidence to support the claim “Rentchecks.com has been a leading provider of pre tenancy & lease intelligence to landlords and agents for the past 10 years”.
In the absence of substantiation showing that Rentchecks.com had been operating as a provider of pre-tenancy and lease intelligence for ten years, the ad watchdog that the claim was misleading.
The claims breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising) and 3.7 (Substantiation).
The claim must not appear again in its current form. The ASA told rentchecks.com to hold documentary evidence to support their claims.
