The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) upheld a complaint against the train operator and ordered it to withdraw the claims.
The ruling concerns adverts seen on the ScotRail journey planner in August, which told customers the operator was “unbeatable on price” and urged them to “book direct for the best price”.
However, the watchdog determined that ScotRail held no evidence to back up these assertions, prompting the rail firm to confirm that the website wording has since been amended.
An ASA statement said: “The ASA considered that consumers would understand the claims ‘get cheapest tickets’ and ‘unbeatable on price’ to mean that, by using ScotRail’s journey planner, they would be able to purchase tickets at the lowest available price for their chosen journey.
“We also considered the claims implied it was unnecessary to look for cheaper tickets elsewhere, and that the additional claim, ‘book direct for our best price’, added to the impression that ScotRail’s prices could not be beaten. We considered that those were ‘lowest price’ (or ‘best price’) claims.
“As such, they had to be backed up by suitable evidence to show that ScotRail would always beat, and not merely match, competitors’ prices.
“We considered that rail ticketing was complex, and most consumers were unlikely to have knowledge of the rules which governed how ticket prices were set.
“Overall, consumers were likely to understand that ScotRail was able to offer competitively priced tickets, which it did by monitoring its fares against its competitors, including third-party retailers.
“We therefore expected ScotRail to hold evidence to substantiate the claims ‘get cheapest tickets’, ‘book direct for our best price’ and ‘unbeatable on price’.”
“We welcomed the changes ScotRail had made to their wording of parts of their website. However, because we had seen no evidence to demonstrate that consumers could obtain the lowest available price by booking directly with ScotRail, we concluded that the ad was misleading.”
A spokesperson for ScotRail said: “Our aim is always to provide clear, accurate information to customers, and we regret that the website messages did not fully reflect the ASA’s requirements.
“We take great care to ensure all promotional material meets advertising standards and expectations and will further review our processes to make sure we maintain the highest standards of compliance.”
