"Join the NEW £7 billion energy market NOW! Train as a DOMESTIC ENERGY ASSESSOR and you could EARN £50K P/A"
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has finally published details of its judgement on advertisements placed in the national press by g-lec Skills Academy for its Domestic Energy Assessment training courses.
The ASA upheld a complaint lodged by a Domestic Energy Assessor (DEA) who noticed that g-lec adverts for its DEA training courses were enticing members of the public to part with several thousand pounds based on unsubstantiated promises of £50k per year earnings.
The company has been ordered to remove the claim: "You could earn up to £50K P/A".
How g-lec Skills Academy dreamt up £50k earnings
g-lec claimed it had based its experience of the gas and electrical safety inspections market to come up with the earnings figure, citing that assessors in those fields were earning over £60,000 a year... See ya!
The ASA, in its assessment, wrote:
The ASA noted g-lec had estimated the potential earnings for DEAs using their experience of the gas and electrical safety inspections market. We noted the £50,000 figure was based on a DEA completing 11 inspections over a five and a half day week and charging £100 per inspection. However, we noted g-lec did not provide any evidence to demonstrate that 11 inspections per five and a half day week and £100 per inspection were realistic or achievable.
We noted the complainant believed DEAs currently achieved around £50 - £60 per inspection, and that there was insufficient demand for EPCs, because there were already 10,000 qualified, or soon to be qualified, DEAs in the UK.
We considered that readers were likely to understand from the claim "you could EARN £50K P/A" that a salary of £50,000 was the average earnings that a DEA could realistically achieve. Because g-lec had not provided evidence to demonstrate that £50,000 was the average earnings and had instead based the earnings claim on their own estimates, we concluded that the ad was likely to mislead.
Tags: dea-training, business-news
