The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) has decided that a paid-for Instagram ad from Motorpoint, which included “Save up to £17,000” as text, is misleading following a complaint where a consumer suggested they were unable to find a vehicle with a saving of £17,000.
The ad, posted on 5 March 2026, featured the text, “Why buy new? Save £1000s off nearly new used cars. Browse our wide range across 21 stores nationwide”.
Below, an image of a car and text that stated “Save up to £17,000”. In the top right corner, an arrow-shaped graphic stated “NOW ON” and “UNBEATABLE PRICE EVENT”.
The ad appeared as a carousel of 40 images of different vehicles.
The ASA considered that consumers would have understood the claim “Why buy new? Save £1000s off nearly new used cars” to mean that substantial savings of thousands of pounds were available on nearly new, used cars.
In that context, consumers would have understood the claim “Save up to £17,000” to mean that a significant proportion of the nearly new, used cars included in the offer were available with savings of up to £17,000.
The other text appearing with the savings claims alongside a carousel of images, were likely to be understood by consumers to mean that the advertised Motorpoint “Price Event” offered savings of up to £17,000 on its nearly new, used cars.
The claims were presented as one overall promotional message. Therefore, the ASA considered consumers were likely to interpret the £17,000 claim as part of the savings available through that event.
Motorpoint’s said that the “up to £17,000” claim was intended to refer more generally to savings against the list price of an equivalent new vehicle, rather than to savings available as part of a distinct advertised “Price Event”.
The ad did not make it ‘sufficiently’ clear that the claim was based on a comparison with equivalent new car list prices, rather than savings available through the “Price Event”, according to the ASA.
The ASA said that within the £17,000 to £17,999 saving band, only 20 of 1,611 vehicles were available.
The evidence did not demonstrate that savings of £17,000 were available on a significant proportion of vehicles.
As the majority of vehicles across the full range were advertised with lower savings, the ASA considered the claim “up to £17,000” exaggerated the level of savings generally available.
Motorpoint accepted that the terms and conditions could have been clearer in the ad and said that, in future, they would include equivalent wording in the ad to reduce the risk of confusion.
The ad breached CAP Code (Edition 12) rules 3.1 (Misleading advertising), 3.7 (Substantiation), and 3.17 and 3.22 (Prices).
