An advert for online tenant referencing company rentchecks.com has been found to breach two codes set out by the advertising regulating body.
The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) investigated a complaint against the firm after claiming on its website that: “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.”
A complainant challenged that the company had in fact been established in 2012. Rentchecks.com responded to the complaint by suggesting that the website correctly reflected that the company had been supplying tenant referencing services for the past ten years. Adding that limited company Rentchecks (Europe) Ltd supplied Rentchecks.com with IT capabilities, virtual contact services and temporary staff to assist with the vetting, but had no legal connection to Rentchecks.com.
However, the ASA reported that the claim had breached CAP code rules 3.1 Misleading advertising and 3.7 Substantiation, due to information on Companies House, stating that the company Rentchecks (Europe) Ltd had been incorporated in 2012.
The ASA declared that they 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". Due to a lack of substantiation proving that Rentchecks.com had been operating as a provider of pre-tenancy and lease intelligence for ten years, they concluded that the claim was misleading.
The ASA added that: “The claim must not appear again in its current form” and noted that rentchecks.com must hold documentary evidence to support its future claims.
The claim has since been removed from the website.
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