Amazon is to be told to stop claiming its Prime service guarantees next-day delivery by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), according to a news report.
UK advertising regulator is set to enforce the ban after customers complained it was failing to provide their goods on time in the run-up to Christmas.
The move is expected to rule that the firm’s claims to be able to operate an “unlimited one-day delivery” service are misleading in the case of some items.
“[A] significant proportion of Prime-labelled items were not available for delivery the next day … because consumers were likely to understand that, so long as they did not order too late, all Prime items would be available for delivery the next day … we concluded that the ad was misleading,” the ASA’s ruling will say, according to the Times.
It’s expected that Amazon won’t be banned entirely from promising to deliver items the next day, but that they won’t be able to sell their Prime Membership as Unlimited One-Day Delivery.
Amazon offers the service to its Prime customers, who pay a £7.99 monthly subscription, but many people said it failed to live up to its promises last Christmas.
Amazon has also come under attack over its tax affairs and, last week, it was revealed that it had almost halved its UK corporation tax bill while tripling its profits.