Furniture and homewares retailer DUSK has been told to clarify future savings claims after a rival retailer challenged a number of mattress sale adverts.
Pages on DUSK’s website, www.dusk.com, seen in August and September 2025, showed four savings claims that included discount codes for specific promotions. These ranged from 15% off to 50% off.
A single complainant, Simba Sleep Ltd, challenged whether the savings claims were misleading because they understood that a number of the products to which the claimed savings applied had not been sold at the higher, undiscounted prices for a sufficient time period.
In response, DUSK (Retail) Ltd t/a DUSK provided sales data for three mattress products raised in the complaint, which included the reference prices, the actual selling price, and the quantity of mattresses sold. They said that at the time the ads appeared, the reference prices reflected the established usual selling prices of the products.
DUSK said a significant number of customers bought the mattresses at or above the reference prices displayed for the products at the time the ads were seen. They also said that, across the review period, the on-site reference price was usually equal to or higher than the reference price featured at the time the ads were seen.
DUSK added that where customers paid less than the advertised prices, that was mainly because time-limited promotional codes reduced the price. They said some promotions were advertised site-wide, were not permanently available, and applied against the reference price. They said discount codes were available across 116 days in the six-month review period, and that around 95% of discounted purchases required customers to manually enter a code at checkout.
However, upon an investigation by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA), the watchdog upheld the claims. Each claim featured a discount code, such as “BH20”, “EXTRA15” and “PAYDAY20”, which consumers could use to apply a discount to items. The ASA considered consumers would understand the discounts to represent genuine saving against the usual selling price of the products.
The ASA considered the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) ‘Guidance for Traders on Pricing Practices’ as well as Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) guidance – Discount and reference pricing principles: selling mattresses online, when investigating. Simba Sleep Ltd also provided example baskets for three different mattresses, which showed the discounted prices and crossed-out reference prices at the dates the ads were seen.
Furthermore, the ASA considered the data supplied by DUSK, but found that consumers were unlikely to consider that the higher, undiscounted prices were the usual selling prices of the products.
“Because consumers were likely to understand the savings claims represented genuine savings against the usual selling prices of the products, and because the evidence did not substantiate the savings claims in the ads or demonstrate that the reference prices were the usual selling prices of the products, we concluded the savings claims were misleading,” the ASA stated.
“The ads must not appear again in the form complained of. We told DUSK (Retail) Ltd t/a DUSK to ensure that future savings claims were substantiated against the usual selling prices of products.”
For more information on the case, click here.
