A
disclaimer is a legal statement intended to specify or delimit the scope of
rights and obligations that may be exercised and enforced by parties in a
legally recognized relationship. Disclaimers are commonly used as a
marketing technique in advertising as an easy way to make a concise statement
without disclosing significant detail of a particular offering. The use of disclaimers gives rise to a number
of inherent risks for consumers where an organization’s use of a disclaimer is
ineffective or fails to draw the attention of the consumer to the qualifying
statement. According to the ACCC
disclaimers should:
- be bold, precise and compelling;
- be accurate, clear and in precise terms;
- not contradict the main message of the ad; and
- be introduced at the same time as the representations they qualify
One example of a past case where a
disclaimer was deemed legally ineffective was in the case against Office
Link (Aust) Pty Ltd, a mobile phone provider.
In this case the phone company was found to have used the disclaimer to limit
transparency of additional costs and conditions associated with their
product.
One
example of a more recent disclaimer which has some similarities to the Office
Link case is the Dodo Voip advertisement.
Whilst this ad makes reference to the additional costs involved in
purchasing the product, and the term of the plan, the additional information in
the disclaimer works to contradict the main message of the ad, that being that
the phone and voicebox are free. The disclaimer is also in fine print which
goes against the requirements of the ACCC that it should be bold and
compelling. The disclaimer in this case
however is introduced at the same time as the advertisement and is clear and
concise in its statement. I believe,
however, that the Dodo advertisement has vast similarities to the Office Link
case and based on this precedent it may not be judged as a legally effective
disclaimer.
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