ASCI attends 1,000 complaints against misleading ads

Advertising sector watchdog ASCI said Thursday it has processed over 1,000 complaints against misleading advertising on behalf of the Department of Consumer Affairs.

"GAMA (Grievances Against Misleading Advertisements) was launched on March 18, 2015 and has received over 1,000 complaints till date. All GAMA complaints have been diligently processed by ASCI," the regulator said in a statement.

The Department of Consumer Affairs (DoCA) had appointed the Advertising Standards Council of India (ASCI) to monitor web portal www.Gama.Gov.In.

As per ASCI, a majority of these complaints came from individual consumers as well as few consumer organisations like the Consumer Education and Research Centre (CERC).
 
"The portal received complaints against advertisements of products and services from almost all sectors (telecom, banking, consumer durables, etc and emerging sectors like e-commerce) across a range of advertising media (TV, print, web-sites, other digital mediums, etc)," it added.

Some of the well known brands' advertisements which were complained against were processed by ASCI via GAMA portal and the complaints were UPHELD by the Consumer Complaints Council (CCC).

In all those cases the advertisers either withdrew the advertisements or modified them as appropriate within the stipulated period and compliance to the CCC decisions was assured.