Steve McDonald - Outrageously Exagerrating the value of a Pendule Watch.

[Wirral70]

McDonald is selling a Pendule timepiece. The starting price was a utterly preposterous £220 and then it went to £110. Then he said 'what if, what if right now I could halve it again? What if I halve it again? Now hang on, bear with me. If I halve this that means you will be getting a watch of supreme quality and you're going to be getting it for £55, A QUARTER OF WHERE WE ACTUALLY STARTED, that means 75% that we started with will have been taken away'.

The same watch in Rose Gold plate is available on bid.tv for £64.99, what an absolutely scandalous example of over inflating the actual value of a product.

Disgraceful, truly disgraceful. That was one of the worst sales I have ever seen on Sit Up and that's saying something.

 

[Price Plunge]

Didn't pay much attention but I did see some of this preposterous sales pitch.

However...There was something that was arguably even worse than this, namely an Aquaswiss "high end" watch he was selling yesterday evening which had a stupidly high start price of over £1000 (I think) and he managed to sell all 5 for £599.95 plus p&p/phone call:

http://www.price-drop.tv/PreviousAuctionProductPage.aspx?Cat=15&SubCat=38&Offer=5321461

He neglected to say what the total carat weight of the "black diamond encrusted bezel" was, and the Price-drop website doesn't mention it either from what I can see. For some reason Steve Macdonald is particularly bad when it comes to describing and selling watches, whereas with anything else he's often just your average salesman with perhaps a bit of exaggeration thrown in for good measure.

Also on the subject of Steve, he frequently says a word that sounds like "somethink" but it probably means something else entirely :wink:

 

[Wirral70]

That sounds like another terrible sale PP.

I was appalled at the Pendule sale though, it gave me bad memories of Auction World. Sit Up have been warned about exaggerating the actual value of goods before, including watches. It looks like it's time they were given a reminder of very, very similar recent Upheld Rulings which they seem to be totally ignoring.

http://www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2013/3/sit_up-Ltd/SHP_ADJ_215269.aspx

Wouldn't you agree that is eerily similar to the scenario outlined in my opening post? The Ruling was only made in March :angry:

 

[Price Plunge]

These examples certainly appear to be another case for the ASA, especially if something not to dissimilar to this has been upheld in the past (as stated). It's puzzling as to why nearly all of the presenters are being so careful in relation to mentioning p&p/phone call costs (and related details) yet are still blatantly ignoring other things like misleading "start prices" and other similar misdescriptions?

The only conclusion has to be that they must be desperate for the money.

 

[Bennyxp]

McDonald is selling a Pendule timepiece. The starting price was a utterly preposterous £220 and then it went to £110. Then he said 'what if, what if right now I could halve it again? What if I halve it again? Now hang on, bear with me. If I halve this that means you will be getting a watch of supreme quality and you're going to be getting it for £55, A QUARTER OF WHERE WE ACTUALLY STARTED, that means 75% that we started with will have been taken away'.

The same watch in Rose Gold plate is available on bid.tv for £64.99, what an absolutely scandalous example of over inflating the actual value of a product.

Disgraceful, truly disgraceful. That was one of the worst sales I have ever seen on Sit Up and that's saying something.

Why not make an ASA complaint? They have obviously been told something by them as many presenters are being careful, and it's starting to seep into the media. The more ASA complints now will make the situation worse for them.

 

[Wirral70]

Why not make an ASA complaint? They have obviously been told something by them as many presenters are being careful, and it's starting to seep into the media. The more ASA complints now will make the situation worse for them.

I already have Benny.

In my opinion this was Sit Up at it's worst. Quite astonishing, even more so that a Ruling was made for an almost identical case just a month or so ago.