Supermarket chain Morrisons has been reprimanded by the UK’s advertising watchdog for “misleading” newspaper adverts and website offers for wine, after consumers were left disappointed when stocks quickly ran out. The Advertising Standards Authority upheld two complaints from members of the public about a national press advert from the UK’s fourth-largest grocer which offered any three of seven selected bottles of wine (which individually cost £5 each) for £10, along with a similar advertisement on its website, staying “Any 3 for £10”.

The small print at the end of the newspaper advert stated: “Available in most stores in England and Wales. Excludes Scotland. Subject to availability. While stocks last.” But the complainants, who had visited a number of stores but were unable to purchase any of the wine promoted, did not believe Morrisons had made a reasonable estimate of the likely response to the offer and challenged whether the adverts were misleading. One complainant also suggested the newspaper advert was misleading because it failed to include a cut-off date for the end of promotion.

The ASA has ordered Morrisons not to run the adverts again in their current form and said in its adjudication: “We told Morrisons to ensure that they made reasonable estimates of demand for similar promotions in future and that they did not misleadingly omit offer end dates from ads.”

A Morrisons spokesperson said: “We are disappointed with the ASA’s ruling, which we understand was based on only two complaints. We ran a market leading deal which resulted in unprecedented sales of over a million bottles of wine. Even though our advertising stated ‘subject to availability’ and ‘while stocks last’ we also continued to honour the deal long after allocated promotional stocks ran out – so as not to disappoint our customers.”