Jersey lawyer is to take ASOS fight to Trading Standards

Thursday 03 June 2021

A Jersey lawyer is taking his fight with ASOS to UK Trading Standards, for what he believes to be an "outrageous" lack of transparency in charging VAT-equivalent prices to islanders.

Advocate Olaf Blakeley is calling out the clothes retailer, after he and hundreds of other islanders argued they were charged a VAT-equivalent price on their orders, despite the company's website saying they charged no VAT to the Channel Islands.

Pictured: Advocate Blakeley said he was charged the equivalent of VAT when ordering from ASOS, despite a message on their site saying the company did not charge VAT to the Channel Islands.

ASOS' website currently states that "exports from the UK to the Channel Islands are zero rated, so you won't have to pay any VAT charges for your order."

However, when ordering clothes earlier this year, Advocate Blakeley believed he was being charged a price which was the equivalent of paying VAT.

Writing in Express in March, he said that when he brought his concerns to ASOS' attention, he was told that "they accounted 0% for VAT on the order, giving me the impression what they were saying was they were charging 20% more but just pocketing that, and not accounting for it to HMRC. Legally, they would be right."

He added: "If such was the shenanigans, you are not being charged VAT you are just being charged the same price as if you were paying VAT. ASOS just keeps it all because it is not legally required to account to HMRC."

After being "inundated" with e-mails from Channel Islanders who had similar experiences with the company, Advocate Blakeley went on to present ASOS with a letter, outlining potential legal action if not responded to and addressed.

In the letter, he said the retailer "is dragging well behind" companies like Very, Amazon, John Lewis, Dell, Axminster Tools who he said are "completely transparent" either in deducting an amount equal to VAT, not adding additional costs equivalent to VAT, or reimbursing the amount charged to VAT.

Furthermore, he later said he was considering reporting them to the UK's Trading Standards if there was no resolution, as well as potentially going to the wider UK media.

Since then, Advocate Blakely has told Express that in their latest response to his letter, ASOS said "they were not going to change any of their pricing structures because they wanted to have pricing that was consistent, regardless of the country of which the person was shopping.

"They say the VAT position doesn’t have any impact on their prices, so the customers in the Channel Islands see the same price as any customer would - even though with other customers, an element of that [price] is VAT."

Pictured: ASOS tells customers that VAT will be charged at 0%.

He added: "They said they consider the matter closed, and I have written back to them and said I consider it far from closed."

He explained that he would not mind the charges if he believed the company were upfront, but he felt the "disingenuous and misleading" guidance on the website led people to believe the VAT equivalent cost would be removed from their charge, rather than kept on the cost.

He illustrated how he felt they could be more transparent by suggesting their Customer Care page on their website change to reflect this, with words akin to: "we will not be accounting to the taxman for any VAT, however the price will not be altering for you."

On this note, he said ASOS had told him "they would be looking at making sure... that it’s made clear to people that there’s a consistent pricing structure," - however, he pointed out that their website and the relevant details have still not changed.

Because of this lack of change, he said he "will raise it with Trading Standards and see what they have to say."