Bid TV and Price Drop TV are facing a probe by the Office of Fair Trading (Ofcom) after broadcasting a host of misinformation, including selling a watch made in China as Swiss Made.
Ofcom claims that the channels’ parent company Sit-Up Ltd has breached broadcasting regulations 27 times, according to a report in the Daily Mail.
Sit-Up has been accused of making false claims about the products it is selling and one of the product areas to be flagged up is timepieces.
On one occasion presenter on Bid TV sold an Ingersoll Limited Edition Chronograph as including a Swiss-made mechanism when in fact the watch was assembled in China. On another a Price Drop TV presenter claimed that a Christin Lars watch was "smothered in diamonds" when in reality it had eight small stones.
The Advertising Standards Agency has been behind bringing these indiscretions to light. While it has no power to act against Sit-Up, Ofcom does have the authority to take the shows off air.
The ASA said: "Since January 2012 there have been 27 ASA rulings against Sit-Up Ltd. We are concerned that that number of misleading ads creates an on-going and cumulative risk of financial detriment to consumers."
Sit-Up countered this by claiming that it had made "significant and continuous efforts to improve our compliance performance and procedures".
