The Advertising Standards Authority has rapped a holiday firm for promoting a price on Teletext which was not available.
Imperial Travel advertised an all-inclusive late deal to Fuerteventura for £283 last October.
A consumer complained that they had been unable to book the holiday.
The ASA upheld the complaint and ruled that the advert should not appear again.
“We told Imperial Travel to ensure that they held documentary evidence to substantiate that their holidays were available at the advertised prices,” the ASA said.
In its ruling the authority said: “We understood that prices could fluctuate over a short period of time, and that, although advertisers were required to refresh content on the Teletext website at least every two hours, there could be occasions on which an advertised price was no longer available to consumers.
“We were therefore concerned that the ad did not make clear that there could be limitations to the availability of the offer. We were also concerned that in this instance the advertised holiday was not available at the advertised price on two consecutive occasions.
“Furthermore, we noted we had not seen any documentary evidence to demonstrate that the holiday had ever been available at the advertised price.
“We concluded the advertised price had not been substantiated, and the ad was therefore misleading.”
Imperial Travel said its offers on Teletext were live and so should have been available.
The company added that sometimes customers asked for changes to the offered holiday, for example because flights were indirect or at inconvenient times, and that could affect the price.
Teletext said it did not believe the ad to have been misleading because it would have been based on prices available at the time the offer was uploaded to its website.