Advertising Standards Agency - not really keen on complaints

The Advertising Standards Authority should encourage whistleblowing against dishonest advertising. Every time a consumer finds that an advert has misled them, they are going to pay less attention to similar ads - and that will hit honest advertisers as much as it will hit the cheats.

But try complaining to Advertising Standards and you find:

• Their online form is designed by a pedant or an idiot. Tell them that you are complaining about Direct Mail, and it demands that you tell them where you saw it. In the kitchen? Living Room? On the train opening my mail just as I went through Haywards Heath? What does it matter? This is a stupid question to ask about Direct Mail, and the person who speicified that the webform should demand an answer for such a meaningless combineation needs a bit of re-education.
  
• You are required to send them a copy of Direct Mail materials (sensible enough) - but if you choose to scan the document (which will be the most convenient option for many complainants), the system has a fixed limit of three documents. The direct mail item I scanned was larger than A4, and double-sided. That makes four scan documents. Not allowed
• If you try sending a large document (I resorted to zipping my four documents into a single file), their system times out and you lose all the information you have typed in. (This happened twice, with Firefox and with Opera browsers).
• There is a "send us the item by post" option, but it is an ordinary mailing address - which adds the hurdle of getting the item into the post, and finding a stamp. If they had the wit (or generosity) to offer a Freepost address, fewer people would decide not to bother, or not get round to sending the offending item.

So, a pretty pathetic experience. Is the ASA a bit of a fig-leaf?