Sky cards from XL Trading

1984ReturnsForReal_2

XLTradingUK wrote: »

OK .. seeing as how you will not do it youself.. I will do it for you
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/it&law/c10_main.htm

In regards to this forum and defamatory comments, we would under UK law - be entitled to compensation.

We can everyone on this thread that has contributed an non-factual and defamatory comment - and we can also chase MSE for your details to do so.

Seeing as you have confirmed that:

1: You are a business
2: You are a business with a VAT number
3: Your website displays neither the VAT No. or Trading Address.

You have confirmed your own site to be an

ILLEGAL WEBSITE ..

& that your "company"

IS BREAKING THE LAW


Perhaps you could sue yourself?.

XLTradingUK

1984ReturnsForReal wrote: »

Seeing as you have confirmed that:

1: You are a business
2: You are a business with a VAT number
3: Your website displays neither the VAT No. or Trading Address.

You have confirmed your own site to be an
ILLEGAL WEBSITE ..
& that your "company"
IS BREAKING THE LAW
Perhaps you could sue yourself?.

Again, I do not own the site - I cannot comment further on this
Our financial department deal with any financial issues but we do pay tax I am happy to say.

We can go round this all night - the simple fact is, your comments that we are doing something illegal is quite incorrect and defamatory.

james123

My gosh! I cant believe i've just spent the last hour reading this thread! can someone lock it so i dont have to follow the soap opera tomorrow aswell. Its compulsive reading

I even "logged in" to write this! which, apparently i havent done since february i do visit more often, honest Oh,, and can i get a congratulations by making my 158th post, 5 yrs on im getting there!

1984ReturnsForReal_2

XLTradingUK wrote: »

the simple fact is, your comments that we are doing something illegal is quite incorrect and defamatory.

No. Its correct & true.

http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/about/gbhtml/gbf3.shtml#c1q3

"3. Who does the Business Names Act apply to?


The Act applies to:

• an individual who trades under a name which is not his or her surname. It makes no difference whether the individual's first names or initials are added. So the Act would apply to Mr JQZ Singh if he traded as 'Singh Antiques' but not if he traded as 'Singh' or 'JQZ Singh'.
• a partnership which uses a specific business name and does not trade under the names of all the partners; and
• a company or Limited Liability Partnership, which trades under a name which is not its corporate name, for example, 'J Smith Limited' trading as 'Fish Antiques'. "

http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/companiesAct/implementations/jan2007.shtml

"Implementations
January 2007
20th January 2007:
EU Directive enabling Companies to make greater use of electronic communications. Full details are available on the BERR website"


http://www.berr.gov.uk/whatwedo/businesslaw/co-act-2006/

http://www.opsi.gov.uk/acts/acts2006/pdf/ukpga_20060046_en.pdf
The Companies Act 2006 which incorporates the EU directive & postdates The Business Names Act 1985. Fully in force. You need about page 740.

http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/bdotg/action/detail?type=RESOURCES&itemId=1073788946

"Displaying a name online
If you are an online business, you must display:

general information about your business - including business name, address, email address, VAT registration number (if applicable)

• details of any relevant professional body that you belong to or any authorisation scheme to which your service is subject"

:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:



ILLEGAL WEBSITE

& BREAKING THE LAW

Tribulation

smiler03 wrote: »

Do any of you notice that Martin proudly notifies all subscribers of loopholes all the time so that we may all benefit?

Yep he does. But they're a completely different thing to the type of thing XLtrading is doing.

I haven't yet seem Martin tell us how to avoid paying for something and imply that we're perfectly entitled to do this with no chance of any comeback from the authorities when the exact opposite is true.

On XLtradings web page they say

You can also order any box office movies/sports events/WWE or any other live event using this card without having to pay a penny.
This is a totally safe product and there is no comeback from using it.

I have a problem with that.

If I tell you you can go and steal a TV from Tesco's, and you get caught, do you think the court would take any notice if you said that my web site said it was OK to do this?

They may well have found a legal way to purchase and sell cards with a couple of months viewing time on them, but for these cards to allow box office purchases free of charge, I simply refuse to believe that is legit and until I recieve it in writing from Sky, I will continue refusing to believe it.

I have a letter typed up to send to Sky including a screenshot of XLtradings web page where all this info is shown and when I get a response, I will post it in this thread, or should this thread get closed (I have a offline copy of the entire thread for reference), I shall open another one to post Skys official response in..

Pieman1972

Perhaps I missed something - in the beginning of this thread XL was instuctung lawyers etc to shut threads down - but later in the thread as customer service mouthpiece can't issue refunds. And there is a management team and financial department to make all the decisions but operating as a sole trader.....

Just read this on the BBC to explain what a sole trader cos I (honestly) didn't know the differences...
http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/business/aims/partnershipsrev1.shtml

Anyway - read the thread - made an observation....sure it will get sorted one way or t'other...

Good luck one and all

Inactive

the_watcher87 wrote: »

Hi guys, just to let you all know I have now received my refund from these guys and I am very appreciative of the service that they have indeed provided this evening to me.

When I was chatting to these guys on MSN they did seem friendly and have to admit that even though I may have been a little short tempered via my emails that they were friendly at all times.

Many thanks XL Trading.

Strange how you have all of a sudden got a refund after waiting so long, at least this thread seems to have got you some satisfaction at long last.

I somehow doubt that you would have received one without this thread.:rolleyes:

redux

Right, as someone who once contributed to this thread, and might therefore be one of those being criticised for my attitude to the company, I'll say a few things.

Defamation law isn't as simple as XLTrading wants to make out, but there are three elements in a successful case. It must be shown that:
- the allegation was made
- the allegation was false
- damage was caused.

So, an assertion which is provably true is not libellous

So for instance if someone on here says a website is legally obliged to publish certain trading details, and if they are not there, then if that is indeed the law and if there is indeed non-compliance, that observation isn't libellous. And nor is quoting the company and asking for clariification of some remarks

Threatening the forum proprietor and multiple users with legal action to test this particular point or similar other ones might be a little over the top. Or even quite a lot.

But conversely that doesn't entitle people to say that everything the company does is therefore illegal.

My next observation is it didn't need the skills of our accountant friend to show us that this must be quite likely a VAT registered business. If the profit on a £4.50 item is only 30p, then for even one person to make a decent living the turnover would have to be well over the VAT threshold.

I'm not going to say I assume the Sky cards are illegal. The interesting remark is that they might last for 1 month or 3 or so, depending on some other rather variable-sounding condition I'm not studying.

I would imagine that in such fields there can be floating stocks of refurbished and temporary replacement items. This is true of for example mobile phones. A while ago I spoke to someone in the ebay shop where a main network clears some stock (I'd bought a phone which came with the wrong colour battery cover). They keep enough of a phone to cover warranty claims, and gradually as the phone gets phased out, or it's found to be less fault-prone than expected, this surplus gets sold, together with unsold stock of discontinued models, returns and whatever else. Maybe these Sky cards come from something like that, though the contractual terms of service on the cards seems odd.

The law has loopholes, and some are daft. For example it used to be legal to sell certain two-way radio equipment, but operation was illegal, so the adverts all had this nod-and-wink disclaimer on them. Later, the same applied to those gizmos for playing the mp3 player through the car radio, using a low-power transmitter. Eventually the authorities decided that enforcement was futile, and legalised them.

The firm's representative does seem to make some statements which imply a rather flexible attitude. In particular, the import of so-called grey stock from other markets, ahead of release date here, for games and perhaps also films, wouldn't have taxed our ability to guess, but referring to large stores being a bit naughty, but then doing so oneself, smacks of double standards.

The whole area of discussing that it's legal to copy something for one's own use, which the firm admits, except perhaps it isn't their own personal use, but not to resell it, seems to be in here somewhere. It seems fairly moot semantic point, whether this firm is copying and selling, or is somehow hiring out their service, their time, to copy something on behalf of their customer. Of course, if the customer already has a copy, and their DVD player/rewriter is broken, it probably is ok to get someone else to help. Does this firm ask people to send in the original to be copied? How do they manage that if the item isn't in the country yet? It's a fair and a good question, not defamatory of itself.

I could be making wrong guesses here, and maybe the person from the firm will explain more clearly, without making personal attacks, such as the old cliche of calling the board guide a monkey, and demanding to speak to the organ grinder, or drawing up more threats of legal action without foundation.

My personal opinion is I wouldn't touch this firm with a bargepole. I don't care to start to spend my time wondering about the legal niceties. For me, it's sufficient to note that the customer services of this firm seem to be one of the most insolent, argumentative and pretend-litigious I've noticed for a long time. The threats to try to ask for forum members' identities, in order to then harass them, really aren't clever. And their customer magically joining here and getting a refund within minutes, at a time outside normal office hours, is one of the most laughable coincidences, even if absolutely genuine.

And as well as that, they completely ignored my question.

DAYMARE wrote: »

- what a user does with their card, is up to them.
[...]

Our cards are not there for people to steal from Sky - nor would we wish for them to be used in this manner.

You do not have to pay £30per month to Sky, there are other alternatives.

redux wrote: »

So if your cards are legal, not encouraging people to steal from Sky, and only to be used as backup copies ...

perhaps, as this is a moneysaving forum, you might explain how people can avoid paying Sky £30, and what those alternatives are?

that should be well within both the law, and the rules of this forum, as you wouldn't be promoting using your own product

Hypothetically, this was a non-factual post, and therefore perhaps one of those the firm's representative is complaining about.

I look forward to clarification.

But not holding my breath

JasonLVC

So to summarise for everyone :-

1. XL has threatened the website for defamation. Now he has openly posted here that he cannot defend the accusations being made as he does not work for the company he represents. Although at the start he made it look like he was a rep and happily quoted rules, laws and even gave us links to wikipedia.

2. He confirms they are 'registered' for tax which means they MUST be a company and therefore their website IS illegal and also breaking EU website and distance selling regulations - having put this in a post it confirms that the company is operating illegally (ie, XL has also confirmed the website is illegal now in a previous post and accepted they need to get their website updated to reflect the details) and so defamation goes out the window as they have not been defamed, rather, they now accept fault. If they are also registered for VAT they are also breaking the law and need to ensure the VAT numer is showing.

3. He has confirmed that their own T&C's contradict themselves, sort of ultra vires in law speak, but then says that is another department....Again, hardly defamation when he doesn't know whether it is wrong/right or not.

4. He says that he is receiving loads more business as a result of this thread, that may be true.....but his keeness to be smug will now make it difficult, near impossible to claim libel damages when there has been no material loss and indeed, a gain. For the resident 'expert' in libel law, XL seems to be making it harder for himself to bring a case.

Indeed, I've only been engaging him in idle chat about T&C, etc for the last few days simply so that he further degrades any potential case by provoking additional debate on the forums which he has willingly done for me thus making a libel action a non-starter;)

In that regard, having revealed XL knows little about libel or company law, I think my work here is done.

JasonLVC

XLTradingUK wrote: »

OK .. seeing as how you will not do it youself.. I will do it for you
http://www.law.ed.ac.uk/it&law/c10_main.htm

Err, that is not the law.

This is a rambling article written by someone who is referecning the Scottish law courts. if you are based in London, then Scottish law will not be applicable to you....even if you are Scottish.

There is no reference in that document AT ALL that is actually 'the law' and appears to be some sort of discussion documednt for a unviersity law course. Still, a slightly better resource than wiki;).