Theft from Mobile verses Theft from Fixed Line

wantmemoney

here's the scenario:

mobile and fixed line phones are covered by the exact same Criminal/Consumer Laws and Regulations....so

1/ if a burglar breaks into your house and orders a pizza using your fixed line phone.........are you liable under those Laws and Regulations to pay for that pizza?

2/ the same burglar breaks into your home and orders a premium sms (eg joke) using your mobile.......are you liable under those same Laws and Regulations to pay for that sms?

in whose interest does it serve for the public to believe they are?

Jon_01

It's up to you to retain control of your phone.

I guess it would depend on where you left the phone?

Wintermute

Surely you'd be liable to pay for it, but you'd have the ability to make a claim on your insurance? A lot of mobile phone insurance will cover unauthorised calls in the event your phone has been lost or stolen providing you get the phone and SIM barred within a specific time period.

A better example would be the burglar calling a premium number from your land line in which case I'm pretty sure you'd have to pay, but you could claim for that on your insurance along with anything they took.

wantmemoney

Jon_01 wrote:

It's up to you to retain control of your phone.

I guess it would depend on where you left the phone?

Wintermute wrote:

Surely you'd be liable to pay for it, but you'd have the ability to make a claim on your insurance? A lot of mobile phone insurance will cover unauthorised calls in the event your phone has been lost or stolen providing you get the phone and SIM barred within a specific time period.

A better example would be the burglar calling a premium number from your land line in which case I'm pretty sure you'd have to pay, but you could claim for that on your insurance along with anything they took.

can anybody give a link to anything that can back this up?

Techhead_2

wantmemoney wrote: »

can anybody give a link to anything that can back this up?

More importantly, can you give a link to back up your assertions in the opening post. (For example, I would say that mobile and fixed phones operate under different regulations)

gjchester

Is it theft in both cases? Surely it's just breach of contract in the first.

In the Pizza order the pizza needs paying by card or cash on delivery and if no payment is made no Pizza is given over, and no Pizza means no theft, breach of contract maybe but not theft.. I'm sure all Pizza chains have some procedure in place in case this happens, they must get prank orders form time to time.

Text message is the not quite the same, in that the order is placed by phone, but the service is likely to be rendered in the same way almost instantly, at that point the goods (ie the joke) have been supplied.

Key difference is the goods are supplied in once case but may not be in the other.

Your right in questioning would you be liable for an order that was placed for anything from your phone but not by you, however the onus be on you to prove it wasn't you who made the order. In that case would you shooting yourself in the foot by admitting you didn't have control of the device so it could be argued you were not taking reasonable precautions to secure the device.

I suspect the only place this could be resolved is in court, but hope no-one has to go through it to prove the point.

wantmemoney

Techhead wrote:

I would say that mobile and fixed phones operate under different regulations

firstly I'm referring to uk Laws and Regulations as they would apply to buying and selling over the phone so I believe you will find it makes little or no difference whether the transaction is carried out using a mobile or fixed line
ps I'm not referring to any technical aspect.

Jon_01 wrote:

It's up to you to retain control of your phone.

gjchester wrote:

In that case would you shooting yourself in the foot by admitting you didn't have control of the device so it could be argued you were not taking reasonable precautions to secure the device.

a phone is a device used to communicate, its not a credit card
a pen is a device used to communicate, its not a cheque book.

if somebody stole your pen would you be liable for all cheques signed with it because you lost 'control' of it?

Jon_01

wantmemoney wrote: »

a phone is a device used to communicate, its not a credit card
a pen is a device used to communicate, its not a cheque book.

if somebody stole your pen would you be liable for all cheques signed with it because you lost 'control' of it?

Pardon?

So, you're saying that if you left your phone somewhere and it was used and you hadn't told your network that you'd lost it you shouldn't be liable for the calls ?
Can you not see how that can be abused? You could run up a HUGE bill and they say that the phone had been stolen.

You have to take responsibility for your own property. The networks have never offered to police your acc for you.

wantmemoney

Jon_01 wrote:

So, you're saying that if you left your phone somewhere and it was used and you hadn't told your network that you'd lost it you shouldn't be liable for the calls ?

what on earth are you on about.....I'm talking about the way UK Laws
(consumer and criminal) are being applied to the public regarding comercial transaction over the phone.

Jon_01 wrote:

Can you not see how that can be abused? You could run up a HUGE bill and they say that the phone had been stolen.

what you are inferring is complete nonsense.
you are suggesting UK Laws that normally protect the general public shouldn't apply to phone owners because an individual criminal may attempt to defraud a phone company. :cool:

gjchester

Your right laws do equally apply to all, and by that token you can't pick and choose which ones you want to use and the phone companies use.

The rule that the user is liable until reported to the issing authority is standard, be it a phone, bank card, passport. Without this there would be no way to police fraud. You could run up a bill then simply say it wasnot you the device was stolen oterwise.

wantmemoney wrote: »

if somebody stole your pen would you be liable for all cheques signed with it because you lost 'control' of it?

No of course not, as you said that an instrument to communicate.

But if you left that pen with the cheque book and somethign with an example if your signiture on (say a bank card) then you would not be taking reasonable precautions to protect the cheque book and you would be liable no matter which pen was used.

Trying to get back to your original question, anything that arrives without you having ordered it is unsolicited goods, I hope we agree thats not in question.


However the question is how could you prove that it was not you and the burglar that placed the order, and how could you prove you had taken reasonable precautions to prevent this happening.

Wintermute

The vast majority of people will report their phone, credit card or whatever lost or stolen as soon as they realise, why should we have a system where they're forced to pay for those who don't take any responsibility themselves and expect everybody else to pay for their mistakes or laziness, the responsible people are already forced to pay for any debt the networks have to sell on or write off already. Any system where the customer is completely free from liability and doesn't have to take any responsibility is going to be heavily abused.

What would happen is John Smith would run up a £100 bill without realising it with his £50 phone on his £15 a month SIMO tariff, John Smith would phone up his network, kick up a fuss, ask what that bill's about and say he lost his phone over a month ago, they'd bar his phone, make him pay line rental and credit the rest, John Smith would go buy a new £50 phone and save £35 off his bill and everybody else would pay towards that £35.

While it's easy to say that it'll be a small minority of criminals who would attempt to defraud the networks like this you'd be amazed by the number of people who will tell a "small white lie" to get away without paying something, anybody who's ever worked in customer services for any of the networks will tell you that people will phone up to dispute a couple of pounds worth of calls and come up with excuses like "my phone must have been hacked" or "somebody obviously cloned my SIM" to get away without paying for a 10 minute call to an 0845 number or something, all the network needs to do is prove it came from the customers SIM card, if people could turn round and simply say the SIM was lost or stolen the networks would be writing off billions rather than millions a year and at the end of the day it'll be the customer who takes the hit, not the stock holders.