aspen woolf investments

elona

There was an interesting post about "they who should not be named" on property hub. Customer services seemingly got very hostile when asked some pertinent questions by a potential investor.

jimjames

Can I suggest if anyone is posting a reply that they might want to consider using the words aspen Woolf with other variations of investment/opportunity/student pods/review in the title of the post.

Aspen Woolf is unregulated so any guarantees they offer have no legal backup. If they stop trading then the guarantee stops with them and any investor in their student pods would lose their money.

http://mistoriagroup.com/news/student-pods-fail-deliver-sales-pitch/

To quote:

"Another concern is the ‘rental guarantee’ offered by developers. This can often be an overstatement. The guaranteed rents are attractive to investors, but often they fail to materialise. I believe that investors are actually subsidising the guaranteed rent by paying an inflated price for the unit they secure"

Malthusian

Mistoria_Group wrote:

"I believe that investors are actually subsidising the guaranteed rent by paying an inflated price for the unit they secure"

There's a word for this kind of investment opportunity where the income is funded by investors' subscriptions and not by the underlying asset. I think it starts with a P and ends with an I. Panini? Pellegrini? Perhaps I should stop before Aspen Woolf's lawyers get agitated.

What is it with the word "pod" and "unregulated investments"? Student pods, storage pods, magic bean pods. Is it because "pod" is nearly "dope" spelt backwards? (A bit tenuous, but who's counting.)

atush

ggb1979 wrote: »

I advised mse I do not give permission to delete my post and also will not provide my name and address for them to give to aspen woolf

I've been told that unless I provide my personal details by 6th July that my original post will be deleted.

What does everyone think about this?

What does that make people think about aspen woolf?

Clearly aspen woolf read the forum, perhaps they could use this thread to explain to mse users and potential investors why they want want my post removed and why their products make such great investments. Then we can have an open debate instead of them hiding in the shadows.

I find it out of order MSE is going to remove your post w/o justification.

bowlhead99

ggb1979 wrote: »

I advised mse I do not give permission to delete my post and also will not provide my name and address for them to give to aspen woolf

I've been told that unless I provide my personal details by 6th July that my original post will be deleted.

What does everyone think about this?

I think it is quite reasonable for MSE to ask you for your personal details, as their standard defence against an accusation of defamation is that it was not them that posted the statement, but you, using the account that they provided to you. That defence is defeated if they cannot actually identify the person who posted the statement (by "identify", give the claimant sufficient information to bring proceedings against the person; name and address should be sufficient).

What does that make people think about aspen woolf?

To me, the fact that they complained about a published statement that they felt to be defamatory, does not make them bad guys or make me think that they would be an unreliable business to deal with. If you have ever tried to run a business, you'll know it can be time-consuming and expensive to protect your legitimate business interests from all manner of threats and risks.

Many businesses would fail if there were no "laws of the land" to ensure they were not illegitimately derailed.

Clearly aspen woolf read the forum, perhaps they could use this thread to explain to mse users and potential investors why they want want my post removed and why their products make such great investments. Then we can have an open debate instead of them hiding in the shadows.

I didn't see what you posted prior to your editing your post. Presumably it was something that appeared defamatory, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to supply MSE with a complaint as to why they felt your statement was defamatory.

Now you have edited the post, despite the fact that MSE told you not to, and are now using the post to state that an investment with them is "highly unlikely to deliver the claimed returns". I presume you have not fully assessed their business plan and track record and don't have any special inside knowledge which makes you able to make that statement as if it were fact, though that comment is presumably not the subject of their original complaint, as it's a later edit

I know this is a consumer champion website and as such it can be unpopular to say anything that is perceived to be in support of a business. I have no affiliation with, or affinity for, this company and agree that unregulated investments are not suitable for the average investor. However, you suggest they join you on this thread for an open debate?

Aside from the restrictions on commercial use of these forums - I know that if it were my business, I would not want to give up the standard recourse to court action in favour of having an internet argument with an anonymous stranger who hides behind a username while his pals cheer him on, whooping and hollering like a Jerry Springer audience until they decide who "won".

You think that you should be able to say whatever you like about a business with impunity, and then if they don't like it they can engage in a battle of wits with you on your "home forum", simultaneously trying to market all of their products as great investments, while you never have to be able to support your allegedly libellous statements in court to consider their merits in the context of what the laws are supposed to protect. I'm not altogether in agreement with that.

Consider for example that you were a small bakery, and I posted some libellous statement on a website to the effect that your muffins were flavoured with a secret ingredient: cat poop. You would not like that.

"But why should I take it down, or tell you who I am so you can require me to defend my statement in court?" I might say; "if you don't like it, why not register as a user on this site and debate with me in public what ingredients you use, and try to convince my readership that your crapcakes are healthy?!"

Of course as a business owner you wouldn't want to have a run-in with some fool on a website posting unsubstantiated statements and inviting you to join the debate if you didn't like them. You would very swiftly acknowledge that not all publicity is good publicity. As such, as a business owner you would much prefer to avoid debate and have my initial defamatory statement deleted ; or get my details so a lawyer or a court could bring an action to attempt to get restitution for the reputational harm caused.

And no, if I report that the muffins contain cat poop and then later edit the text to say "actually I was just thinking that they taste like they might be flavoured with cat poop, as I am very familiar with that taste and that's my opinion", it does not necessarily reverse the reputational harm that was initially caused by my reckless article.

Apologies for lack of brevity but you did ask what everyone thinks of MSE and Aspen Woolf's demands. Long story short I think it is perfectly reasonable for MSE to ask for your details or remove your post which they are kindly hosting for you; and I don't think any less of AW for not coming on for a Q&A. I still wouldn't invest, but that's a different question.

:A

le_loup

If it's Aspen Woolf themselves, is that a real guarantee?

Have they taken out a policy with a large insurer which give recourse to investors should, heaven forbid, a bankruptcy occurs? Or are they in a trade body which covers such an event like APTA would for a holiday company?

I ask merely for information,

Archi_Bald

bowlhead99 wrote: »

I think it is quite reasonable for MSE to ask you for your personal details, as their standard defence against an accusation of defamation is that it was not them that posted the statement, but you, using the account that they provided to you. That defence is defeated if they cannot actually identify the person who posted the statement (by "identify", give the claimant sufficient information to bring proceedings against the person; name and address should be sufficient).

I don't think this is what the MSE Privacy Policy says.

Mistermeaner

My original post is still present, I put below it the edit.

For clarity the original post merely said "don't touch with a barge pole"

That was it, no more, no less.

Can't believe I'm the only one getting grief as others said similar.

jimjames

ggb1979 wrote: »

My original post is still present, I put below it the edit.

For clarity the original post merely said "don't touch with a barge pole"

That was it, no more, no less.

Can't believe I'm the only one getting grief as others said similar.

Maybe if it said:


"I wouldn't touch it with a bargepole" then there may be less issue as it's then your opinion rather than advising others what to do.

bowlhead99

Archi_Bald wrote: »

I don't think this is what the MSE Privacy Policy says.

As you know (because you posted a link to it), the privacy policy allows the personal information obtained from the forum, including email address and IP address, to be disclosed to third parties in various circumstances. These include, among others,

If necessary in connection with legal proceedings or potential legal proceedings; and/or

If required or permitted to do so by law

So, they seem to be quite within their rights to give out the personal information they collected, as defined in the privacy policy, to a third party in these circumstances - circumstances presumably being that the third party is complaining about their rights, under the law, to not be defamed, for which recourse includes legal proceedings and the web host's standard defence includes confirming the name and address of the transgressor.

As mentioned, supplying the name and address of the poster allows them to say they have properly identified the poster to the complainant, and gets them of the hook for hosting the allegedly improper statement if it was not done intentionally on their part.

However, name and address is not actually data that they already collected from the poster's forum activities anyway. As Masonic implied, if they ask the user to supply that information specifically so that it can be passed to the third party, that is not misuse of data that they have collected; it is simply using the data for the explicit reason for which it was collected. As such, the user would not have an expectation that the information would be kept confidential from the third party; quite the opposite. So, it would not need to be lumped in with the policies for general data that they scrape on a day to day basis.

In this case, the poster does not want MSE to supply his identifying information to the third party; he would rather deflect blame ("can't believe I am the only one getting grief") and leave MSE in a position where they cannot identify the person who has made the allegedly defamatory statement and could be accused of being complicit in its posting.

MSE are a business valued at millions of pounds and presumably do not want to fall foul of the law because of some obstinate user who will not identify himself and yet thinks he can simply "not give permission to delete my post". As such, it is perfectly reasonable for them to simply remove the post from their website - despite the fact that the poster does not give them "permission" to remove from public display, the text that he typed into a form on their website.

I'm sure the OP and some others feel they should have some fun with Aspen and keep posting about them to increase the visibility on Google of the company and negative sentiment towards it, as some kind of revenge for daring to request that they not be defamed. To me that sounds kinda childish, but each to their own.