foneforum trading address

[davidc]

Good day.

Dear Mobaholic or as you are also liked to be addressed "Dave". Please be aware you are breaking the law by operating this web site without publishing your trading address and company number. I have orders my solicitors to check the matter and raise an official compliant with trading standards.

Companies in the UK must include certain regulatory information on their websites and in their email footers before 1st January 2007 or they will breach the Companies Act and risk a fine.

from this page : http://www.out-law.com/page-7594

Every company should list its company registration number, place of registration and registered office address on its website as a result of an update to the legislation of 1985. The information, which must be in legible characters, should also appear on order forms and in emails. Such information is already required on 'business letters' but the duty is being extended to websites, order forms and electronic documents.

The change is being made by a Statutory Instrument that is expected to be passed on Thursday to implement a European law, the First Company Law Amendment Directive, into UK law. According to a Department of Trade and Industry spokesperson, the law will take effect on 1st January, one day later than the Directive requires. (The Companies (Registrar, Languages and Trading Disclosures) Regulations 2006 has now been passed.)

The information is likely to appear in the footer of every email sent from a company, to avoid having to decide whether each email amounts to a 'business letter' or not. Many companies do this already because the term 'business letters' was thought likely to include emails even without this new clarification.

For websites, contrary to the fears of some, the specified information does not need to appear on every page. Again, many websites will already list the required information, perhaps on their 'About us' or 'Legal info' pages.

The E-commerce Regulations, passed in 2002, require that certain information is listed on a website, including, "where the service provider is registered in a trade or similar register available to the public, details of the register in which the service provider is entered and his registration number, or equivalent means of identification in that register".

That has been understood as including the company registration number and place of registration. The E-commerce Regulations also required a note of "the geographic address at which the service provider is established" – which many have taken to mean the registered office address.

However, the wording in the E-commerce Regulations is ambiguous compared to the new provisions. Further, many organisations' sites currently omit the information, perhaps making the mistake of thinking that the E-commerce Regulations do not apply to websites that do not sell online (in fact they apply to almost all websites).

[rashmi_sweet23]

"I have orders my solicitors to check the matter and raise an official compliant with trading standards."

you have orders.. you have solicitors... who are you by the way, a website watchdog ?...

[mobaholic]

Thank you davidc for expressing your concerns.

I have no intention of being goaded by you into any discussion about Dave's identity, as I should be quite remiss to do so.
He has the same right to expect me to guard his personal information as any member here does, yourself included.
I am fully happy with the work that he is doing for the forum, and I shall say nothing else on the subject.
His identity does not relate in any way to the issues you have raised in any case.

I cannot comment personally about anything that you have asked, as I had nothing to do with the registration of the domain name, or with the setting up of the website.
I was simply told when it was ready for me to start familiarising myself with its features.
I am responsible for preparing the forum for its launch, including its initial settings and board content, but nothing more.

I shall draw your concerns to Mikael's attention, and he will no doubt make his own reply when he is ready to do so.

[davidc]

So which one do you prefer to be addressed as ? Dave or MH ?

it doesn't matter if you didn't setup the website or the domain.

You are the admin here and this site is breaking the UK law in the current structure.

[nixforfun]

Hi David

I think you should let people know who you are...what is the authority you represent?

if you are an authority with the UK law- u have complete rights to say what you have said...but I thought it should have been done as a PM to the admin. Since you have chosen to use the public route, Please mention your authority.

if you are a member of the site who wants to help the owner comply with the laws in good faith, I think Mikael and MH need to thank you for warning them here.

If you are neither of the 2 categories...........

Regards
Nik

[Dave]

So which one do you prefer to be addressed as ? Dave or MH ?

it doesn't matter if you didn't setup the website or the domain.

You are the admin here and this site is breaking the UK law in the current structure.

I believe your first question to be entirely facetious, but the simple answer is that you write to Dave when contacting me, or I believe that mobaholic is unconcerned with the question of whether you write his name in full or shorten it to mh.

Your are fully entitled to express your opinion, but I suspect that there is no one here who agrees with you.

If you are concerned with fact and the law, I suggest that you rephrase your erroneous statement to refer to mobaholic being one of the admins here, not "the admin" as you asserted.

As far as I can see, mobaholic has already answered your concerns as best as he is able.
If you are impatient for Mikael's reply to you, why don't you send him a PM, rather than repeating your views in this thread?

I do not have any input into admin discussions myself, but I should like to ask you why you have come here when, if your concerns are genuine, there would appear to be much bigger fish in the sea to go after?

I have just taken a look at the telecomforum site, and I can see no trading address specified on it.
The forum itself does not even have a link to the old niftylist About page, but if you navigate there, you will see that, again, there is no trading address specified.

Who are we ?
After receiving more than 300 pounds bill from BT for the first month of international calls, I started searching for lower cost alternatives. I discovered the dialthrough companies, which cut prices by sometimes over 90% on BT list prices. I thought it might be a good idea to have a database of access numbers and prices so everyone can easily check for the best prices.

Oron@niftylist.co.uk

2004 - London

If you have such pretensions to become a barrock room lawyer, how come you are not giving the admin there the benefit of your opinions?
They ARE trading - selling mobile contracts, having sponsored adverts, and operating their own sponsored telephone services including a 07744 service, a Top Up one, and a 0870 number.
Perhaps it has escaped your notice that there is no such trading on this site, and your lawyers, whom you say "you have orders", are quite likely, I suggest, to tell you that the free exchange of information about telephone services does not constitute trade under the legislation involved.

These views are my own, and I have not referred to either admin before making them.

[Mikael]

So which one do you prefer to be addressed as ? Dave or MH ?

it doesn't matter if you didn't setup the website or the domain.

You are the admin here and this site is breaking the UK law in the current structure.

davidc,

I'm not quite sure what the purpose of your posts are, but whatever, they are complete nonsense. This website hosting a discussion forum about telephone services is not breaking any laws whatsoever. As it is not operated or run by a company, it is not possible or necessary to comply with the Companies Act.

As Dave has already mentioned, Foneforum is not selling or entering into any business transactions. It is simply a place for people with an interest in phone service to discuss them. As you will have seen, the domain for this forum is registered in my name in my personal capacity. The website is in no way a business.

I hope this clarifies the situation, and in future you post constructively without making assertions that you obviously have no basis for making.

Mikael