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In breach of Office of Fair Trading Guidelines?
angelgiga
Member Posts: 63 Arc User
After reading this through again, although I am already familiar with the documentation, I am pretty certain that Cryptic/PWE are in breach of the Treating Customer's Fairly Legislation that was passed in the UK 26th May 2008.
As such it could be argued that Cryptic/PWE are acting outwith the 'good faith' agreement they have entered into with their customers.
Quote from the document:
'The new regulations ban traders in all sectors from using unfair
commercial practices towards consumers. They set out broad
rules outlining when commercial practices are unfair. These fall
into four main categories:
? A general ban on conduct below a level which may be
expected towards consumers (honest market practice/good
faith). This is intended to act as a ?safety net? protection
for all consumers.
? Misleading practices, like false or deceptive messages,
or leaving out important information.'
The full document is available here to read and is from the Basic Guide for Businesses.
http://www.oft.gov.uk/business-advice/treating-customers-fairly/protection
The reason that I am personally concerned is the entire lack of information until after it was done. It is only within a few hours of this post that anything was ever stated to the community. Therefore a consumer could be correct and expected to believe that, before any such announcement was made, the website had been taken over fraudulently and that consumer details could have been compromised such as card details, name and address etc. Now obviously this did not happen, but consumers could have been forgiven if they thought this was so. Therefore, as far as the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is concerned they are in breach of UK legislation.
I am unsure if that binds them as they are not a UK based company but surely they have to follow the laws of any country in which they trade?
As such it could be argued that Cryptic/PWE are acting outwith the 'good faith' agreement they have entered into with their customers.
Quote from the document:
'The new regulations ban traders in all sectors from using unfair
commercial practices towards consumers. They set out broad
rules outlining when commercial practices are unfair. These fall
into four main categories:
? A general ban on conduct below a level which may be
expected towards consumers (honest market practice/good
faith). This is intended to act as a ?safety net? protection
for all consumers.
? Misleading practices, like false or deceptive messages,
or leaving out important information.'
The full document is available here to read and is from the Basic Guide for Businesses.
http://www.oft.gov.uk/business-advice/treating-customers-fairly/protection
The reason that I am personally concerned is the entire lack of information until after it was done. It is only within a few hours of this post that anything was ever stated to the community. Therefore a consumer could be correct and expected to believe that, before any such announcement was made, the website had been taken over fraudulently and that consumer details could have been compromised such as card details, name and address etc. Now obviously this did not happen, but consumers could have been forgiven if they thought this was so. Therefore, as far as the Office of Fair Trading (OFT) is concerned they are in breach of UK legislation.
I am unsure if that binds them as they are not a UK based company but surely they have to follow the laws of any country in which they trade?
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by angelgiga on
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Comments
You can still log into the game if you do not switch over to a PWE account from a Cryptic account and still buy C-points as normal with that account. It is only if YOU choose to switch that you then are able to post on forums and purchase in game currency as zen rather than c-points.
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
Proud Leader of the Massive Chaos Group
Proud Listener of Subspace-Radio.net The Voice of Star Trek Online.
[SIGPIC]http://massivechaos.enjin.com/[/SIGPIC]
It is not a part of the service paid for by subscribers to star Trek Online especially since if it were then Free players would have no access to it at all.
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
The only noticeable difference is I select Perfect World instead of Cryptic when I log in.
___________________________
In game: Commadore_Bob; Joined Jul 2009; That post count + 20,000
This may be the case right now but before all these changes we weren't allowed to post in the forums unless we bought cpoints with real money and used them in game. Sure you could read them but in my opinion yes you had to pay to use the forums.
_____________________________________________________________
The main people being hurt by this is PWE, since if no one can buy anything from the c-store, they are not making any money.
The c-store is their bread and butter.
Quite honestly I see some kind of token 'we're sorry' event in the near future to placate people.
500 years in the future and we still look like schmucks when getting our ID photos taken...
all depends where the forum is hosted
That is a moderation issue to try to keep the forums free of spam and other anti-social behavior. I doubt any reasonable person would conclude anyone paying anything to play STO or to buy anything in game does so because they get to post on a forum.
_____________________________________________________________
Just so you know in the faq of this newly change not "maintainence" that happened yesterday, there had been no annoucement of the new pwe login system and in a few weeks or months you have no choice but to make a pwe account to access STO.
Someone please pursue this serious matter! Clearly PWE has no right to do what it wants with it's private intellectual property without the express permission of a bunch of trekkie roleplayers on the internet.
I mean you agreed to a terms of service (a contract) that says they can pretty much do whatever they want, but I'm sure any judge will simply throw that out and rule that you have been damaged by changes to a forum provided as a service by the owners of the intellectual property you make use of under the aformentioned terms of service. I'm sure that the UK judicial system will immediately put resources to this matter that would otherwise be squandered investigating murders and robberies to sort out PWE.
I only have two requests:
1. Show up in court dressed as a Klingon or Federation officer. Demand that judge address you as "Captain".
2. Film the proceedings and put it on Youtube. I know Daniel Tosh will pay a fortune for it. Probably enough for you to make bail after the contempt citation.
firstly the OFT have the rights to inpose fines on companies if it is shown that they have mislead customers, whether in the UK/US or any other country agreeing to copy right rules..
or are you saying PWE have the right to dictate..?
the question is what they have done..?
1. is it legal and lawful?
2. has any contract been breached?
3. can it be proved that PWE has defrauded customers?
using the word fraud and accusing anyone of any thing, needs to be backed up in LAW as the burden of proof is with the accuser..
hence 'due process'
PWE is innocent of all allegations till proven wrong..
sorry that's the Law
but if a 1000 brits were to complain to the OFT, they would then have to investigate..
http://www.perfectworld.com/about/terms
It is, however, a huge question of Ethical Conduct, Communication, and straight forth poor high level management.
Cryptic is a small company with a huge hit, and you can see they struggle with it each day. Yes, their learning affects most of us in how they do things, they do the wrong thing and learn, and they also do the right things too team. Lets give some credit too where it is due.
It is human nature to focus only on the bad, I am as guilty of that as any.
My only beef is the questions I posed in the original thread with Branflakers, a management overview should of asked those questions before the change was allowed to occur. The fact it was not, shows the poor management of the forums, which history shows too of the control factor and communication of poor execution. It is any management responsibility to make sure the team as a whole is on the same page before executing anything sweeping. Not Bran's fault, he deserves and award for being patient enough to deal with us.
My concern is not due to monetary transactions, service interruptions or most of the above.
My concern is with treating customer's fairly.
The use of the service provided by Cryptic/PWE is Star Trek Online.
We expect these companies to treat us fairly in our dealings with them regardless if we are paying for this service or not.
By not notifying customers that they are making a change, or what change they are making is not treating that customer fairly. It is not respecting them as a user of the service and as such states to that customer that their views are of little value.
What the documentation states is that this applies to you regardless if you are a bakery shop declining to tell people you have closed down or moved premises (however crude this notification may be), a bank not telling customer's that they have changed the terms and conditions for an account, a debt collection agency mis-representing itself or harassing a debtor, or in this case declining to advise customer's of a major and important change to the way in which their account works to be able to use the forum.
PWE/Cryptic declined to treat it's users fairly by:
1) Not telling them a change was happening
2) Not advising customers that this change would necessitate a change to the way you log in to both the paid service (STO) and it's forums.
3) Not advising customers that a change to their personal information would be required (i.e. password and username).
The fraud comment was in regards to the idea that because no notification was given, a customer could realistically believe that their details had been compromised as it was not only the forum details that changed, but the details that were required to access their account which may or may not include their credit/debit card details, home address and phone number. I am not saying that this IS fraud. What i am saying is that a customer could be concerned that it could be confused as fraud as no notification was given.