I shall assume the Distance Selling rules are for dealings "as consumer" only, otherwise I would have suggested that the onus is actually on the supplier to prove that they did enclose 50. Actaully, come to think of it, it must be this way, as you cannot prove that something does not exist.

What's the problem? You asked them for the information held at all 3 CRAs, and you got it. There would only be an issue if the information they gave you didn't match that which was on file. Just because you believe something is on file, doesn't necessarily mean it is on file, let alone on file with all 3 CRAs.

Luxembourg is in the EU (but not in France), and thus must have strong data protection rules. "International credit records" are fictional, and if they did exist they would be illegal. Of course, UK companies tend not to check ex-UK record anyway, so, so no worry of permanent damage. It will have implications for taking legal action, because I imagine you would need to secure judgment in the UK and then have the judgment endorsed in Luxembourg before you can enforce it.

Check your contract for a "force majeure" clause, which will say something along the lines that the parties to the contract will not be liable for the result of any occurrences beyond their direct control - if you are being forced out of your house, you are not liable for the remainder of the contract.

I'm not aware of any rules we have that say that we are only allowed to help people out with the problems explicitly posted to the forum. I imagine lots of our most useful information would not be known otherwise. The OP has had about as much help as we can give - go to the police and take it from there, since there is nothing we, PayPal or eBay can do. Perhaps I will. They'll likely tell me it's not a problem, since if your copy of that book you ordered gets lost in the post, they've got a few thousand more left in stock that they can send out. They end up £10 out of pocket, they feel that with their millions in profit every year it's a reasonable price to pay to retain a customer. But then this isn't the High-Volume Online Retailer Action Group. For those of our members who aren't multimillion multinationals, the ones for whom that £50 package going missing will make a considerable difference, who won't be able to replace lost items at their own cost, often mistakenly believing that because their buyer has chosen standard first class post that it's their own fault if anything goes wrong, this will be a major problem. the last thing they need to see is someone giving the impression that it's all well and good to send by standard postal service. Like many people, I don't accept PayPal (I try and avoid using it to pay where I can) because I do not trust their policies. Either way, that is not my problem. In such a case, one of three things happens: it is delivered, and I get proof of delivery to defend anything that comes my way; it is not delivered, and comes back to me, and I have proof of non-delivery so can find out why and arrange redelivery; or it gets lost and I recover the cost from RM and get the refund cheque out. In all three cases, I will have lived up to the requirements and expectations of the law, and covered all bases in this respect - something I could not have done with a non-trackable delivery. With a trackable delivery, you have confirmation both that the address exists and that someone was there to take delivery. For small-value packages, the compensation provided by recorded (100x, not 10x, the price of a first-class stamp - £34 ATM) will do nicely, and costs about £1 total. Not a huge amount of money. I think this statement is utter nonsense. Standard SD is up to £500, with the option of covering it up to £1000 or £2500. £4.85 is not a lot of money on an £800 package. ... and frequently they make the decision under the mistaken impression that if the buyer chooses non-trackable it's no longer their problem. Your attitude is not helping - you may have taken adequate precautions, but do not assume that everyone else has. That would be because taken in isolation (as it will be by most), it is.

HTTP 502 generally means the problem is not with the target site but with your proxy settings (at many ISPs this is beyond your control). Anyway, the conditions in summary (my annotation in red) are: I don't think there's anything there that really runs contrary to our goals. The legalese is here. The notice on the wiki main page says that all information belongs to you (specifically RTR), and that nobody may modify or redistribute it, when those are the very two things that are done whenever anyone edits a wiki page. By leaving it there, you also potentially jeopardise your ability to deal with genuine infringement (e.g. the dreaded Ambulance Chasers). The CC licences work around this by making the collaboration process a non-issue. Remember that on the forums, posts are edited primarily for legal protection, and only by the original author and the moderators. Not trying to be deliberately awkward, but it's the usual - very powerful organizations are operating unlawfully, so it is of the utmost importance that everything (and I mean everything) is above board. We must be seen to be whiter than white, squeaky clean, and all that jazz. All these words aside, as soon as this is sorted out, I'd be happy to help out. I know my way around a wiki (I've got around three private ones I use for personal purposes), and know a lot about MediaWiki in particular.

The way that the Wiki software works is that editing a page and then committing the change is modifying the previous version, and then publishing that modified version. I strongly suggest you look at ready-made options. On the matter of copyright, I trust the opinions of the Creative Commons lawyers considerably more than I do yours (nothing personal, but if there's a few decades of experience in international copyright law you're not telling us about, I might be persuaded ). If you've got some overriding concern which absolutely requires you to own everything, we'd love to hear it. Otherwise, you'd do well to simply adopt CC-BY-SA for the Wiki, on account of the fact that it is one of the few options that would make it legal for people to contribute, and easily the most practical of those few options. I am reliably informed that I would need that on paper, signed and notarised, complete with a mutual release agreeing that my contributions belong to me and are to be licensed under the same terms as the rest of the content, and that RTL does not claim any right over the contributions of its members (I hope I didn't miss anything out). This would then need to be repeated for every contributor. Alternatively, adopt CC-BY-SA, and you don't need to do any of that. Read that description, and tell us what your objections to it are - I don't believe that any of those four basic conditions interferes with our goal.

However, this is still not acceptable, since the seller is STILL liable until delivery. Lots of sellers do not understand this, and suggesting that any non-trackable means of delivery is acceptable even when both parties have agreed it is misguided. I am not and have not suggested you do not know what you are talking about. What I have suggested is that you may be unintentionally giving people the impression that if they are not accepting PayPal they can happily send things first class and assume all is well. What I have suggested is that regardless of what payment method you choose to accept, you should always send at least recorded. In that case, if anything goes wrong, you at least have an address to take things up at the other end, and you can be compensated for the loss of the package.

I would like to help put stuff on there, and help out with the often-underappreciated (at least on the 'Pedia) task of cleaning up, but cannot at the moment as it would be illegal for me to do so (and anyone else besides Dave, in fact) because of the copyright notice on the front page. I'm game for a lot of things, but 10 years in prison for copyright infringement is not one of them.

Looks good. Actually a very sensible idea - occasionally good nuggets of information get buried in the forum, and then there are a few threads where the signal gets drowned in noise (*ahem*). I have some considerable knowledge of Wikipedia and the MediaWiki software, the search facilities are good, and in terms of building an editable reference its feature set makes it practically second to none. Two suggestions I would like to make straight off the bat: 1. Upgrade - the 1.6 series is no longer supported. 1.10 was released a while ago, and should be good for a while. It's important to keep it up-to-date. 2. De-uglify the URL by getting rid of the "index.php" - it's usually straightforward in most cases, but if you are one of the exceptions I can help you out with it. PS - this is incompatible with the software.

Fine. The important thing here is that other people don't get the impression that sending anything they sell on eBay via non-trackable means is by any stretch of the imagination a good idea. Recorded delivery is cheap enough. I take your point, though perhaps it should really be called New and Improved Seller Protection Of course, this change will at least discourage many of the [causing problems] buyers, though somewhat reinforces [causing problems] sellers (non-existent goods, bogus e-books, "picture of" sales, etc.)

The CCA is not applicable here, for what I hope should be obvious reasons.

Which makes makes as much difference as urinating in the ocean. I charge you 20p, you charge me 20p, volume of transactions means the banks work out roughly even on these. Which takes us to ... Exactly. Playing with money is what they do - it's the real service they provide under it all. Taking all the money deposited with them, using it to do things like making sure when you ask them for £20 that they have £20 somewhere handy to give you, funding mortgages and business loans in a climate of low interest rates that brings high multipliers, generally fulfilling various functions without which the economy would fail (spectacularly and massively so). It's a service they provide, so it's money they raise. Free transactions on personal accounts is a loss leader. Every penny is recouped from more profitable services such as mortgages (on which they make a metric shedload of money).

Self-assessment tax returns are for anyone whose financial affairs are more complex than PAYE allows for. Self-employed, substantial dividend income, high-volume stock and commodities trading, ordained ministers of religion, elected officials, the list goes on. (I'm ex-Revenue - what's your excuse?)

Forget the OP for the moment - you do realise that if you don't use a trackable method and someone tries to [problem] you by claiming non-delivery (which they can do regardless of payment method), you have no hope of defending, right?

Thanks. Main reason I asked is that I've been digging through legislation and found a series of offences at the "statutory maximum", apart from one which is specified at level 5, hence the thought that the two amounts may have been different.

Have you read anything I've said? If you send ordinary post, the burden is still on YOU to prove delivery in the event of any dispute. Proof of posting is not proof of delivery.

Every private tenancy agreement I have ever seen contained a clause to the following effect: An outstanding mortgage won't usually prevent you from running a business (though, as has been said, careful of business rates), and councils may give some leeway (get it in writing!), but if you are renting privately starting any sort of business whatsoever probably puts you in breach of your tenancy agreement.

... which is not the question that was asked.

Not strictly bank-related, what is the "statutory maximum" summary fine in E+W? £5000 (Level 5) or a higher figure? I have found that it is £5000 in Scotland.

A point to remember, if a buyer declines a trackable method when offered a choice (e.g. seller offers standard/1st class as well as SP), this does not absolve the seller from responsibility for delivery. The seller at all times remains liable for the goods until the buyer takes delivery. A couple of years ago, I sold some kit on a buyer-collects basis - in that case, I am responsible for the goods until the buyer has collected them. My objection to this statement lies entirely in the word "clearly". There's also the issue of greater dishonesty: PayPal == eBay, so if PayPal do not allow standard postal service, eBay should not allow sellers to specify it as an available option.

In general, you must own your own home. You can't start a business out of a privately let home because your tenancy agreement prohibits it (landlords do this as a matter of course - there are probably insurance and mortgage implications). Social landlords may be more forgiving, but you should check the paperwork to be safe. If the terms of your occupancy prohibit it, get approval in writing. Someone recently clued me in on this gem about ensuring you are compliant with all relevant laws (case-in-point: fair terms in contracts): Do not seek sanctuary in the law. Make the law irrelevant. IOW, don't work around legal issues when you can plan to avoid them in the first place.

There was also an election on May 3rd of this year. Not that I am in any way insinuating a connection ;-)

It may well be different as in both cases, the companies could suggest that they were actively losing money from the lack of connectivity. Either way, if you want to go down this route, if you can't find anything on the subject anywhere else on the forums (try posting in General Consumer Issues for more eyes) you may well have to seek professional help.

Businesses are entitled to choose their customers, and are entitled to use any means they wish to do so. The "emergency injunctions" you speak of are reserved for instances where they are necessary to prevent harm or distress, such as in cases of domestic abuse, illegal eviction, etc.