Brit telcos deliberately killed Phones 4u, claim admins in £1bn UK High Court sueball Administrators of UK mobile retailer Phones 4u claim that the company was deliberately collapsed by a cartel of British telcos – although an iPad with key evidence "cannot now be found", according to the High Court. The eye-opening allegations appeared in a 17 July judgment in the High Court as Phones 4u's administrators, PwC …
I don't understand how people don't make copies.
It's like when you're closing your car boot you check your keys are in your pocket rather than about to be locked in.
If you have something important - just email it to yourself, or print it, or put it on Google Drive, or something.
Are these the people who are constantly locking their keys in their car?
( Image is of me checking my keys, twice )
I had the cutest little MGF once that (myriad mechanical defects aside) routinely swallowed my keys into it's boot. Whereupon I would have the opportunity to try public transport, or try walking 5 miles in inappropriate footwear, or finding out which of my friends with cars would come and pick me up. Oh the joys! But I always had a backup (sort of).
I had a different, but similar, experience last week. I ordered a robot, due to claims on the manufacturing companies website and the resellers, that it did exactly what I wanted. When it arrived, it didn't perform the advertised function. I took a copy of the websites before I started the refund process. Within hours both websites were changed and the companies called me a liar. I sent the website images to them and the money is now back in my bank!
I wish I'd done that when I got my British gas boiler installation last year. Website said "First Service free". On installation they made it clear that the first 12 month service was chargeable. On challenge they said "We serviced it when we installed it". Which is not how I'd define a service, nor the engineer (not theirs) who we did pay to do it, last month.
But I couldn't push it further - because when I went to the website it no longer said that.
"Are these the people who are constantly locking their keys in their car?"
picture the scene, picnic day at the beach 100 miles from home with my missus and her relatives, time to pack the car up, missus uses the remote to open the boot of my newish saloon car and puts the keys in the boot with all the other crap and then closes the boot. i go to open the car and find the door locked, where are the keys i ask, in the boot comes the reply.
the car came with an assistance package, chap turns up in 20 mins and tells me he can open the boot but will be ~ £500 of damage. luckily her brother lent me his smart car to do a 200 mile round trip drive home and get my spare key so i could retrieve my car from the beach and drive another 100 miles home.
work the following day was a struggle.
In UK law secret recordings are a bit of a grey area. At least as I understand it from legal programs I've heard, being no lawyer. Mostly the police can't do it, but private individuals can - even though they're legally supposed to ask for permissionto record - it may still be admissable, even if they didn't. Although I suspect the real answer is: It's complicated.
Interestingly, there is now a way to report traffic offences caught on dashcam and upload the video directly to the police. I've done this once. The police then responded by asking me the car's reg. number as a confirmation that I'd witnessed the event. Which I didn't know, as I'd been driving at the time and left it to the dashcam to do the recording. And by then I'd lost the original ( or I could have read the reg number off it and given it to them). But they did still pay the driver a visit and he was prosecuted for a related offence as a consequence.
The UK principle is "evidence is evidence" no matter how obtained; any illegality is a separate issue.
However proving that something such as a recording or a transcript is indeed evidential, not simply faked, can be challenging.
It has always seemed odd to me that the American system would treat evidence which actually proves guilt as inadmissible due to the way it was obtained.
"It has always seemed odd to me that the American system would treat evidence which actually proves guilt as inadmissible due to the way it was obtained."
The concept does sound problematic, but it also provides a safeguard against misconduct by the more powerful party in a criminal investigation. If a policing organization commits a crime, they may not be held to account. The legal system is connected to them, other courts may not have jurisdiction, and if the defendant doesn't have the resources to pursue them or a sufficiently interested third party to foot the bills, the police get off for their crime. By making it clear that their crime cannot pay, it reduces the need for that. Of course, it also makes it harder to convict criminals, so there are pros and cons to either approach.
Not in Germany.
You cannot make a sound or photographic recording of an illegal act unless you have police permission or other official permission to do it. Any recordings of such acts made without such permission are not admissible in court as evidence.
This is why many neighbourhood feuds literally fester on for years. It is also why it is illegal to record telephone conversations in Germany subject to the above conditions.
Officially it has something about breaching the perpetrator's right of informational self-determination or some shit. Personally, I suspect it has more to do with the constitutional right not to incriminate oneself. But that's just my personal opinion.
1. How many mobile devices will still be around which have data from 2014? Most devices would surely have been decommissioned or wiped by now.
2. Why would past employees still have company data from 2014 on their personal devices? That would surely be a breach of data protection laws
3. Why oh why would you keep such a significant recording on a single, old device and not copy it to other places? At least by sending yourself an email or backing up on to a USB stick.
It would make sense that shady dealings led to the demise of P4U, but I should imagine it would be incredibly difficult to prove. Especially after so much time has passed.
I'm looking at a phone dating from 2012 right now. Yes it was replaced, but it's still here. I plugged it into power a few days ago looking for something else, and it still works, except it doesn't have a SIM anymore, the SIM is in a newer phone. Why would I wipe it? It's an emergency backup phone, in case the current phone has a problem. So, yes, there could well be older phones still around.
> Why would I wipe it? It's an emergency backup phone, in case the current phone has a problem. So, yes, there could well be older phones still around.
I'm completely the opposite - once I've bought a new shiny and finished configuring it, I dig the packaging for the old device out and slap it onto Ebay.
It helps to offset the cost of the new device, reduces clutter, and in the event of anything going wrong, I'd rather just buy a replacement - if I need something cheap and in a hurry, there's always places like CEX.
On the other hand, once I find something which Just Works, I tend to hang onto it for years, and then spend months bemoaning that there's nothing suitable to replace it.
Such as my 160gb iPod Classic, which I begrudgingly "upgraded" to a 128gb iPhone SE when the HDD developed a click of doom. That worked well for over a decade, and I still miss the physical buttons, dammit!
(Though I suppose technically, the iPhone does now act as a backup for my main phone...)
""once I've bought a new shiny and finished configuring it, I dig the packaging for the old device out and slap it onto Ebay. It helps to offset the cost of the new device, reduces clutter, and in the event of anything going wrong, I'd rather just buy a replacement"
In my case, if I'm replacing something, it's likely in one of a few conditions:
1. It's broken. Physically. Bad enough that I can't repair it. Resale value next to zero.
2. It has gotten so old that someone might want it, but they won't find it. I've waited months hoping that someone would buy old devices, and now I try to be more realistic about what it's worth, usually next to zero.
For case 2, if I can't sell it but it continues to work, I try to find someone who can use it. I have found several places that would like phones that still are capable of making calls, so I can donate those. Sometimes, I can do the same with laptops. For other devices, I keep them around in case I need a disposable device or a victim for potentially destructive experimentation; after all, it's better to reuse when possible.
I have an old phone from 2012 which was not reliable enough for the place I donate phones to. It has been a potential casualty in a number of tests so far. Still works, well sort of. If I need a cheap device that might suffer during the experience, I'll draft that into service rather than paying for something new.
"Why would I wipe it? It's an emergency backup phone, in case the current phone has a problem."
I have a few old phones knocking around as well, which can be used for backups or dev phones. But once they get to 3 or 4 years old, they stop receiving security updates. A six year old Android phone will be a pretty substantial security risk. It's a good idea to do a factory reset of them once they get replaced to wipe off your main Dropbox/ Google/ MS accounts and documents, then set up throwaway accounts for them. They can then be used in a pinch, but there won't be anything too sensitive to lose if they become compromised.
>> 1. How many mobile devices will still be around which have data from 2014?
I'm using one to write this. Don't assume everybody upgrades on a regular basis, least of all someone who works for a reseller.
>> 2. Why would past employees still have company data from 2014 on their personal devices? That would surely be a breach of data protection laws
Because they were keeping it because they thought it would come in handy as evidence of illegal activity. Most people would regard that as a justified breaking of the data protection law, even if they understood that law, which most people don't.
>> 3. Why oh why would you keep such a significant recording on a single, old device and not copy it to other places? At least by sending yourself an email or backing up on to a USB stick.
Because you're a businessman, not a techie, and don't even understand what a backup is, let alone bother to ever make one.
>> 2. Why would past employees still have company data from 2014 on their personal devices? That would surely be a breach of data protection laws
Data Protection doesn't say anything explicit about what you can/can't keep or for how long. The general thrust is that what & how long you keep something must be appropriate & proportionate.
What's appropriate & proportionate? That's for a judge and/or jury to decide.
as we've seen time and time again, private equity buying up high street stores, selling the property, taking out massive loans thus loading previously perfectly profitable ventures with MASSIVE loan and rent payments have decimated the high street...NOT Amazon. Every store having issues can be traced to a PE firm loading it up with rent and loans.
Now we have a case where the Private Equity owners got screwed by their own actions because they thought they could buy it up, sell off the shops, load up on debt and sell it after paying themselves massive dividends and "management fees" but probably left it a "little late" because they tend to be useless at actually running a store. SO this time they actually seem to have lost money, which is why they've thrown their toys out of the pram like little kids.
now they're screaming that the telco's are at fault and not their own greed
>>>> Every store having issues can be traced to a PE firm loading it up with rent and loans.
Bollocks! Some retailers are in that position because of private equity thievery. Others are suffering from self-inflicted wounds - M&S, WH Smug, House of Fraser, John Lewis, etc.
Oh and the places where you buy stuff are called shops, not stores.
I remember looking at a couple of phones in one of their shops. They were not really interested in me just upgrading my device on my existing deal (out of contract). There was a lot of pressure to start a new contract with Vodafone. At the time, Vodafone was a no signal area where I lived at the time (since rectified).
I left and went to CPW who tried to flog me a Samsung phone despite me making it clear that I didn't want a Samsung phone and that my existing HTC device was fine.
Neither of them got a sale. I started buying secondhand iPhones from pawn dealers. That continues today.
I went into Phones 4 U once. Within the space of 10 minutes, I had three salespeople trying to sell me new contracts. I was looking to upgrade my phone, but none of them even checked what I wanted.. I don't like pressure sales, and I tend to avoid any company that really tries to pressure me me into buying something. I did want a new phone. I didn't necessarily want to upgrade on my current contract, but wasn't opposed to the idea either. I like to decide on what hardware I want first, then see what contracts I can get with that hardware. The Salesdroids wouldn't take a polite "I want to look around" for an answer and after the third one pounced on me in ten minutes, I shouted "Fuck Off, leave me alone" and stormed out the shop.
Went straight into the Carphone Warehouse up the road/ A saleswoman came up to me, listened to me when I said I wanted to look around a bit before I made up my mind. She responded, "Cool, I'll be over here if you need anything" and went to do some paperwork at a terminal. I tried a few phones, found one I liked, and went back to her. A while later, I walked out the store, having signed up for a new contract, with a new phone in my sweaty hands..
I'd like to see us go back to that more relaxed style of sales. Give the customer what they want at a reasonable price, without trying to bundle in potentially expensive extras (such as extended warranties and gold plated HDMI cables), and people will go away happy, and hopefully come back next time they want something,
Doubt it will happen though.
Similar experience to me. I went in to look at a specific phone, got taken upstairs to an area with desks and was submitted to a very long attempt at hard selling (I only let it go in because it was raining outside, was due to meet someone in an hour and needed someone to shelter).
None of the discussions involved the phone I said I was interested in and all the contracts were for much more than the one I currently had (not through them).
I vowed there and then to never enter one of their stores again and told everyone I knew of the experience. Perhaps they should take action against me for damaging their business?
"Within the space of 10 minutes"
I wouldn't have stayed there so long.
I'm always prepared to walk out on poor service and high pressure sales count as -ve service in my view. I've also walked out for the opposite reason; after being left alone for an unreasonable period of time I walked to the dealership across the road and bought a new car there instead.
It won't happen while there are idiots who think you drive sales by putting staff under performance targets. As if pressure on staff somehow creates greater demand from the public, rather than all the competing firms becoming more and more aggressive in trying to outsell each other and risking killing off the market by making the buyers more and more averse.
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