Legal Positions
Many of the questions and complaints on this forum are dealt with by referring both buyers and sellers to the PPH 'Terns & Conditions'.
This very worthy document seems to change at regular intervals but the March 2nd edition comprised 10,382 words in 383 paragraphs.
These are supplemented with the User Guide which sometimes contradicts the legal 'small print' of said Ts & Cs.
So it would help if some of the legal positions arising from this were clarified, preferably in Plain English.
Nobody wishes to get involved in legal disputes and most people, like myself, approach business on the basis that 'my word is my bond' but there is an increasing need to 'know where we stand'.
1/ Can the contractual arrangement between buyer, seller and PPH be deemed valid where the identities of the various parties are not fully disclosed?
For example, one seller complained (on this community) that they wished to take legal action against a buyer but PPH declined to disclose the address on 'Data Protection' grounds.
2/ Is there a valid contractual arrangement where a buyer is shown as Bill H, subsequent correspondence is with Jim Smith and the ultimate client turns out to be Jim Smith's employer or even his mate?
3/ Is it legally valid to charge the buyer a 10% fee on a job where the Terms & Conditions accepted at the start of the job offered a FREE bank-transfer payment option?
To put it another way, is it valid for PPH to change the rules mid-contract or are they bound by the terms prevailing at the point of bid acceptance?
4/ With new contracts, is it legally valid to charge a buyer fee when the list of buyer fees in the Ts & Cs is contradicted by a statement in the User Guide, to the effect that no buyer fees will be charged.
i.e. does the user guide form part of the contractual arrangement?
5/ Finally, at what point is the whole contract invalidated by PPH failing to pay sellers in a timely manner.
For example, if a seller has not been paid within 7 days of a withdrawal request, would it be reasonable to consider this a 'breach of contract' and deal directly with the buyer?
Perhaps a single failure would be acceptable but what about persistent or frequent delayed payments?
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That's very nice Kelly but this isn't just a problem for me - it's a problem for every member of the PPH 'community' and, as such, should be discussed openly on this community forum.
If the support people have anything useful to contribute, perhaps you could ask them to respond here rather than privately. -
I completely agree, Les. In fact I am the person who was refused contact information for a buyer on the grounds that it would breach the Data Protection Act. Had I not been wanting to do more work through PPH I would have simply sent them the invoice instead because I am clearly not working for the buyer if I don't know who he is.
The big problem that I have been raising for the last two years is concerning VAT and the place of supply. The PPH system is not meeting legal requirements. The situation with VAT for a registered freelancer working remotely is not the same as, for example, a shop. In a shop a customer can buy something and pay VAT on it and it doesn't matter where they live because the place of supply is the shop and any items bought are "goods". For remote freelance work, the place of supply is the buyer's location and the item supplied is a "service". When the buyer is in a different EU state to the seller, the rules on VAT are different depending on whether the buyer is VAT registered or not.
PPH are having serious problems identifying the location of buyers. It is a recurring theme in the forums. This needs to be fixed immediately. In fact it should never have got into this mess in the first place. -
Simon
PPH accounting systems are crazy - they just don't seem to understand how everyday book-keeping works, let-alone the nuances of VAT where, as you rightly point out, the place of delivery is quite important.
When I first started doing work for PPH, I had to cancel and re-issue several invoices because of their crazy VAT treatment.
When raising an invoice, most people would set out the invoice lines (hours times hourly rate, or whatever), total them up and add the VAT at the bottom though, with most accounting systems, VAT calculation would be automatic.
With PPH, you have to round-up the hourly rate or fixed-price item so that each line is VAT-included.
You then add the VAT rate at the bottom and the invoice is then calculated backwards to get the figures that you started with.
You don't get to see a 'draft' of the invoice so it is very easy to make mistakes.
Apart form that, this system won't cope with a mixture of standard-rate and zero-rated items.
And don't get me started on the confusion arising when they split overdue invoices into the escrow part and the unpaid part.
The Data Protect Act relates to 'personal' data and basically requires that (1) the data held should be accurate and (2) it should be used for the purpose for which it was provided.
Why was that data collected in the first place if not for the purpose of facilitating the relationship between buyer and seller?
The major credit agencies have no problem with providing names, addresses and credit history for both individuals and businesses. -
I don't like the invoicing system at all. The first time I had to use VAT it was not clear if that was added to the invoice and there was no preview. Some of my customers ask me for a "proper" VAT invoice afterwards on my own letterhead.
Hiding behind the Data Protection Act is nonsense. As sellers our details are given to buyers, yet the buyers details are secret. If there is supposed to be a contract between buyer and seller the identities of both parties must be known. If a dispute ever went to court I suspect the terms and conditions would be thrown out of the window very quickly.
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Simon
It would be good to see some of this PPH nonsense tested in Court - particularly where the fairly-simple User Guide contradicts the 10,000+ words of Terms & Conditions.
I have met some shysters in my business career but I never came across anybody who thought that they could unilaterally change the payment terms in mid-contract.
Trouble is, the sums involved are probably not worth the hassle of legal action.
Also, one needs to question whether PPH would have the resources to pay if the action were successful. -
Hello guys,
I have found this thread as the result of becoming increasingly frustrated at the way PPH have been dealing with a refund request against myself. A client accepted a proposal and, with the brief information they gave me, we started to work on a plan for their website. They later informed me that they didn't want to carry on the project. However we had already started the work. I indicated on the refund request that I was happy to CANCEL the project, but we had completed a few hours work already. PPH took this to mean I was happy to give a full refund. Of course this was not the case. I contacted PPH support and they told me that they would give me 50 proposal credits instead. I make that a value of £19.95. I informed them politely that I cannot pay my staff in PPH credits.
The terms and conditions clearly state that a full refund is only available if the seller has not started work. I clearly stated that we have.
I think this should be looked at with the legal questions above. As you state, the sums are so small that legal action is often not worth it. However I feel that at some point it needs to be done.
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Hi Soracle
Apart from taking a devil of a long time to respond, I find that the major issue with PPH support staff is a basic inability to understand the problem.
I have often waited 3 days for answers to questions I never asked and it usually takes several rounds of correspondence to establish a sensible dialogue regarding the actual issue of concern.
The next major difficulty is the inability of PPH support staff to 'own' the problem and my issues have often been passed around with my having to explain the whole thing to several people.
And do PPH even learn from the experience of their users and correct the frequently-recurring issues?
Not bloody likely - this single thread is now 2 years old and the same sort of problems are still happening.
To be honest, i dread contacting PPH support as I know this will involve several days of timewasting argee-bargee with little prospect of a successful outcome.
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