GWRtrainman

He's posted a 'clarification' on his website, which pretty much contradicts the first Announcement!

Quite incredible

The British IP system does not work as a Policing system or Court making judgements.

It's merely a timestamp.

So, Dave has made a claim - it's not been tested or checked in any way.

• Someone else may have had the idea earlier, they quite likely not have registered it. They can't loose their IP or have those ideas taken away by a Dave style registration.
• Likewise if someone now produces a model for which Dave has registered CAD - they won't be stopped or find themselves in trouble unless Dave brings a claim and wins in court.
• Lastly someone can challenge these registrations if they so wish and have then cancelled. For instance the original manufacturer of the full sized loco.

As a business funded by other people - Crowdfunders or Retailers, I can't see either being happy seeing their funds being diverted from a product into legal action.

Seems a dead end idea and probably an indicator that his business has reached the end too.

1 hour ago, Widnes Model Centre said:

 

https://beta.companieshouse.gov.uk/company/08601496/filing-history

 

His accounts were in before the 1st May deadline. Must be it, surely?

Perhaps he'll make this an Annual announcement of an announcement -  so we can remind him to file his accounts!

It's been available for ages, so how come no one has done it yet? I wanted to pick the brains of those who had done it, not be the one to show everyone else how to do it .

That's becuase P4 stands for - 'Population of 4', and EM stands for 'Erh, me'  

Which I think means you're 20% of the entire population of modellers in those funny gauges!  

Dave

 

Thanks for the clarification on the instalments. Found this piece of detail in moneysavingsupermarket.com "The law's specific on this, you get the protection for the whole cost of an item or service, even if you only pay for a part of it on credit. The only condition is that what you're buying costs more than £100 and less than £30,000." So provided the stage payments are instalments for the final item, and not related to CAD, tooling etc. it should work.

 

Mike

Hi,

I think it could get more complex than that. Especially if the card companies realise there is a problem and they start seeing multiple claims.

Firstly it would depend what each stage payment is paying for. If the first one is for the CAD - then provided the CAD is produced no one would have the right to claim for it not being 'delivered'. Same for later stages if the purchase is for 'tooling',  The deliverable might not be considered to be the loco for the majority of what we are actually paying for, but rather the development and tooling costs. In posting 27 Dave outlines the payments as all being for cad and tooling.

From memory there is also a 180 day limit on claims using the Act - so if you pay for all the tooling and cad in one year, but it then takes 181 days for the actual product to be manufactured, delivered and the fault to arise - or the person holding your money to fail to deliver it , then I suspect you'll be out of luck and have no claim.

Then you have to check who you are actually paying - if it's a 3rd party such as Paypal (possibly kickstarter, I'm not sure how that works) then you lose the rights against the supplier anyway. If the Payment is going direct to the manufacturer (i.e. DJM) then he may be in breach of his credit card merchant terms as most require that the goods are supplied within 30 days of payment. Taking deposits etc is something you have to agree with a card company before you start taking any money - else again they could decide the whole deal is in breach of merchant conditions. Either way the person running the scheme should be under no illusion that a credit card company won't simply pay up and sit back. They'll come chasing for their payouts. We used to own a Guest House - as we took deposits the card company held all our funds for 90 days. That will impact on the DJM cashflow and ability to progress whilst that money is on hold.

So your most likely solution if you have serious problems is Small Claims Court against either the Ltd Company (if DJM is), or Dave himself. Assuming you can off load the liability to a credit card provider in this way is probably not something the card companies are going to be particularly happy to see happen! Especially as Dave has publicly stated he's using it as a form of insurance against failure.

Best to ask your credit card company if you are covered in this type of situation if you are worried.

Well, whether any given error is sufficiently egregious to deter a purchase is very much an individual choice, and, yes, from 3' away on a moving train whether it is going to matter is a very different matter.

 

I quoted this gentleman's remarks because he does seem to know what he's talking about, and I leave it to others to decide for themselves if, assuming the criticisms are well-founded, they matter. All I can say is that he knows way more than I do and, apparently, more than Oxford, about these wagons. 

 

And not wanting to deny the Junior Messrs Black & Decker's entirely reasonable inclination not to mind the errors, in fairness to the "Rivet Counter General", he did conclude that there was rather more than misplaced bolts in issue; he said, "large numbers of detail and dimensional errors".   

 

In fairness to Mr Oxford Rail, I have not decided against this model, but I must confess, a purchase is now less likely than it was.  I will have to reach my own view, based on prototype photographs, as to whether the model captures the appearance of the subject sufficiently well.

 

The one point I would offer here as my own opinion is that the errors, born whether of corner-cutting or, in many cases, apparent carelessness, appear to be mounting across this nascent range.  There may be commercial imperatives for some compromises on accuracy.  Some, though, like the detail on the 4-plank and the misshapen firebox on the Dean Goods are very much "you may as well get them right as get them wrong" issues, which is frustrating.

 

I would like to be able to trust Oxford to get the details right where reasonably possible.  Moreover, I like to believe that Oxford cares enough to do so.

 

As things are at the moment, I feel that with anything this company announces or offers I will have to research thoroughly before deciding whether it's "hit or miss".

 

Come on Oxford, you're close, but you need to go all the way!

Do take care re-posting comments out of context.

This gent also says he's reviewed the model based on one photo - but seemingly from that he is able to accurately determine dimensions....

Rails of Sheffield are already selling the first Oxford release at a tempting £84.50.

Rails are now reporting the model as 'Sold Out'. Seems I had better hot foot it down to my shop fast on Monday....

I never knew we had a group of wise men who could undertake such a detailed review based on one PR photo!

Out of curiosity, perhaps they could list the reference sources they are comparing with? As I suspect until we see some more objective reviews from the magazines all we're going to get is a list of perceived faults. Am I the only one thinking it would be nice on here to have a more balanced set of comments from some one who can back up what they say. It's always so negative!

Personally I'm off to my local shop next week as they've just been told their stock arrives on Wednesday.

Oh - website has updated again this morning to say it's now being released:

http://www.oxfordrail.com/

Hi,

I've just had a new loco from Hornby international - code HCT-PC120769

So it looks like there are other factories being used by the European part of the group