fsa investigation?
ADVFN PLC
24 November 2006

ADVFN PLC (the 'Company')

Exercise of Options

The Company announces that options to subscribe for 150,002 ordinary shares of
one pence each in the Company have been exercised at a price of 1.25p per share.
These shares have been allotted and application for the shares to be admitted to
trading on AIM has been made to the London Stock Exchange. Admission of and
dealings in these shares are expected to commence on 1 December 2006.

Independent

Small Talk: Financial group ADVFN forced by one of founders of Langbar International to divulge the identities of a number of subscribers after death threats against him were posted on one of its websites.

What about the Data Protection Act?????????????????????????????.

It would have been through a court order.

Subscribers always had a hell of a job unsubscribing from ADVFN and lots of them usually ended up using the 'destroy your credit card method'.

Are they still on ADVFN's Debtor's List for their subscriptions?

I have always thought, that on the Balance Sheet of ADVFN, the component part, which includes Debt from subscribers as assets, would be quite a large and exceedingly erroneous figure. Furthermore, it will continue to rise month by month as the error compounds.

eg, Just to get an idea, 1000 subscribers at 10 per month for 5 years = 600,000

Doc, what an excellent point and first time it's been mentioned, either on this or the other bb!

Don't think the auditors would allow too much of that. I think one of the parts of an audit is to satisfy themselves the debtor figure is collectable.

Kayak: Absolutely right. Auditors -- even with private companies, let alone public, have to be satisfied that monies due are collectable, particularly if they're getting on a bit (the debts, that is, not the auditors).

Don't lets confuse working Debtor Control Policy with the Debtor's List.

By that, just because they don't bother trying to collect it, well, it doesn't mean to say it is uncollectable.

Perhaps such subscribers as I have mentioned will be only be challenged to pay arrears when they try to log on with their old username and password.

On the Internet, things such as a subscriber's e-mail address change from time to time. Neither can connectability through a home user's ISP be absolutely guaranteed. Just these two things alone, might arguably give ADVFN the benefit of the doubt as to whether a subscriber has actually 'finished' or not.

Anyhow, all that apart.....

Q 1. How is their Debtor's List audited?
Q 2. What are the audit rules, which determine whether a non-paying subscriber is a debtor or not?
Q 3. Have these criteria always been the case? If not, when were they altered? What where they and what are they now?
Q 4. On the last reported Y/E accounts, what was the financial value of the whole ADVFN Debtor's List?

MM

You have a good point there about collectability being important.

As a point of interest and seeing as you are involved somewhat with MoneyAM, could you advise what the latter's policy is perchance?

Such info' might serve as a good and reasonable comaparator.

On the one hand, I'll pass this opinion....FOR

I think the debts are highly collectable, particularly if the subscriber did not use a Recorded Delivery snail mail letter to Unsubscribe. Technically and in law, such a subscriber has not kept to the Terms and Conditions.

Once the debt has risen to, say 250, then surely it has to be worth having a go at collecting it? At least, by using a Debt Collection Agency and on a 'no win - no fee' basis?

Surely at this stage the old subscriber may be considered to have terminated with his or her 'ADVFN Goodwill' and, since this is now not important from ADVFN's viewpoint, the debt should financially be well worth pursuing - and into the Small Claims Court too.

There is no defence that is satisfatory to an ex-subscriber who did not use a recorded delivery letter to unsubscribe.

On the other hand, I'll pass the opinion that these types of debts are uncollectable - AGAINST

The Terms and Conditions concerning subscription cancellation are irrelevant.

If you can't collect them automatically by debit methods from a bank or credit card account then they are actually unenforceable in real life.

The costs of collection or of pursing such debts are too costly and time-consuming when balanced against the likely achievments gained from success.

BUT - what have the following questions got to do with either of the above? :-

What is ADVFN's policy?

Is the value of their Debtor's List sensible or ridiculous?

Well, ADVFN certainly don't havee a very good policy for terminating accounts. There were a series of posts a few years ago from Crocodile. He tried to close his ADVFN account several times. He tried by phone, recorded delivery letter, Email etc. ADVFN just kept collecting his subs from his credit card. He got them to stop in the end, but I can't remember how.

As DocProc says above, members of ADVFN often have to resort to destroying their credit cards or reporting them stolen to get a new credit card number. It seems that there is no easy way to stop a regular payment on a credit card from the credit card end.

it took me a few threatening emails before they cancelled mine...prefer this site's monitor but miss advfn's bbs

Doc: Sorry, can't comment about MoneyAM's policy on such matters -- because I don't know what it is! My involvement with MAM was/is as a technology provider.

But I have experience with dealing with auditors in another sphere on matters of collectability. If a debt is old (over a year, say) they tend to be sceptical about collectability, even though the debt is left there by common consent of the parties (related companies, for example). They tend to want to provision the debt, so it comes off the P&L for that year. And it may subsequently be collected -- back onto the P&L later, then.

I personally know three cases where Premium subscribers to ADVFN had to cancel their card account because advfn wouldn't cancel the direct debit


Maestro - why can't you get back onto the bb?

When I was banned I had no problems carrying on the battle with new usernames through new email addresses?

richardbees,

As I understand it, Clem will allow a person to re-register under a new username as long as they behave themselves.

richard..i'll try another email address but i thought it made no difference

Andy: you can email, apologise for any offence and promise never to be naughty again and they'll re-instate your username.

maestro - who are you kidding?

But for anyone else; what works for me is: you have to delete all 'files' and 'cookies' on your PC - then create a new email address which you then use to register a new account / username with advfn.

That will continue to work until you access Outlook Express / or another site from your pc which 'recognises' you, because that will then renew a cookie which is recognised by advfn.... and you get banned again.

Don't know about you, maestro, but I've got more than 50 usernames on free advfn.

Ive cancelled my Silver account with them by normal post and they have acknowledged the letter by e-mail saying I have so many days before my account is closed.

Ive also recd an e-mail saying they will refund me monies, so I cant really see how they have any defence against that if I were to take them to court.

As for opening a new user name I beleive they can track you down by your ISP number??????????. Any thoughts on this?.

GF,

That would depend whether you have a fixed or floating IP aqddress.

Most people have a floating one, so they wouldn't be able to recognise you this way.

To find out, go to a dos command screen, and type IPCONFIG

ake a note of the IP address.

When you next restart the PC and connect to the web, repeat the IPCONFIG routine, and compare the two IP addresses, that will tell you if you have a fixd one or not.

It was difficult if you were on AOL and also btinternet now apparently.

Ask Kayak to explain why , I haven't got a bloody clue.

Dil,

Good to see you're still around!

Do you mean difficult for ADVFN to recognise you, or difficult to re-register?