OK to display smart card ID in sale?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Fraoch808
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Actually, it is fact that this is not true in Canada, except in Quebec.

You need to understand there is a differnence between the "receiver" and the "conditional access module".

When you purchase a receiver, you are purchasing the receiver only. The card remains the property of Bell ExpressVu and is provided in the box to simplify the experience. At one point I bought a receiver, during the last card swap I believe, and it did not come with a card, one had to be sent by ExpressVu. This is obviously a less consumer-friendly scenario.

The receiver is yours, and you can do whatever you want with it, turn it into a plant stand, aquarium, whatever. However, should you wish to use it for TV, legitimately, then ExpressVu provides you with the card to acquire programming.

This is no different than a card swap. They don't charge you for new cards (well not directly as a line item anyway). If you owned the card and it was your property, then they could say you had to buy a new one. Same if the card goes bad for any reason. They send you a new one fore free, requesting the old one back to verify it has not been tampered with (otherwise there is a charge to cover "damages" done).

Quebec however has different consumer protection laws. As I am not familiar with them I'll refrain from posting more detail for those that live there, but it is my understanding that you do indeed own the card to some extent.

However, this is all off topic and some posts are bordering on violation of the forum rules, which I encourage you all to read asap.
 
How is this off topic? We're discussing about one clause of the BEV agreement, and that discussion erupted from a legit question.

They don't really have a choice to swap the cards for free. If they didn't they would have no choice but to offer an opt-out from whatever contract you have with them, and there would be a mass migration to cable because people would be mad at them and cable would jump on the occasion to offer killer deals.

What part of the law in the rest of Canada would make this is legal everywhere in Canada but Quebec?

The thing is, we'll never know for sure because they will never be so foolish as to flat out ask for a card back, because then they would run the very real risk of having that part of the agreement voided, and then they couldn't flaunt it around anymore. Courts tend to be sympathetic to the little guy being strong armed by big corporations, at least in Quebec, I don't know about the rest of Canada.
 
Every once and awhile I get ticked off at the number of so called experts that jump out of the woodwork and purposely try to revise the facts. One of the posters had it right when he/she was quoting Ebay policies. I have a habit of saving a lot of useless information and just retrieved the email I received January 19, 2007 from Ebay which states in part
"However, your auction-style listing violates eBay's electonics policy and has been removed, in accordance with our User Agreement, items prohibited by law or by eBay policy are not allowed on eBay. All fees related to this listing have been credited to your account. We also notified members who placed bids on the item that the listing has been canceled."
And so on. Eventhough some items may go through the operative part is "if they get reported"........I follow the buying and selling of Evu equipment on a regular basis and have seen many listings disappear. And as a final note the card belongs to ExpressVu. Period. End of story.
By the way you would not known is the listing was cancelled if you did not bid on the item. Sorry for the rant but facts are facts.
 
I have a feeling your comment is targeting me. I'm not disputing the fact about ebay's policy.

But as far as ownership of the card, we can't know for sure until bev asks for a card back and they're taken to court over it. Agreements can say anything and everything they want, it's what will stand up in court that is important. I'm just confident that if it would happen to me, I would prevail in court. If they ever ask for yours back and you just hand it back to them without a question, it's your choice, but I'd say it would be a pretty foolish one and I would ask for your info so I could start asking for some of your other stuff myself.
 
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