Administrator

Hi, The seller has already been restricted from making posts on the forum (including in the For Sale board) straight after you initially reported this. They do however still have access to their private messages so that they can contact you. If its clear that they have no intention of resolving then they will be permanently banned. I would recommend making contact with the company as you will require evidence that the item is stolen if you plan to report this to the police. If so there is useful information on the Citizen's Advice website: https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/somethings-gone-wrong-with-a-purchase/if-you-think-youve-bought-stolen-goods

Unfortunately the cleaning company still has a Facebook page called 'East dulwich forum' which is what you are seeing here. Facebook Group = a place where other people can participate. Facebook Page = a profile page for a business where only the business can post. I will be disputing the name of the cleaning company's Facebook Page as well as its obviously designed to mislead people that its related to this website, but the main aim was to prevent them using 'East Dulwich Forum' as their group name, which has been somewhat achieved (even if they've just just appended '& Herne Hill' 😆)

This is a new group is owned by myself. Its not the 'fake' cleaning company owned East Dulwich Forum group which has recently renamed itself. I created this with the intention to claim our IP on Facebook and reserve the eastdulwichforum group name, rather than leave it open for someone with bad intentions to claim like before. I am using it to promote this website and share content / interesting threads from here. Obviously it will in no way replace the website.

I have split the Poundland -> Tesco Express discussion into another topic for easier reading. Feel free to continue the discussion about it there.

Just to summarize my email response to the original poster: Selling sharp bladed knives online, including utility knives, is now regulated (more info here). Age verification needs to be performed at the point of delivery. Whether this applies to 2nd hand person-to-person sales (like selling on EDF) is a bit of a grey area. However the fact that EBay completely bans listing of knives in the UK (source) suggests that their legal expertise has decided its not allowed, so its best for us to follow suit. So unfortunately, no Swiss Army knives for sale in the For Sale board and the rule stands.

In summary: East Dulwich Forum was founded in 2006 before Facebook existed. A few years ago, someone maliciously started using the East Dulwich Forum identity and created a Facebook Group of the same East Dulwich Forum name and used many of the slogans, phrases from this website. This person has been using their Facebook Group to promote a Cleaning and Building business they are connected with. They are using it for their own financial gain. They apparently suppress links / comments from rival trades businesses to make sure theirs is the one seen to be recommended. People often get confused between this website and the Facebook Group. I regularly receive sent via the 'Contact Us' page on this website asking questions about something 'on the Facebook Group' despite it being completely unconnected. Furthermore there have been times where the Facebook Group owner has made comments or decisions to damage the reputation of the East Dulwich Forum 'brand' (an example here). I'm not a legal expert but in my opinion, the clearly amounts to maliciously 'Passing Off' as another business. Note - this is different to copyright or trademark infringement which would be difficult to claim against (more info about the differences here - its quite complex!). Recently I submitted a complaint to Facebook to notify them of this page passing off as eastdulwichforum.co.uk. Surprisingly, it appears that this complaint was considered and as a result, they have (slightly) modified the name of their group. A small win. To be honest, I wouldn't usually care about this type of thing but it was damaging the reputation of this forum. And for the record, there are many of other legitimate local Facebook Groups which I encourage people to use - ones which don't try to make a financial gain by passing off as a long running business.

In the last 24 hours this thread has become farcical. The majority of the posts were completely unrelated to the topic and full of personal attacks from both sides. Posts from the last 24 hours have been removed and the thread will be locked for the next 2 days. (changed to until 26th Dec due to life commitments.

Agreed.

There were a couple of people reporting this post. Just to confirm, the photo has come directly from the Met police and allowed for media use, so its fine to re-post it here.

There is deliberately nowhere to enter your phone number, name, address etc anywhere when registering an account on this forum. There never has been. There is no way to attach this sort of personal information to your account. If someone says that EDF has given your phone number, then this is a lie. No personal information is sold to any third party and it is not collected in the first place.

Agree. I've just split this year's posts into a new 2024 topic.

Hi Moovart, Sorry to hear that. So firstly, let me make it clear that I have a number of methods at my disposal to ensure reviews posted on EDF are legitimate. I'm not going to go into detail exactly the techniques as this will make it easier for people to game the system. However I would like to make it clear that: Every single review posted is checked, especially for newly registered users. Any reviews posted via IP hiding tools (VPNs) are removed. If you have multiple accounts on EDF, you will be detected. If even one review get detected as fake or originating from a person connected to the business, all mention of the offending business is completely removed from the forum and permanently blacklisted (even if you have 100s of legit ones). In the last 1.5 years since owning the forum, I have blacklisted 8 trades businesses. All reference to them have deleted and they will never allowed to be mentioned on the forum again. One of these businesses I mentioned (an Electrician) had around 100 reviews, probably many of those legitimate. But as soon as I found a evidence of a review posted by the owners account beyond all reasonable doubt, all reviews were removed. If a business is genuinely posting fake reviews, then they are taking a huge risk especially if they have years of feedback on EDF already. One slip up and they are gone. So this is a valid observation to make. What I'd say is that on EDF, we get thousands of people visiting the forum per day but only around 50% of these people have accounts and actively post on the forum. Many people even register accounts on the forum but prefer to stay as 'lurkers' (and there's nothing wrong with that!). Many people who visit the forum don't live in East Dulwich (e.g. landlords, people living in other areas of South London) but still visit with the sole intention of finding tradespeople. The benefit EDF has over other review sites (like Checkatrade, MyBuilder etc) is that if you want to discount the '1 post' and 'newly registered account' feedback from your research, then you can. On those websites I mentioned, don't get to see profiles of people who leave feedback so you have no idea where these are coming from. Just to add, I absolutely do not trust Checkatrade at all (I will provide evidence of convicted scammers who currently have active profiles when I get time in the future!) This is a good example of why we see more positive than negative reviews in the trades industry. One scathing review for a tradesperson can be very bad when its someone's only source of income. While leaving a bad review for a restaurant, bar, product etc is not so bad and can be done relatively anonymously. To be clear, you are welcome to post 'average' or 'negative' reviews of anyone on EDF and it won't be deleted, as long as its honest, factual and (if possible), with evidence. If you do not want to post it publicly, you are welcome to send me a private message and I will note it - if more such feedback is given then I'll look into it further.

The last few posts were off-topic and sour, so removed.

This is a very old thread, but I'd like to bump it up because 'Will' (aka Scott Pike and various other names) has recently become active again and is offering handyman services in the area. They recently registered an account on the forum called HandymanDulwich which I have banned immediately as soon as I discovered the connection. I will be messaging anyone who appears to have been in contact with him recently. I have had no reports of him scamming people recently, but based on the feedback from a few years ago you'd be well advised to stay clear.