Beware - Domestic Appliance Direct!!!!!

woolie1946

:mad: DAD or Domestic Appliance Direct appear to be an entirely fraudulent internet company who don't deliver orders and also take money from your card to line their pockets.

On 9th Sept I ordered (via their secure payment site) a breadmaker costing £76.99, paying by Mastercard. When nothing had been delivered after two weeks I e-mailed to ask what was happening and received a very polite reply saying that the item was out of stock, but offering a 15% refund if I was prepared to wait another two weeks for delivery on the 2nd October. I agreed, but yesterday nothing arrived! Getting suspicious I searched the net and found that I was not the only person in this situation. Smelling a rat I logged onto my credit card account to find that on 30th September the same company had made not one, but TWO transactions on my account for £599.99!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

They have now posted a notice on their website pleading financial difficulties are preventing them from fulfilling orders, yet I'm the one with the financial difficulties!

I immediately stopped my card and am now trying to organise some sort of collective action by all those affected via Trading Standards, Watchdog and any other appropriate route. Can Martin help us in any way to make this more effective and stop these fraudsters in their tracks?

darkcloudi

If you paid by Mastercard, I will assume you used a credit card why not ask the credit card company to reclaim the fraudlent transactions. Just tell them about what had happended and they can recover your costs.

I don't believe you need to go through some form of collective action through trading standards as you suggest.

sharpy2010

woolie1946 wrote: »

Can Martin help us in any way to make this more effective and stop these fraudsters in their tracks?

They might not even be fraudsters. They may be a genuine company with good intentions who have seen some bad luck. That doesnt explain the extra money they have debited, but it could be a mistake.

Good luck getting your money back though!

Jemma-T

Looks like we'll all have to guess the URL and waste time looking for it.

Dodgy, fraud and simply having problems isn't the same thing.

sharpy2010

It wasnt particularly easy to find the URL either, took me about 5 minutes of searching...

However, that was yesterday, and I've no intention of looking for it again!

rsykes2000

Extremely easy to find the URL, I typed in https://www.domesticappliancedirect.co.uk and it worked. Took approx 10 seconds of typing.

oldone_2

Taking two payments of £599.99 for an order value of £76.99 is not a misfortune,error,bad luck or due to banks calling in their funds - it is fraud and theft pure and simple.

Jemma-T

sharpy2010 wrote: »

...took me about 5 minutes of searching...

rsykes2000 wrote: »

Extremely easy to find the URL, I typed in www.domesticappliancedirect.co.uk and it worked. Took approx 10 seconds of typing.

5 minutes or 10 seconds multiplied by at least 212 people who've opened this thread. That's a LOT of wasted time.

sharpy wrote:

However, that was yesterday, and I've no intention of looking for it again!

Exactly.



And on my first visit via that very handy hyperlink:


Dear Sir or Madam,
We MEIFANG CHEN LIMITED trading as DomesticApplianceDirect.co.uk started off as a small company with a very strong business plan and strategy; unfortunately due to the bank seizing our funds on receiving towering volume of sales we regret our current situation.

In hope that the bank would release our funds we had managed to negotiate with our suppliers for a better deal and offered our customer's 15-20% discount on the invoice value, but the bank has let us down once again. We can now make no payment to our suppliers, and therefore can't deliver any goods.

On speaking with our Merchant bankers regarding the refunds to the consumers, we have been advised to request our customers to cancel the transactions with their personal banks. For those customers, who placed their orders recently and has not yet been charged please consider them as being cancelled.

We are now in the process of writing to the relevant authorities, Trading Standards and VISA to acknowledge them on the company's present situation.

We strongly apologise for any inconvenience caused unintentionally.

Kind regards,

M Chen
Managing Director
Meifang Chen Limited
4b Amersham Road
London, SW14 6QE
United Kingdom
T: +44 (0) 845 299 7673
F: +44(0) 207 657 4939
E: customerservice@domesticappliancedirect.co.uk


I've never heard of the company and I'd certainly not consider any of these small companies unless it was absolutely necessary and the purchase was covered. Small companies are getting hammered lately sadly but I think small companies should really stay small especially if they need massive bank funding. Up until lately banks were throwing cash at 'good ideas' and that's all stop. For now.

student_84

The postcode SW14 6QE doesnt exist on royal mails website, if you havent already done so contact your card issuer to recoup the funds and get a replacement card issued

ElkyElky

LOL I would never buy from a company that has 'Direct' in its title. I've stumbled across quite a few fraudulent shopping websites named similar.

PROLIANT

Wow, nowt like having a poke at the small business owner, I mean, just because they don't have all the bells and whistles of a huge corporate giant doesn’t mean they are less likely to supply you with your goods, I make a deliberate point of trying the small "local" business first for stuff I need before going to the big shops, at the end of the day you are covered by your bank if things go wrong, albeit you shop on eBay, you are more likely to get ripped off by some idiot on there than a reputable small business. :rolleyes: