Farepak in administration: What to do? (Merged Thread)

seapol41

Hi

I have read the comments issued on your forum and the forum on https://www.unfairpak.co.uk which I find very interesting.
I am affected by the Farepak situation also, but not as a saver.
I have a few comments to make about certain things which the general public do not seem to have been given the right information on.
For now, I would like to clarify the situation over the Choice Gift Voucher. Most people are assuming that Farepaks troubles 'started' when Choice went into administration (bust!!) in February 2006. However, if you read into the statement issued by PWC (Choice's administrators) carefully, baring in mind the news over Farepak now and that issued by EHRG in August, you could possibly conclude differently?? But these are only my views!!!!!!!!
The Statement issued was:

01/02/2006 09:24
Edward Klempka and Ian Stokoe of PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP were appointed joint administrators of KeyCheck Limited and Choice Gift Vouchers Limited, one of the UK’s leading supplier of gift vouchers on Tuesday 31 January 2006.

KeyCheck Limited is a non-trading holding company; its wholly-owned subsidiary, Choice Gift Vouchers Limited, trades as a clearing house for retail vouchers from offices in Gateshead. In this role it issues Choice vouchers to its customers which then on-sell them to the general public to use in retail outlets as payment for goods supplied. Many major high street retailers accept the vouchers in lieu of cash.

Following the administration, retailers will no longer accept Choice vouchers. Accordingly, the joint administrators urge members of the public who have vouchers which are still unredeemed, to approach the organisation they bought the vouchers from to seek a refund or be issued with alternative vouchers.

Edward Klempka, joint administrator and partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers said:

“It is regrettable that as a direct result of two major customers failing to pay their January accounts, Choice could not meet its payment obligations to retailers. As such, the directors of Choice had no alternative but to seek the protection of administration.

"The administrators will continue to manage the business while seeking a buyer and will do all we can to ensure that members of the public are not unduly inconvenienced.”

ENDS



For more information contact:



Stephanie Howel
BRS PR Manager, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP
Tel:020 7213 2421
Mobile:07734 456098



Edward Klempka
Tel:0113 289 4247

infiniti77

Surley the Directors resonsible for this, should be taken to task by the authorities, given that monies were still being accepted after, it was widely acknowledged that the company were in a difficult situation finacially.

Zena_Barton

have been both an agent and customer with Farepak over the last 10+ years and am at a loss to imagine how this current situation could have happened. Surely the company must have known at least 12 months ago that there was a problem but continued to take peoples money all this year. People pay in money all year long but dont receive any items until November/December, so if creditors include suppliers of goods this relates to 2005. Is this not fraud??? If so is there anything we can do on this front?

lebrockers

The government normally help on all weird, wonderful and pointless situations. They plow money i to rediculess ideas and help in the wrong areas. It's about time they done the right thing, I think they should get involved to ensure peoples christmas's are not ruined. After all, we pay taxes and would expect support from local councils/government.

Let see if the rulers of our wonderful country can. Writing to local MP's is going to be the best way forward to get the notice required. It may be a long shot but money has been lost and families will suffer!

zsazsa_3

Zena_Barton wrote:

have been both an agent and customer with Farepak over the last 10+ years and am at a loss to imagine how this current situation could have happened. Surely the company must have known at least 12 months ago that there was a problem but continued to take peoples money all this year. People pay in money all year long but dont receive any items until November/December, so if creditors include suppliers of goods this relates to 2005. Is this not fraud??? If so is there anything we can do on this front?

There is nothing "we" can do on possible fraud. I have emailed the Serious Fraud Office and received a reply basically saying that if the administrators of Farepak feel it appropriate, then they have the right to refer the matter to the Serious Fraud Office.

zsazsa_3

lebrockers wrote:

The government normally help on all weird, wonderful and pointless situations. They plow money i to rediculess ideas and help in the wrong areas. It's about time they done the right thing, I think they should get involved to ensure peoples christmas's are not ruined. After all, we pay taxes and would expect support from local councils/government.

Let see if the rulers of our wonderful country can. Writing to local MP's is going to be the best way forward to get the notice required. It may be a long shot but money has been lost and families will suffer!

I think you are perfectly correct in that we need to continue writing to our local MP/MSPs or both if the case maybe also for our Welsh Counterparts (sorry I am unsure of the title of your local government - maybe AM but stand corrected if wrong). We have to keep the pressure up both with local government and Westminster. I for one think the more people that email Ian McCartnery the consumer minister who seems to be really pushing for something to be done would be a fantastic idea also.

zsazsa_3

infiniti77 wrote:

Surley the Directors resonsible for this, should be taken to task by the authorities, given that monies were still being accepted after, it was widely acknowledged that the company were in a difficult situation finacially.

It will be down to the administrators of the company now to decide this or not!

zsazsa_3

http://www.upmystreet.com/commons/email/l/648.html

If you use this link you can email Ian McCartney.

grilli

My mum has lost a smaller ammount of money than most have posted on here, she wants to know how she goes about getting anything back. Are there any letters already setup like there were with the bank charges?

emilyj

I do not know much about how the Farepak business worked, but from this forum it looks as if some people play "catch-up" in September/October so they pay in all the money by the closing date.

Is this true?

Have any agents "made up" payments for customers who could not afford all that was due, with the intention of receiving it back when the vouchers arrived?

The reason I ask is that, the more I think about it, the more concerned I become about the role of HBOS.

Why did they not say in mid-August, when the shares were suspended, that they had no intention of increasing the borrowing facility?

Seems to me they callously waited till Farepak had collected as much cash as possible to make sure they got all the money that was due to them - no matter who else lost out.

The Findel deal was obviously sitting there in the wings, as is came into operation the same day as the Administrators were appointed. So those with full access to information had a pretty good idea the bank was not going to come up with the extra facility.

Maybe if it can be proved that the bank deliberately allowed Farepak to continue accepting money just so they could get their money it would encourage the Government to find a way to return more money to customers.