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

emilyj

Thinking about possible refunds to people who paid by Visa Debit cards, I was wondering two things.

Who repays the money? Your bank, or Farepak's bank?

And I know that HBOS was the bank that loaned money to the EHR group.

But who was the bank for Farepak Ltd? Was that HBOS as well?

(Kleeneze's own bank is, I think, NatWest).

I was just thinking that if it is your own bank that has to repay you, then once they realise they could have to repay a lot of millions of pounds of money, they might start to wake up and take an interest!

xxdougiexx

Yip - Farepaks bankers were.... you guessed it HBOS.... Suprise Suprise !!!

emilyj

So now we need to know which bank has to refund Visa Debit card payers -the bank of the person who paid, or the bank of the person to whom the payment was made.
(By the way, I think I understand that the re-payment will come to you from your own bank .But will they actually pay you, or will they reclaim it from Farepak's bank ie HBOS?)

Jennica28

what are the ebay listings?

Natural_Born_Klingon

I've seen several posts in here about Park Hampers, so I thought I'd try to put some info about them forward. Until three months ago, I'd worked for them in their IT departments since Jan 2000. The hamper business side has always been the strongest of their groups, and they're recently been dropping the parts of their business that have not been making profit, and weren't expected to (hence the "until three months ago"!).

I'm still in contact with people who work there, and while they expect to take some bad publicity, they are still financially sound. They have to be - the major shareholder wants to sell his shares so that he can retire!

They sold the Home Collected Credit business at the end of July for £8 million. That was a loan book of £64 million, but was losing at least £250k/year.

I'm in no way suggesting that anyone should use Park; I can see the attraction of the "hamper" package, but even a low interest, instant access account is a better deal (and I would have said that even when I worked for them - I've NEVER used their services!).

You guys should see the mark-up on the actual goods; they have staff sales and I've just got one of the guys there to get me a Robosapien and Junior (V1, unfortunately) for £17 ....

One of our closest friends lost money in this Farepak fiasco, so I wish everybody the best in getting their money back, however it can be done.

moosetastic

relynutz wrote:

wasnt really sure what to expect on watchdog, but cant cant believe how much wasn't on watchdog!!!!!!:mad: :mad:
it was so breif

I agree, and the person they got on speaking about it wasn't exactly vocal either.

At least Watchdog are going to be keeping tabs on this, so anything new should be sent to them I think as well.

emilyj

I'm still in contact with people who work there, and while they expect to take some bad publicity, they are still financially sound. They have to be - the major shareholder wants to sell his shares so that he can retire!

Interesting you should say this.

I know that the Directors seem like the obvious "villains " here, and certainly they have much to answer for, by allowing Farepak customers' money to be put at risk by using it in Group activities.

But if you read the Group accounts, you will see that they are all shareholders and/or have substantial share option packages, so they did have considerable personal interest in keeping EHR afloat, and have (like all EHR shareholders including me, ) lost everything.

sandfacer

park hampers about 7 weeks ago tryed to buy out farepack this was refused guess by .... hbos if the takeover had goneahead no customer would have lost out only possible loser would have been hbos
i phoned hbos for a statment on it this morning they quoted bank code of conduct

michjoe

karren wrote:

I just found them too, there must have been a glitch, but how will you prove that people are genuine fairpak customers?

I think that the people trying to raise money for fairpak customers on ebay have asked for proof if you are a customer and they will then put your name on a list.

alwaysbusyMUM

zsazsa wrote:

Click this link and it will take you to tada - Farepak's Accounts section where you can log in with your account number and take a print off of all monies paid by you

https://www.farepak.co.uk/accounts.asp

OMG - THANK YOU.
The last statement I've been able to find is dated July!! even though I have my bank statements to prove payment, each time I saw the payment had been credited I shredded the farepak statments - 2 weeks before everything went belly up, they rang me to say I couldnt have the asda vouchers I'd ordered because they had to be ordered through freedom2shop, long story - so they transfered what I'd overpaid to freedom, and then all subsuquent payments paid that off, the problem was I'd never recieved any paperwork at all. All I got was my new account number, and password.
SO ONCE AGAIN a HUGE BIG thank you, I've just got onto both of my accounts and printed the statements off.