HMV Not Accepting Vouchers - Surely This Is Fraud

ValHaller

mommacrab wrote: »

You are wrong.

WHSmiths do not purchase 3rd party gift cards. They act as agents.

When a 3rd party gift card is sold, the money is transferred through the banking system to the company that the gift card relates to, in this case HMV. WHSmiths do not have the money, in this case HMV does (or it's administrators). You will not get your money back from WHSmith and nor are you entitled to as they do not have it.

Nothing to do with where the money is. The notice stating that they act as agents means that your contract is with HMV

mjm3346

Almost £5,000,0000 a week is wasted on giftcards that go unspent/expire


http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-17644528

falcon21

I'm glad someone posted about this - it stinks!

I went in today and also had a voucher refused. (It was bought by an Aussie relative who was new in the country and obviously hadn't read they were in trouble. That said, neither had I, and looking back it seems to say there is a profits warning to shareholders - no indication that they are on the brink of going bust).

It beggar belief that they can refuse to honour a voucher, but the practicalities are this: the company is in Administration which gives them some protection from their creditors. In effect, we are creditors and we have just joined what it probably a very long queue, including some major banks and financial institutions, who always seem to get their money first when the !!!! hits the fan. Apparently their suppliers (ie the major record labels and film studios) have been very supportive and some even lent them money during their difficulties. It is apparently in their interest to stop Amazon, i-tunes etc gaining a monopoly.

My only suggestion is that we start a consumer campaign to get our vouchers honoured, along the lines of the Farepak campaign.

An extreme tactic could be to get together a consortium of creditors (ie. people with unused vouchers) and try to force them into bankruptcy through the courts. This would take a lot of time, effort and co-ordination, but hopefully the threat of this hanging alone might give the Administrators and other creditors pause for thought. It sounds like a lot of them want to get the business sold as a going concern.

Anyone interested?

falcon21

PS. the Administrators are Deloitte.

People who own vouchers should at least register as creditors with them. Will try and dig out the details.

lucy03

mjm3346 wrote: »

Vouchers as a gift are both thoughtless and selfish and offer no advantage over cash.

With vouchers not only is there the risk of a company going under or the voucher remaining unspent and expired (as many many £1,000,000s do every year) you dictate where someone should shop, possibly removing the chance for them to get the best deal or exactly what they wanted.

I'm not sure that giving a gift of any kind is thoughtless and selfish. If someone sends me flowers I don't think "that's a waste of thirty pounds I could have gone and bought wine with, how selfish". Or if someone sent me a voucher for a meal I wouldn't think "what a selfish individual, I wanted to go to McDonalds".

lazer

falcon21 wrote: »

I'm glad someone posted about this - it stinks!

I went in today and also had a voucher refused. (It was bought by an Aussie relative who was new in the country and obviously hadn't read they were in trouble. That said, neither had I, and looking back it seems to say there is a profits warning to shareholders - no indication that they are on the brink of going bust).

It beggar belief that they can refuse to honour a voucher, but the practicalities are this: the company is in Administration which gives them some protection from their creditors. In effect, we are creditors and we have just joined what it probably a very long queue, including some major banks and financial institutions, who always seem to get their money first when the !!!! hits the fan. Apparently their suppliers (ie the major record labels and film studios) have been very supportive and some even lent them money during their difficulties. It is apparently in their interest to stop Amazon, i-tunes etc gaining a monopoly.

My only suggestion is that we start a consumer campaign to get our vouchers honoured, along the lines of the Farepak campaign.

An extreme tactic could be to get together a consortium of creditors (ie. people with unused vouchers) and try to force them into bankruptcy through the courts. This would take a lot of time, effort and co-ordination, but hopefully the threat of this hanging alone might give the Administrators and other creditors pause for thought. It sounds like a lot of them want to get the business sold as a going concern.

Anyone interested?

No-one gets their money first when a company goes into administration - if the company is wound up all assets will be sold etc and the proceeds will be then be paid to all creditors at the same rate - ie: 20p for every £1 owed.

I am not sure if you can register as a creditor if you have a gift card, but I assume you can as the reason for not accepting the gift card is due to that fact that it would be treating one creditor as preferential to another - so to get a return for your gift card (even a small one) you must inform the administrators.

ValHaller

falcon21 wrote: »

... My only suggestion is that we start a consumer campaign to get our vouchers honoured, along the lines of the Farepak campaign.

An extreme tactic could be to get together a consortium of creditors (ie. people with unused vouchers) and try to force them into bankruptcy through the courts. This would take a lot of time, effort and co-ordination, but hopefully the threat of this hanging alone might give the Administrators and other creditors pause for thought. It sounds like a lot of them want to get the business sold as a going concern.

Anyone interested?

A better campaign would be to get people not to buy vouchers and make it very bad manners to give them as presents, because they can be eaten up if the company goes bust.. That would get rid of them and the problems that go with them when a retailer goes bust.

halibut2209

lazer wrote: »

No-one gets their money first when a company goes into administration - if the company is wound up all assets will be sold etc and the proceeds will be then be paid to all creditors at the same rate - ie: 20p for every £1 owed.

I thought the adminstrators themselves and the taxman got paid before anyone else.

falcon21

halibut2209 wrote: »

I thought the adminstrators themselves and the taxman got paid before anyone else.

Exactly. And if the poster above think that banks don't have ways of extracting as much as they can before everyone else he is deluded. I have it on first hand authority from someone who works for one an Isolvency Practitioner.

falcon21

kronenbourg wrote: »

Bit daft buying them in the 1st place , HMV have been on the brink for months and now they finally have gone into administration

Cue a slew of sob stories like the comet debacle with people having £100s worth of useless vouchers

keyser666 wrote: »

I am with you on this one.

zenseeker wrote: »

Why did you think giving gift vouchers was better than just giving the equivalent in cash? You know cash can be used anywhere, right? And if a store goes bust, cash still has a value.

mjm3346 wrote: »

Vouchers as a gift are both thoughtless and selfish and offer no advantage over cash.

With vouchers not only is there the risk of a company going under or the voucher remaining unspent and expired (as many many £1,000,000s do every year) you dictate where someone should shop, possibly removing the chance for them to get the best deal or exactly what they wanted.

Do you lot slow down at car crashes?

I am struggling to understand how your smugness and glee at other peoples' misfortune enriches you. Perhaps you also enjoyed seeing Farepak go the wall and families have to go without Christmas food and presents because they were 'too stupid' or lacking in discipline to put money aside in a savings account?

Personally, I don't buy vouchers for myself or as presents, but you can surely understand why a typical voucher buyer, such as an elderly relative who is slightly baffled by the modern yoot, might resort to buying one.

Anyway, having made the point about how vouchers are stupid to people who probably didn't buy them anyway, perhaps we can back to the important points in hand.