Help please!...Our business has been conned!

icecreamcastle

Hello,

Thank you in advance for your time and any help - hopefully, this is the correct forum to post in.

We hired a distribution company to distribute our publication for the last 2 months. We have since discovered, they have not delivered any of them! We have ample of evidence in both the failure to do the work and the work they agreed to undertake.

Thankfully, we paid via PayPal and PayPal have been extremely helpful and it looks extremely promising we will receive the distribution costs back.

However, we are still around £8000 out of pocket due to our print costs (we haven't received our publications back) and we have also lost a lot of custom due to the failure to deliver.

My questions are:

1. Are our missing publications now classed as stolen items? They went straight from our printers to the distributor. We paid for and own the publication. In law, is this theft?

2. If yes, do we report this to the police or somebody else?

3. What is the best course of action to take or who do we contact in regards to attempting to recoup our print expenses and loss of earnings?

Thank you once again for your time and help. I've tried to keep this first post as brief as possible but can fill in more details if required.

Pennywise

You need to engage a solicitor as this is a commercial/business contractual issue. Police won't be involved as it's not theft - you have them the material.

MrJones1

You had a contract with a distribution company to distribute your publications. But it has later turned out that they have breached the contract by not delivering the publications. You have the evidence to prove this.

There is a legal route that you can take and you seem to have the upper hand with the evidence you have. You will at least be able to get the money you paid them for the distribution and the print cost. Loss of profit is also something you could claim.

What you need to do now is to get in touch with a solicitor. Sometimes it's enough with them sending letters to the distribution company. Sometimes the case will have to go to court. Since this case is about several thousands of pounds, I cannot see any reason why you shouldn't take this case further.

icecreamcastle

Many thanks for your replies. Yes, we did think seeing a solicitor was probably the next step. We are only a small company, so this is a big chunk of money we have currently lost.

Loss of earnings could be slightly more difficult to give an exact figure (although we have definitely lost custom) but we know the exact print costs lost.

Basically, this has hit us hard so we'd like to move as quickly as possible taking the correct actions. We also believe the distribution company is a 'phoenix', so we need to act fast if we have any chance of recouping our losses.

Thank you once again for all your help. I'm guessing we should notify trading standards too?

hollydays

You could ring action fraud and talk to them about corporate fraud
http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud-az-corporate%20fraud

Link about a company
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-20934991

AndyMc.....

hollydays wrote: »

You could ring action fraud and talk to them about corporate fraud
http://www.actionfraud.police.uk/fraud-az-corporate%20fraud

Link about a company
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-20934991

If you actually knew anything about action fraud you wouldn't have posted that.

bengalknights

As already stated you need a solicitor (ideally one that specialises in corporate law)

After this they can judge the seriousness and to what compensation should be due.

MrJones1

To give you an idea of how to measure the loss of earnings. Just as you say it can be slightly difficult
to give an exact figure. However, you could compare your sales between the period you wanted the
fliers to be distributed this year and same period last year. If there is a reduction in sales, you can
make an educated guess and conclude that the distribution company's breach of the contract caused
this.

Once again, I would like to stress that it's important that you get in touch with a solicitor. I don't want
to see your case fail, because you have lost several thousands of pounds.

Mojisola

icecreamcastle wrote: »

We hired a distribution company to distribute our publication for the last 2 months. We have since discovered, they have not delivered any of them!

However, we are still around £8000 out of pocket due to our print costs (we haven't received our publications back)

Have you asked for the publications back?

icecreamcastle

Yes Mojisola, we have asked for the publications back (obviously, they are out of date now too). We have been told many contradicting lies but the company claims they don't have them.

Manxman_in_exile

icecreamcastle wrote: »

Yes Mojisola, we have asked for the publications back (obviously, they are out of date now too). We have been told many contradicting lies but the company claims they don't have them.

Have they explained why they don't have them?