The next day
At 10:40 on 12th February I called the Evesham sales line to enquire about buying a Zieo NX680-HDX – a high end laptop advertised on the Evesham website. The salesperson seemed completely unaware of the situation described to me by the advisor the day before. We got as far as her confirming that she would need my address and payment details to proceed with the order before I said I would need to get back to her. There was never any indication that they were in liquidation or that there would be any reason for me not to proceed with the purchase.
To find out what the legal situation was regarding a company that continues to trade while it’s in liquidation I called the Trading Standards office. After a long sequence of being fobbed-off from one person to another I eventually spoke to Dave Brown at the South West office of Consumer Direct – a free consumer legal advice service.
I told Dave what had happened and, disappointingly, he wasn’t sure what the legal implications of this situation were. Upon consultation with someone who presumably had a better handle on the law, he confirmed that, if Evesham had been willing to sell me something despite being in liquidation, it could be guilty of verbal misrepresentation and misleading advertising. He said he was referring the case to the Trading Standards office (the first people I rang) and gave me a reference number.
Does anyone care?
I then called Andrew Pitts at DTE Leonard Curtis to see if he had any answers to my questions. He said he hadn’t received the fax and to send it again. It was successfully sent again at 17:33 on the 12th and I rang Andrew immediately to see if he’d received it. I was told that he’d left for the day, but a colleague confirmed that the fax had arrived and had been put on Andrew’s desk.
I rang again at 09:10 on the 13th Feb and Andrew told me that he would email me if he had any comment. I said that I needed to know if he was going to answer my questions in order to decide whether to publish my story now or await his answer. He said he would try to let me know by the end of the day.
The main consequence of my inquiries has been a feeling that nobody is being held accountable for whatever is happening at Evesham Technology. Help desk staff are saying the company is in liquidation, while sales people are still apparently accepting orders. I tried to buy a PC from the website this morning (10:20, 13th Feb) and was still able to proceed to the point at which I was asked for payment without hindrance.
The administrators of Evesham Technology, DTE Leonard Curtis, have been very unhelpful so far and seem reluctant to answer perfectly reasonable questions. Trading standards doesn’t seem to be able to offer even rudimentary advice to consumers and we’ve yet to see if they do anything now that I’ve made them aware of the situation. In spite of bold statements on the matter, the law and the financial community seems to have no problem with the concept of phoenix companies, in which the assets of one Limited Company are moved to another legal entity, without moving the liabilities and often with the directors being the same for both companies.
At no stage have I encountered any action to protect consumers or any indication that anyone apart from Evesham’s customers has any interest in the situation there. And then we wonder why there are hardly any domestic system builders left.I must stress that the one person at Evesham who would speak to me – the advisor I first spoke to – was very helpful and appears to be as much a victim of this situation as anyone else.
If anyone has any further information on the situation, has had experience dealing with Evesham Technologies or would simply like to comment on this story, please use the HEXUS community to do so.
Further reading: Evesham accountability outrage
