Camerabox go under

Sorry if this has already been noted on the forum, but if not here are the details:

http://www.camerabox.co.uk/

Dave

That's our ridiculous legal system for you. Even the unlucky people who paid for things in the last few days will only recover a few pennies on the pound. Seems a bit fraudulent if you ask me, the operators of Camerabox must have known they were about to go under yet they continued taking payments. How can it be legal to take those payments in the last few days, knowing you are about to go bust and won't be able to honour any deliveries, but then keep the money and use it to pay off other creditors?

In the US if you pay some creditors just before you go bust but not others the liquidators can sue them to get the money back!

K.

They're not the only ones to act like this. I suspect a lot of bankruptcies occur when the bank gets fed up with making loans to a lame duck business (which has been carrying on as normal rather than making an effort to sort their problems out).

Germany seems rather notorious for this - banks supporting firms no matter what, even when the losses are ongoing and the firm shows incredible arrogance in their refusal to address their management/manufacturing/marketing/pricing problems which are causing the losses.

Naturally we have no idea whether any of this applies to Camerabox. They could equally well have been the victims of a similar bank stunt to that pulled on someone I met a while ago whose accounts were frozen despite their having steady cashflow and a full order book. In their case, the bank wasn't happy with the way they were ploughing the profits back into growing the business rather than leaving them in the bank (not much money for a bank there...)

So true, and it includes payments to contractors for services rendered even up to 6 months in the past, and contractors' and even employees' expense claims for same period. And sometimes employee accrued vacation. Usual case of the big guys over the little un's. I'd stopped working for a client due to slow payments, not only did I lose all unpaid invoices (expected), but they clawed back all pay up to almost a year earlier! And left me with big legal bills. Company paid off its execs though through parachutes, and company continued to operate - under a new name - with same staff/business.

it is illegal to keep trading if there is no reasonable prospect of a business avoiding bankruptcy. of course, it's a bit of a grey area as to exactly when that point is reached but no doubt it will come out in the wash

not much comfort for people who have parted with cash and got nothing in return, but maybe they are covered by their credit cards?

Most online retailers have a clause that says a contract does not exist until they dispatch the goods.... so refunds should be possible?