Further to my thread about dodgy suppliers it appears that Watford Electronics and Savastore could possibly be in serious financial difficulties (see Hexus Lifestyle report today).
Until this situation is clarified it may be advisable to steer well clear.
I was only looking at the site the other night and said to someone that everything I looked at was not in stock with a 1~2 week wait.
This is a shame if they do have problems as I have used them since the early '80, but I have thought they have gone down hill in the last year
ASUS A7N8X nForce 2 AMD Tbred @2012 MHz, 2GB Radeon 9250 Win2000/slackware
LG GSA-4167B - LiteOn SHM-165P6S & NEC ND-3550A Seasonic S12 - 4x Maxtor 200GB WD 74 GB
- - - -
DFI LP RDX200 CF-DR (12/23) Athlon 4200x2 (LDBFE@2.5GHz) Zalman CNPS9500 AM2 Sapphire Radeon X1650XT 24Pipe
2 GB G.SKILL F1-4000USU2-2GBHZ Raptor 74, Maxtor 200GB x2 Hitachi 320GB x2, Eclipse 62 Corsair HX 620, LG GSA H42N, Asus CRW-5232A, Optiarc DVDRW AD-5170A ViewSonic Professional P220F via KVM
thats a shame if it is. got my logitech speakers from them, decent company!
got to RMA my Logitech mouse to them this week, hopefullly it wont all fall apart yet....
The site is down at the moment
http://www.savastore.com/
It has now been bought over with investors
But it is now...intention to invest heavily in the underlying technology behind Savastore.com
As a result of this purchase, Savastore.com is temporarily closed for business.
Original URL: http://www.channelregister.co.uk/200...ord_aftermath/
Watford Electronics left debts of £3.5m
By Mark Ballard
Published Friday 9th February 2007 18:17 GMT
Watford Electronics’s stock remains in the hands of administrators, giving unsecured creditors hope of seeing some of the £3.5m they were owed when the firm collapsed earlier this week.
Watford's cards had been marked since November when it released a troubling set of accounts and trade insurers started putting the squeeze on its credit lines with suppliers.
But distributors were talking to the PC firm's directors about finding a way for it to trade out of its troubles even as recently as last weekend.
Watford's directors failed to return calls placed by The Register this week. However, the firm's financial controller told The Register on Monday that "business is normal" and "the rumours are not true".
But on Wednesday, Watford Electronics went into administration. At 3.30pm that same afternoon, according to a statement posted on the firm's Savastore website that day, a firm called Globally Ltd "purchased the business of Watford Electronics".
Globally had been established just days earlier, according to Companies House. Its registered address is Jessa House, 1 Finway, Luton. Watford Electronics/Savastore also operates from that address.
The Register has established that Globally did not buy Watford's stock and that what there is of it is expected to go a long way to paying creditors.
Unsecured creditors are owed in the region of £3.5m, and are dependent for any return on a condition administrators put on Globally's purchase of Watford and that holds Globally to pay more money to creditors if they have any success with their phoenix venture.
A statement from Watford’s administrators, Smith & Williamson, said: "Shortly after the Company entered Administration, we received an offer for the goodwill and chattel assets of the Company from Globally Limited."
"Following a review of the Company’s financial position, we concluded that there would be no benefit in continuing to trade through the Administration given the significant liabilities that the Administrator was likely to face."
Alasdair Manson who works for Smith & Williamson, confirmed that Globally had been allowed to buy “goodwill and chattel” assets of Watford Electronics for a "token" sum ".
“I've no doubt creditors will get value in due course on the basis that the stock still remains to be released and wasn't included in the deal," he said.
"Any deal that could have been completed by the administrator would have been linked to profitability going forward. If Globally makes a significant profits then additional monies will come back to the creditors," said Manson.
The writing first began appearing on the wall 11 November last year when Watford published its accounts for the year to 30 September 2005.
Though it had grown turnover 30 per cent to almost £50m and as still one of the best known names in the indigenous PC industry it made pre-tax profits of £122.7m After tax and amortization it made £51,800 - a 1 per cent profit margin.
The figures also showed it had "identified" £105,141 of trade debt "not cleared in prior years".
Together with "write-offs", this meant a "total prior year adjustment" of £199,913.
Trade sources say that in the wake of these figures, credit insurers, led by Euler Trade Indemnity started cutting back Watford's insured cover carefully, so as not to frighten anyone into a rout. Euler refused to comment.
The whole channel was rooting for Watford, not the least because it would have been better for everyone if it had been able to trade out of its troubles and keep buying local stock to the tune of £50m.
Andrew Child, director of credit insurance broker Aon Trade Credit, said credit insurers were keen to do what they could for Watford.
"There were meetings discussed with [Watford's] directors. There was a decision to keep the company afloat," he said.
But the meetings, which were scheduled last week, were cancelled at the last minute without explanation.
After the collapse of names such as Tiny, Time (Granville), Elonex and now Watford, Britain's once hopeful PC industry has been crushed by competition from international behemoths.
The thing all these firms had in common said Sukh Rayat, European boss of components supplier Avnet, was that they were all having to compete with "the big guys."
He blamed the manufacturers of the components that go in the PCs for sucking up to the global PC makers and making a rod for their own back.
"The vendors let it happen," he said, "And now the vendors are in the corner as well because the tier ones have got the power. It's a real vicious circle."
The managing director of another PC components distributor said the thing the recent collapses all had in common was the poor relations they managed with their creditors - they crossed their fingers and hoped for the best when they saw the ship was going down instead of turning to their closest allies - their suppliers - for help.
"We work very well with particular companies that are working appropriately, but we tend to be aggressive in these situations - where there's more transparency we work with them," he said.
Computer 2000, which with around £450,000 unpaid is thought to be Watford's largest creditor, had been taking that approach until the surprise arrival of administrators, said Phil James, the distributor's commercial manager.
"I would say that there's still room for these guys, but it's a concerning time for them," he said of the British PC and consumer electronics retail sectors.®
At about 11am on the 7th of april i purchased a new ViewSonic 22inch monitor (the ipod version). Was very excited as i thought i had saved myself £20 over all other merchants who sold the same item.
I registered as a new user and proceded to the checkout where i was asked to register with this new Verified by Visa system - managed by my bank intelligent finance (choice name). Purchase completed. Recieved an email saying that my goods have been dispatched.
At 4pm the same day i click the link on the email to go to order tracking but was greated with a bad request page. I subsequently went to the homepage to find the text that is there now. It pretty much read that the company had been bought and that all orders will be honoured and sorry for the disruption.
I checked my online bank account to find that nothing had been taken from my bank......So i was not that worried at this point...
On the 8th i checked my bank again....£330 had been taken from my bank!!!!!!!!!! I called the bank, they told me that there is nothing they could do!
Have i lost my money!? Is this not fraud! Who can i speak too, i wish i had a credit card now
Simply gutted!
Dunno about your bank, but mine ask that you wait 30 days and if you havent received the goods, they will refund you and then they will take it up with the firm. I'm not sure if this applies when a firm goes bump though.
I'd hold on..
Originally Posted by savastore.com
Savastore Problems - Management, Not Financial ?
Watford Electronics Failure is being posted as financial collapse, but I think that it's poor management of quite straightforward issues which could have been resolved more than twelve months ago, but, like all big companies, they had cut off contact and feedback of messages that they didn't want to hear. About eighteen months ago they stopped packing goods properly, relying on supplier packing and also used unreliable carriers who delighted in mis-handling, all causing goods to be damaged and 'returns' to increase. Oblivious 'management' saw this as a financial problem to be borne by their customers or by suppliers under warranty. Meanwhile, satisfied customers will have been those receiving goods in robust original packing.
As a long time customer going back to being served by Nazir Jessa at Cardiff Road, it's sad to see their collapse, but unless they tackle their real problems, they won't be back !
i'd hold on to that and see if you can RMA directly through logitech. you may not see that mouse again!
i demand more booze...
Thanks gutting, i would be so annoyed if i were you! luckly ive only used them once and that was when they were good. shame its down the pan now though!At about 11am on the 7th of april i purchased a new ViewSonic 22inch monitor (the ipod version). Was very excited as i thought i had saved myself £20 over all other merchants who sold the same item.
I registered as a new user and proceded to the checkout where i was asked to register with this new Verified by Visa system - managed by my bank intelligent finance (choice name). Purchase completed. Recieved an email saying that my goods have been dispatched.
At 4pm the same day i click the link on the email to go to order tracking but was greated with a bad request page. I subsequently went to the homepage to find the text that is there now. It pretty much read that the company had been bought and that all orders will be honoured and sorry for the disruption.
I checked my online bank account to find that nothing had been taken from my bank......So i was not that worried at this point...
On the 8th i checked my bank again....£330 had been taken from my bank!!!!!!!!!! I called the bank, they told me that there is nothing they could do!
Have i lost my money!? Is this not fraud! Who can i speak too, i wish i had a credit card now
Simply gutted!
Just been told about Visa debit card charge back....
see link
do a search on bbc website for "chargeback" Id put a link but this site wont let till i have post 5 posts
Not sure if it will work, told the bank they said they would call me back tomorrow as they didnt know anything about it.
I have equipment RMA'd back to them the day before the went belly up about £300 worth, got nothing back to my emails or phone calls, I had been waiting since November for the RMA to come through and then at the last minute it was rushed through really quickly?? - bet they knew what was happening
I have since bought a laptop from another online store airwave-solutions-store.co.uk, i hadnt heard of them before but a freiend reccomended them to me, they were quick to deliver and it came with a months free support [] which was great for helping me set it up, I reccomend them
Watford or Savastore was one of the two companies that I won't deal with again, Aria was the other, once was enough with both.
I'm sorry to hear that people have lost money but because of the way that company dealt with me, I'm not sorry that the business is no longer trading.
My tale of woe began with me ordering a Maxtor hard disk from them, they sent a cheaper model than I ordered with the same capacity. I complained and RMA'd it to them, that went smoothly enough, I requested that they sent me the correct item. I was suprised when the same item was returned to me with a hand written sticker on the plastic bag it was in, covering the label on the drive with the model number of what I'd ordered written on it, needless to say I wasn't happy and a second RMA happened.
In the end, I did get my money back and Watford / Savastore paid all of the delivery costs, which was 4 sets of postage, so it wasn't all bad.
There are currently 1 users browsing this thread. (0 members and 1 guests)
Posting Permissions
LinkBack URL
About LinkBacks
Reply With Quote