Tailor-MADE disaster for furniture customers

ONLINE furniture retailer Made.com – one of the darlings of the pandemic with mega-sales during lockdown – went into administration yesterday with hundreds of job losses and thousands of customers left in the dark about their purchases. Touch wood, some 4,500 deliveries currently with courier firms should be on their way to customers. But the firm’s collapse means another 12,000 or so unfulfilled UK orders cannot be completed and people will not get a refund direct from the firm. After being founded in 2010, it was valued at a staggering £775million last year after floating on the London Stock Exchange. But more recently, households cut back on big-ticket purchases and global supply chain issues left people waiting months for their orders.

While Next is buying the brand name and website for £3.4million, it will not be picking up existing stock or fulfilling outstanding orders.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW

If you’re affected, your best chance of getting your money back is if you purchased goods using a credit card.

Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act means you can make a claim for purchases over £100 (but under £30,000) made on your credit card. If you paid by debit card within the last 120 days for any amount, you are also in luck.

You should make a chargeback claim (sometimes called a “disputed transaction”) via your bank, which will then try and reclaim money from the retailer’s bank. In both cases, you should be able to reclaim all your money.

While Made.com typically sourced furniture from smaller producers – rather than making anything itself – your contract was with the online giant so there is no way of chasing the actual makers for your missing goods (and they may well be owed monies, too).

If you paid by bank transfer, you can make a claim to the administrators but you are only likely to receive a refund after all the firm’s other debts have been paid.

It’s a horrible situation for everyone involved, especially at this time of year, but this is why I always recommend that big purchases should be made using credit cards for added consumer protection.