Openpandora Ltd (UK) Struck off email


Well - I don't know if you guys think there's any point, but I've objected officially to the strike off application.

This can be done if you are a creditor by sending an email with the objection and any supporting information to enquiries@companieshouse.gov.uk

I was very suprised when I spoke to companies house today to find that not one person had objected. I suggest everyone who can does - If only to prompt an investigation. It may be that nothing untoward has taken place, but I think there's enough doubt that an investigation would be welcome.

I am thinking of following this up with a moneyclaim online application for the amount I paid. I'm not sure it will be worth it, but if companies house and HMRC investigate and find that there are irregualities with drawings and business to business transfers, then it may be succesfull.

The thing that really stings, is that Openpandora LTD were actually in breech of contract quite early on, and they broke several trading standards rules. I was aware of this but I thought, by not pressuring them and waiting as long as it took, I was a supporter.

I guess I was nieve for not forseeing this end result. I also said, "thats not going to be popular in a million years, its too silly' when I first heard 'What does the fox say" so my judgment seems way off.

Anyway - I wonder what you guys think. I may just go through the motions on a matter of principal, and If I get anything back I'll donate it to the fund.

Still REALLY want a pandora - even though, when I first ordered, I didn't even own an iPhone. A Lot's changed and I still want one!
Great, now I have an idea of how to go about it.

I've PM'ed you with a question.
 
Unless there's evidence that he's somehow broken the law, there's nothing that they'd be able to do. Being an incompetent businessman is hardly illegal, otherwise the entire banking industry would be serving time in prison.
 

Quote of the day :D
 
Ok - I have now I've filed a court claim. They now have 14 days to respond to that claim but they won't be allowed to strike off the company with a county court claim in progress from a creditor.

If anyone else wants to do this (UK) it can be done online here: https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk and the court fee is £25 which you can add to your claim.

I was hoping to upgrade via ED, just needed to wait to have the funds but the link he sent out is not working now, hopefully there's still a way I can get a Pandora.

I'm doing this because of the principle of the thing. I feel cheated and lied to. If I do end up getting anything back from the legal action I will donate it to the pandora fund.
 
I can bring some light into the CC tunnel, as I also discussed that with an employee from CC this year at the FOSDEM.

It was an issue of both sides.

The CEO of CircuitCo has a similar behaviour than Craig has.

Which means: Promises are being made just to calm down the other party.

You can imagine what that means for the production team and the production itself.

These days, the CEO mainly stays out of production and things work a lot better.

Craig promised parts to be delivered within weeks (he also always did that with the iControlPad...).

Manufacturing companies planned the production and had parts missing - and that quite a few times.

Quite a mess, if you ask me.

CC at one time didn't believe anymore parts would come when they had been told they will.

This lead to the nub issue - remember when the nubs needed to be improved (which took 6 months) and we made the deal with CC to populate all the PCBs upfront, so that they will be finished shortly after the nubs finally arrive?

Well, that's where the CEO came in... he always told us they're producing PCBs (which they didn't do), just to keep us calm.

And when the nubs finally arrived and they started to populate the PCBs again, they were too old and that caused many failures.

CC is to blame for the failures AFTER the nubs arrived. Had they populated the PCBs as promised, they would've worked.

I am also angry for the lies to calm us down.

On the other side, Craig is to blame for promising them parts over and over again that never arrived, so CC got pissed off at one time.

Both Craig and the CEO are pretty good selling people things, but not so good with organizing huge projects.

It was really bad luck - if one of them wouldn't have been like that, things would've been different.

They also stated:

We have not received or requested payment for anything that is not delivered
Which directly contridicts the claims made by OPL.
CC didn't charge for PCBs they haven't delivered, that's true.

The production is not that expensive though.

It's the parts - and they had been paid upfront by Craig. With 1000 non-working PCBs, that's about 200.000 USD, so a huge loss.
 
That makes sense now! 

I'm still keen to finally get a pandora.... I couldn't use the voucher links when you sent them because of a lack of funds and they don't seem to be working now...
 
They also stated:

We have not received or requested payment for anything that is not delivered
 Which directly contridicts the claims made by OPL.
Even if CircuitCo didn't charge OpenPandora Ltd for boards not delivered they'd still be out the cost of the parts, which would dwarf the assembly costs CircuitCo would normally charge. Even in the case where it's boards that CircuitCo went ahead and didn't populate due to recognizing oxidization they'd still be out the cost of those PCBs. I would assume they at least sent back the parts for those, if not that's a huge oversight and something Craig should have insisted on. Unless these are all boards that CircuitCo did populate but are holding on having determined they're defective.

If they populated 500-600 boards that were damaged primarily due to PCB oxidization I would hold CircuitCo accountable, unless they reported this to Craig who gave the go-ahead to populate them anyway. But who's to blame for the boards becoming damaged in the first place? Given ED's story, I think that CircuitCo was wrong to claim they were populating boards when they weren't, but why should they have been required to populate them then wait indefinitely for the nubs to arrive? If they negotiated a change in the order so the PCB assembly was done without the nubs and then delivered to the customer that'd be one thing, but I'm alarmed that they'd really agree to keep the boards in their own storage indefinitely. At some point they should have said no and sent them back.

And were the nub contacts themselves not also in risk of oxidization, or did the design make this a non-issue?
 
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Well - I don't know if you guys think there's any point, but I've objected officially to the strike off application.
Ok - I have now I've filed a court claim. They now have 14 days to respond to that claim but they won't be allowed to strike off the company with a county court claim in progress from a creditor.

If anyone else wants to do this (UK) it can be done online here: https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk and the court fee is £25 which you can add to your claim.

I was hoping to upgrade via ED, just needed to wait to have the funds but the link he sent out is not working now, hopefully there's still a way I can get a Pandora.

I'm doing this because of the principle of the thing. I feel cheated and lied to. If I do end up getting anything back from the legal action I will donate it to the pandora fund.
Finally! Nice work Stuart, I'll be interested in hearing your progress. 

To everyone else who Craig owes money: Stop listening to the people here who are suggesting Craig might not have/hasn't done anything illegal. Frankly, they have no idea what they're talking about and they're doing you a disservice. File a small claim just like Stuart has done and in addition file your objection to OP UK Ltd being struck off. It's the only way Craig is going to be held to account for anything.
 
And were the nub contacts themselves not also in risk of oxidization, or did the design make this a non-issue?
Nubs are soldered manually with more flux, and they have bigger, less tightly packed pads.

Oxidation is mainly a problem with fine-pitch BGA packages, as we're talking tiny pads at .5 mm spacing. This is where bad solder wetting really causes havoc. 
 
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I've always wondered about that story re CC not populating the boards until the nubs came.  ED, is that something your aware of directly via comms with CC, or via Craig?. Are you  sure Craig asked them to do it?   - Just to clarify , not saying anything either way

Secondly.  I remember Craig making a comment one day along the lines that he had made a cut price deal with CC to populate the boards , and at the low price agreed, they would do the population during times when they had no other work..  I've always thought this could have attributed to the issue.
 
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I've always wondered about that story re CC not populating the boards until the nubs came.  ED, is that something your aware of directly via comms with CC, or via Craig?   - Just to clarify , not saying anything either way
With an employee from CC this year at FOSDEM.

I was communicating with CC back when the nub issue happened (it was the first time I talked with them), therefore I know they lied to me (they confirmed to me PCBs are in production).

On the other side, I've experienced myself with Craig when I organized the iCP manufacturing in Germany that parts didn't come when he promised them.

GC had to move the production date a few times because of missing parts.

So I KNOW CC lied to us, and I have no reason to not believe they didn't get the parts when they were announced, as I had the same experience later.

It all made sense what that guy told me.
 
Id pretty much figured that cc didnt get certain parts in time and craig just lied about it. Based on the icp2 stuff.
 
Unless there's evidence that he's somehow broken the law, there's nothing that they'd be able to do. Being an incompetent businessman is hardly illegal, otherwise the entire banking industry would be serving time in prison.
 

Quote of the day :D
Hmmm.. I don't know about this.  Maybe the entire banking industry is run by...the cops that's why they are not chasing after themselves :)
 
Wow! As I say I've been too busy to really keep up with all of this since 2010, so I got the occasional update via email, but I never understood quite what was going on. Now I see it was a bit of a mess.

:(
 
ED: The upgrade links I got at the end of last month don't work... Does that mean no upgrade. I wasn't aware there was a time limit and I didn't have the funds at the end of last month.
 
What actually happened with the icp2?
As fair as I can tell, Craig failed to manufacture the cases and swivel clamps and never ordered the nubs, keymats, dome stickers etc etc and he is refusing to account for the money. It's a pretty safe assumption he blew the cash and has nothing to show for it.
 
Ok - I have now I've filed a court claim. They now have 14 days to respond to that claim but they won't be allowed to strike off the company with a county court claim in progress from a creditor.

If anyone else wants to do this (UK) it can be done online here: https://www.moneyclaim.gov.uk and the court fee is £25 which you can add to your claim.

I was hoping to upgrade via ED, just needed to wait to have the funds but the link he sent out is not working now, hopefully there's still a way I can get a Pandora.

I'm doing this because of the principle of the thing. I feel cheated and lied to. If I do end up getting anything back from the legal action I will donate it to the pandora fund.
I considered this, but I emailed about it and they said that I needed to have an address in the UK. Do you have an address in the UK, or did you find some way around that?
 
@Linopoly I'm in the UK, I should think it is trickier if you are not. A USA company shut up shop owing me $500 and, although the MD was still contactable I was advised that it would be almost impossible and defiantly not financially worth it to try taking any action.

It's almost certainly a waste of time though.

The LTD company will not have any assets, maybe they've gone because of the issues early on, or maybe they've been moved elsewhere to fund other things, I doubt the HMRC or Companies house can be bothered to investigate.

Sad - I've said it before - Those who thought they were helping by putting up money and being patient, only to become the problem, then to end up with no pandora and no refund. I was going to take advantage of the upgrades that ED generously offered to pre-order customers but I didn't have the funds last month and this month they are no longer available. 

Hard not to feel bitter.
 
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