Lets say Maelstrom is right, this means Wayland games drove them out of business and it's Waylands fault allot of customers got burnt.

Lets say Wayland is right, this means they protected the business as a whole, lost a competitor and in the end protected future people from getting burnt by MG.

No matter who is right or wrong I still lost my money, as did ALLOT of other people. I have no idea how much money MG owes in outstanding orders and they will most likely have deleted their database or transferred it to EotS, Maunsfeld or whatever it's called this week.

I dont know who to believe and in the end it doesn't matter, I got burnt as did the person who sent me his money so I could buy our order from MG. I'm paying him back so in my case only I will have gotten burnt. It's just £105 but if you tally up everyone's outstanding orders it could be tens of thousands of pounds.


There is an alternative to this though. As Wayland claims they did "offer to buy Maelstrom Games, INCLUDING honouring all liabilities for the business."
Heck they did so twice!


So what I'm proposing here is for Wayland to honour this offer now and come out as the saviour of the UK gaming market.
They have no obligations to do this, nor can we expect them to do something like this. I'm just saying that if they did, I'm sure the PR from this would get them ALLOT of gamer cred and ALLOT of new customers as well.
Offering the people who go burnt store credit works too, or say 50% off the amount scammed by MG.
I'm sure a PR stunt like this would end up on the news all over the UK, probably around Europe as well. In the least it will get talked about in every gaming store around the world where people have access to and are active on the gaming forums out there.
Perhaps a news program would do a report on how people got scammed by MG, how Wayland tried to help them by buying MG including their debt but the greedy devils refused and rather burnt their customers by stealing and transferring all their money over to other companies. Despite this Wayland chose to honour their offer even without obligation and thus saved the trust in the uk online wargaming market!

Something like this would probably be extremely hard to do though as I'm sure MG would have no intentions of giving Wayland their data bases of unfulfilled orders, heck it might not even be legal to transfer those files.

Wayland could do a small promo I suppose, let's say free shipping one 1 order if you check a box stating you got burnt by Maelstrom and when you place the order Wayland will send a gift from this website to Rob Lane.

grefven wrote:

Noir wrote:

grefven wrote:

Noir wrote:
Wayland Games, THANK YOU.

Now no one else can be ripped off by Maelstorm. And you used a common pratice to do it. It not you fault Maelstorm made it easy for you.

People weren't "ripped off" by Maelstrom until Wayland forced them to it.

You really belive that? So everyone was paying for the item the wanted and getting them, instead of paying money to buy models for other people with there money, and hoping more poeple would buy stuff so Mealstorm could buy the product the want.

100K of debt say on way more then the other.

Granted, they were in financial difficulties obviously, seeing they had high debts. But according to MGs announcement, they had an agreement to pay off that debt with 500 a day, or 15000 a month. But prior of this "forced resolution" by Wayland MG was still fulfulling their orders. I ain't saying that they would have managed to come out unscattered, but I ain't either saying that they wouldn't. Wayland made sure, though, that they wouldn't. And effectively made sure a lot of customers of MG of late wasn't getting their orders. Thus, Wayland forced them into action with their firesales, but it wasn't enough, obviously. Also, I ain't saying that MG has nothing of the blame. Obviously they do with their "moving warehouse", lack of communication, splitting up business, etc. But to state that Wayland did the right thing, unbiased, is bulls'it in my opinion.

If MG was on the up and up (ie not using current orders to pay for previous orders) they would have been able to send everyone what they ordered. I don't really buy that Wayland is the good guy here either but to say that MG was fulfilling orders is stretching it more than a bit.

 MadCowCrazy wrote:
So what I'm proposing here is for Wayland to honour this offer now and come out as the saviour of the UK gaming market.
They have no obligations to do this, nor can we expect them to do something like this. I'm just saying that if they did, I'm sure the PR from this would get them ALLOT of gamer cred and ALLOT of new customers as well.

What would they be buying? Maelstrom have no stock, no warehouse, no staff and no money. It all belongs to EotS who Wayland have no stake in.

Wayland Games acted in a way any business would react to this situation.

Now I'm not saying buying out your biggest competitors debt and then giving them 1 calendar month to repay this debt as fair, but indeed business, and in business this was a very well executed move.

As Wayland's statement reads 'we tried to purchase MG' but in this attempt failed to receive a reply. So the next best thing to do is remove the competition by technically purchasing MG by buying out their debt... Maybe, buying the STOCK that Maelstrom did hold, could've helped keep both Maelstrom operational and therefore MG able to pay back a bit more of their debt to Simple Miniature Games...

But if MG was allowed to remain operational would they have learned a lesson or carried on ripping customers off? This is where I believe WG protecting the customer and industry part probably comes into play!

I myself - Like Psychotic Storm states, am curious as to why SMG sold the debt to MG's competitor? Surely a bank or a debt collection agency - like other credit companies refer debt too - would have been more of a professional move. That said though if SMG was actually struggling to pay their own debts to suppliers, then going down this route would be a slow painstaking process... So indeed selling to a competitor to receive the money faster is a better choice for protecting themselves and their future!!

The only thing us folk can do is sit and speculate. The only ones with the true facts are SMG and WG...

The most important thing here is that the customer gets what they deserve - be it goods or refunds. As Wayland does state, it's important to keep the customers confident in internet retailers.

Will they fulfill the orders of customers - this is an interesting one, as they would've just forked out x amount of thousands to pay off a debt, so do they now send x amount of thousands of their own stock out to MG customers! I think refunds from credit card companies, banks and PayPal will be the answer to this question.

TSD

 George Spiggott wrote:

 MadCowCrazy wrote:
So what I'm proposing here is for Wayland to honour this offer now and come out as the saviour of the UK gaming market.
They have no obligations to do this, nor can we expect them to do something like this. I'm just saying that if they did, I'm sure the PR from this would get them ALLOT of gamer cred and ALLOT of new customers as well.

What would they be buying? Maelstrom have no stock, no warehouse, no staff and no money. It all belongs to EotS who Wayland have no stake in.

Exactly, but EotS most likely have no intentions of honouring MGs outstanding orders. Wayland wouldn't be buying anything, they would be giving away stuff for free to the people who got scammed by MG so that we who got scammed gets something instead of nothing. Wayland would gain nothing but good PR and probably allot of new customers.

Waylands shouldnt have to, nor will they imo, hurt themselves by offering 50% off products to people affected by Maelstroms collopse, nor are they any way responable for the demise of MG, if MG's never gave Waylands the oppurtunity to buy debt from a supplier this would never have happened, if MG were cash flow positive this would not have happened, this all boils down to MG it began with them and imo it doesnt matter how it ended as it was pretty envitable, cash flow is VITAL to any business

 MadCowCrazy wrote:
Exactly, but EotS most likely have no intentions of honouring MGs outstanding orders. Wayland wouldn't be buying anything, they would be giving away stuff for free to the people who got scammed by MG so that we who got scammed gets something instead of nothing. Wayland would gain nothing but good PR and probably allot of new customers.

EotS don't have any outstanding orders Maelstrom do.

Basically you're asking Wayland to pay Maelstrom for nothing (IMO if Wayland are the largest creditor then Wayland now pretty much own Maelstrom anyhow) then give away lost of stock. I don't think the extra PR is worth that much.

grefven wrote:


Granted, they were in financial difficulties obviously, seeing they had high debts. But according to MGs announcement, they had an agreement to pay off that debt with 500 a day, or 15000 a month. But prior of this "forced resolution" by Wayland MG was still fulfulling their orders. I ain't saying that they would have managed to come out unscattered, but I ain't either saying that they wouldn't. Wayland made sure, though, that they wouldn't. And effectively made sure a lot of customers of MG of late wasn't getting their orders. Thus, Wayland forced them into action with their firesales, but it wasn't enough, obviously. Also, I ain't saying that MG has nothing of the blame. Obviously they do with their "moving warehouse", lack of communication, splitting up business, etc. But to state that Wayland did the right thing, unbiased, is bulls'it in my opinion.

Prior to the forced resolution MG was already having problems fulfilling orders. It should be patently apparent by looking at what products were not coming into stock that they were having problems with several distributors.

They also lied. Repeatedly. Claiming they needed money for a new warehouse. That the distributors were out of stock of X/Y/Z. That it was GW's fault etc.


The facts which are not in dispute are that Wayland took a 100k debt on from simple. An amount that must have been significant from a small distrbutor. They then called in that debt and maelstrom didn't pay it. And moreover, the MD of maelstrom had already been setting up spin-off/shell companies.

Maelstrom continued taking orders when they knew theywould not be fulfilling them.

I don't carecabout Wayland' s motivation. I do care that simple are still in business, probably because of Wayland and that maelstrom lied over and over again. I fervently hope that trading standards and Hmrc are able to bring action against the directors.

 thesupplydrop wrote:
Wayland Games acted in a way any business would react to this situation.

I myself - Like Psychotic Storm states, am curious as to why SMG sold the debt to MG's competitor? Surely a bank or a debt collection agency - like other credit companies refer debt too - would have been more of a professional move. That said though if SMG was actually struggling to pay their own debts to suppliers, then going down this route would be a slow painstaking process... So indeed selling to a competitor to receive the money faster is a better choice for protecting themselves and their future!!

Why not a bank, well banks like to buy debt when there is a chance the debt will get paid off, it way banks sell debt to others company when it looks like they willn't have the debt paid. What banks going to by a bad debt note. More so if the company not even worth the amount of debt.

What's the point of it all if Maelstrom just changes it's name and carries on regardless? Who in their right mind is going to supply them now, knowing that EotS could go the same way...

Fairly long time lurker, 1st time poster, do Wayland have any plans if they can get the Eye Of The Storm venue? Just me being nosey

A good question would be, if the demand for one calendar month was not made, would all this thing have happened?

Was Maelstrom hell bend or ripping customers, or was it a result of an ultimately failed, desperate last attempt?

grefven wrote:

 Alkasyn wrote:

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
Typically a company calling in a debt would need to give a months notice

so Wayland buys debt and then immediatley calls it in on 1st Oct,

Maelstrom then had 1 month to find the cash

hence the fire sale to try and do so, probably ending on the last day before the court got involved

Ok, change the word "lying" for "purposely not informing". Maelstrom knew they would not be able to pull through but they still continued the "sales".

If they were thinking that, then they wouldn't send out orders that are dropping in to people every now and then. I think they hoped that the sales was going to be enough, but it wasn't. Then together with the snowball effect with people (rightfully so, I must add) cancelling their orders to get their money back. It didn't add up in the end then.

Ahh... so you pick the company that lie for 6 month.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
A good question would be, if the demand for one calendar month was not made, would all this thing have happened?

Was Maelstrom hell bend or ripping customers, or was it a result of an ultimately failed, desperate last attempt?

A good question, would be why would you put your company (in this case MG) in a place to be snap like that, in the first place.

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
A good question would be, if the demand for one calendar month was not made, would all this thing have happened?

Was Maelstrom hell bend or ripping customers, or was it a result of an ultimately failed, desperate last attempt?

Does it really matter? They knew well enough that even such desperate measures would not save the company.

The long and short of it all as far as I can see is as follows:

Wayland brought the debt to sink their main rival

Maelstrom stalls on the debt payment to accumulate as much money as possible to kickstart EOS

Customers get screwed by Wayland and Maelstrom and are expected to take it

Evilref wrote:
The facts which are not in dispute are that Wayland took a 100k debt on from simple. An amount that must have been significant from a small distrbutor. They then called in that debt and maelstrom didn't pay it. And moreover, the MD of maelstrom had already been setting up spin-off/shell companies.

Wayland bought the debt so it's unlikely they paid 100,000 for it. Probably more like half that. It's still a big chunk though.

 Alkasyn wrote:

 PsychoticStorm wrote:
A good question would be, if the demand for one calendar month was not made, would all this thing have happened?

Was Maelstrom hell bend or ripping customers, or was it a result of an ultimately failed, desperate last attempt?

Does it really matter? They knew well enough that even such desperate measures would not save the company.

Good question, if MG demise was solely on the debt been called, it would matter, if they would explode by their stupid decisions anyway it doesn't matter, in nay case I do not feel the customer benefited by the whole story in any way and I am a bit worried if and when such a move may happen again.

HopScotch wrote:
The long and short of it all as far as I can see is as follows:

Wayland brought the debt to sink their main rival

Maelstrom stalls on the debt payment to accumulate as much money as possible to kickstart EOS

Customers get screwed by Wayland and Maelstrom and are expected to take it

How did Wayland screw customers, by not giving them the product the paid for from Mealstorm? Do you think a bank would do something different, like sit on a debt that just keeps getting bigger so MAYBE Mealstrom customers MIGHT get there stuff.

HopScotch wrote:
The long and short of it all as far as I can see is as follows:

Wayland brought the debt to sink their main rival

Maelstrom stalls on the debt payment to accumulate as much money as possible to kickstart EOS

Customers get screwed by Wayland and Maelstrom and are expected to take it

Exactly my thought which is why I posted my proposal, see it as a way for Wayland to redeem themselves in the eyes of us internet shoppers. They did state they were just trying to protect the market and customers as a whole by trying to buy MG and in the end destroying them.

In the end though I doubt Wayland will do anything other than laugh all the way to the bank as MG, EotS, Maunsfeld etc will have lost all credibility and one of the few options left will be Wayland.
Call it a lesser of two evils if you want, though Wayland hasn't been evil, more like sinisterly clever.

Lorien wrote:

As a German saying goes:
"Lieber ein Ende mit Schrecken als ein Schrecken ohne Ende."
which loosely translates into:
"It's best to get unpleasant things over and done with."

Lorien, It as been 10y+ since I have had German in high school, but that is a damm fine saying!

I would translate it to something like:
"I rather have an end with fear than fear without end!"

To the rest: Sorry 'bout the off tropic.

 MadCowCrazy wrote:

HopScotch wrote:
The long and short of it all as far as I can see is as follows:

Wayland brought the debt to sink their main rival

Maelstrom stalls on the debt payment to accumulate as much money as possible to kickstart EOS

Customers get screwed by Wayland and Maelstrom and are expected to take it

Exactly my thought which is why I posted my proposal, see it as a way for Wayland to redeem themselves in the eyes of us internet shoppers. They did state they were just trying to protect the market and customers as a whole by trying to buy MG and in the end destroying them.

In the end though I doubt Wayland will do anything other than laugh all the way to the bank as MG, EotS, Maunsfeld etc will have lost all credibility and one of the few options left will be Wayland.
Call it a lesser of two evils if you want, though Wayland hasn't been evil, more like sinisterly clever.

Why do Wayland have to redeem themselves? you do relise this was going to happen (MG going bust) sooner or later.

And wayland laugh all the way to the bank? they have just spent 10's of thousands of pounds and will be in the same boat as EVERY customer of MG's that is owed money, they are now a creditor of MG. There is nothing sinister about what Waylands have done. Now if they said a few more months down the line, after people have spent more money with MG, what with the xmas sales and spending spree's coming up and MG selling more stock they didnt have, then Waylands saying they could have stopped this months ago, that would have been sinister.

I understand you are annoyed at being out of pocket but that is down to MG and MG alone, may I ask when you placed the order?

Asking a.n.other company to give away product and make a loss to make up for a competitors incompetence/fraud is more than optimistic. Wayland has no way of knowing who ordered what, who received what or who got refunds from banks, credit cards or PayPal.

It's asking for them to give away thousands of dollars to people who might not be out of pocket at all.

MarkyMark wrote:
Why do Wayland have to redeem themselves? you do relise this was going to happen (MG going bust) sooner or later.

Exactly. Maelstrom selling off all their assets is what finally drove them under. If Maelstrom still owned EotS and Mierce then Wayland would now own them and Maelstrom would still be in business (as a subsidiary of Wayland).

Interesting post http://thefrontlinegamer.blogspot.com/2012/11/the-truth-about-maelstrom-games.html

MadCowCrazy wrote:
In the end though I doubt Wayland will do anything other than laugh all the way to the bank as MG, EotS, Maunsfeld etc will have lost all credibility and one of the few options left will be Wayland.

Check out dark sphere I have never had an issue with them. I for the time being will be avoiding Wayland until all the facts come to light I certainly don't think they are innocent in all this.

Noir wrote:

How did Wayland screw customers, by not giving them the product the paid for from Mealstorm?

Wayland has shown (in my eyes at least) that they have as little respect for the gaming community as Maelstrom and associates as they were well aware of the problems for months and sat back and watched as hundreds (maybe) of us continued to buy from Maelstrom knowing the majority of us were throwing good money after bad.
If they really were the heroes they are trying to make out, and if they cared so much about the customers and suppliers why didn't they step in much sooner and prevent all this anguish. Two emails just doesn't cut it with me.

That's how Wayland has screwed us.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
For the record I am not under impression that Wayland should fulfil Maelstroms orders, those died when Maelstrom stopped responding to emails.

I don't hold Wayland responsible for the demise of Maelstrom either, that lies squarely at Rob Lanes door and no where else. I just wonder why they didn't step in earlier, why did they delay?

HopScotch

Waylands tried to buy Maelstrom months ago, may i think it said. Any press release from Waylands saying Maelstrom is in trouble would be very contentious, and probably illegal (at least at the time). You really think while trying to buy Maelstrom Waylands are going to say they are going bust? of course not. You have no idea on how business works if you think Waylands screwed you.

Do you think the credit insurance companies screwed Comet? because they are the reason comet had to go in administration.

MarkyMark wrote:
HopScotch

Waylands tried to buy Maelstrom months ago, may i think it said. Any press release from Waylands saying Maelstrom is in trouble would be very contentious, and probably illegal (at least at the time). You really think while trying to buy Maelstrom Waylands are going to say they are going bust? of course not. You have no idea on how business works if you think Waylands screwed you.

Do you think the credit insurance companies screwed Comet? because they are the reason comet had to go in administration.

I'm not taking it personally i know they didn't actually screw us, I am just interested why they didn't nip all this in the bud back in May? I wouldn't expect them to come out with a press release just do exactly what they have done in the last week or two back in May.

Maelstrom wouldnt sell to them, ,why I dont know maybe Rob Lane thought he could salvage the company, quite possibly he didnt want to sell to a rival company. When two business occupy the same space in a industry there are tensions and rivaleris, I have seen it a lot in my industries.

MarkyMark wrote:
Maelstrom wouldnt sell to them, ,why I dont know maybe Rob Lane thought he could salvage the company, quite possibly he didnt want to sell to a rival company. When two business occupy the same space in a industry there are tensions and rivaleris, I have seen it a lot in my industries.

How did they manage to buy the debt in the end then? I thought they bought it directly from/off the supplier Maelstrom owed it to? Which is why I couldn't understand why they didn't just do that earlier and call in the administrators then and there.

They did indeed buy the debt from a third party. Maybe because the debt was being serviced then, maybe because simple mini's did not relise the extent of Maelstroms overall debts.

Also buying the debt then could have used up a large chunk of Waylands cash reserves that they wanted to use to buy Maelstrom with.

Theres plently of maybes and probables but we will not know the whole story probably for ever sadly.

I was going to ask a question here but I've forgotten it for the moment.

I'm guessing that the 'doomsday' scenario would have been that Maelstrom being unable to pay Simple miniatures, may have meant that they would be in debt to their manufacturers... ETC etc and half the uk wargaming ecosystem may have gone splat?

Oh, the question!

Was maelstrom even in a state in say, September, to even still actually *be* competition to Wayland? If it wasn't for the supply chain issues, they could have quite easily kept their ohr out of the whole thing and maelstrom would have gone down the tubes later anyhow. Looking at my own orders from maelstrom, problems had started affecting the customers (or at least me) in mid July.

In any case, if you're a bit miffed at wayland about the goings on, Rockethobbies seems to have just started up and there's 'total wargamer' too.

MarkyMark wrote:
They did indeed buy the debt from a third party. Maybe because the debt was being serviced then, maybe because simple mini's did not relise the extent of Maelstroms overall debts.

Also buying the debt then could have used up a large chunk of Waylands cash reserves that they wanted to use to buy Maelstrom with.

Theres plently of maybes and probables but we will not know the whole story probably for ever sadly.

I think you are correct on all counts there.

Hi,

I have created a form which I hope people will fill in.

It is too start a campaign against the outstanding orders we have with Maelstrom.

I am hoping people will post the form in other forums and blogs they visit.

Please go to ...

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/viewform?fromEmail=true&formkey=dGlRUGhDcDhUT21FMkF1Ymp4alQ4Z1E6MQ

To fill in the form and join the campaign. I personally had a huge order with them, over £400, I am not likely to see this money again, but I think its worth the efforts of us getting together as a group. I think we can do something providing we have the numbers.

Please note that only this forum will not be enough, to be effect you have to be willing to post this link in other places you visit. One person alone cannot do this, please do not sit idly by, you can help by passing the link to friends, posting it in other forums and blogs you visit etc

I'm a little rusty on the process however the bit of Maelstroms announcement that strikes me as odd is this.

"Maelstrom Games Ltd. has ceased trading and will enter liquidation at some point over the next few months."

Why are they waiting for a few months before liquidation when they state that the company has ceased trading now?

Also it appears that Maelstrom going strictly by the definition and the information they provided traded insolvently after the 17th October 2012 when they continued to send sale emails and sell product through the site.
On that note quick question to people who are still receiving goods or can log onto EOTS and see orders made with maelstrom, you did not happen to make those orders on or after the 17th by any chance?

I ordered 2 Dark Vengeance Starter sets, I had set up a Wanted add here on dakka to find someone to split it with. A person responded and sent me the money to buy a second set. I placed the order but was first told the collectors editions were sold out, then that GW had been causing delays and finally that the boxes would arrive the next week.

Then they stopped responding to emails and I started looking around the forums, I found these threads and tried to cancel my order but got no response from Maelstrom. By this time it was to late to do a paypal dispute but I did one anyway, nothing happened because I was too late so I wont be seeing the money or the miniatures.

People call me a pessimist but I prefer the term realist.
Here is what I think happened.

Maelstrom has allot of debt, they are trying desperately to work it off which is why the started the banelegions and other resin miniature ranges. They may or may not have been slowly paying off their debt. If they were paying off £500 a day that is still £15 000 a month, it would have taken about 7 months to pay off the whole debt (if the debt was around £100K).

Wayland saw an opportunity to eliminate another competitor so offered to buy Maelstrom Games, they obviously wanted the Banelegions and Banelords rights with that offer.

Maelstrom said no as they probably felt they had spent too much money developing the Bane product line to sell it off for what they felt was a too low offer or perhaps Rob was too stubborn to sell.

Wayland offered to buy the debt, at a higher rate than a normal creditor would buy for or at a normal rate with the promise of paying instantly instead of the drawn out process that would otherwise have taken place. In either case this was obviously a quick deal.

Since Maelstrom refused to sell Wayland figured they could just drive them out of business by demanding the debt be paid.
Rob at Maelstrom basically said FETH YOU and started having huge sales to try and get rid of any physical assets that Maelstrom had left which would have been taken from them once the time limit was over and liquidation started.

Rob figured that if he couldn't have Maelstrom then no one could so he emptied all assets out of the company and transferred them over to his other businesses. There is probably paperwork stating how all these funds were transferred, all with "legit" reasons like debts, work relate or anything else you can think of.

As Rob didn't want to hand over any Bane miniatures to Wayland they honoured the sales and sent everything they could out to the people who bought from them. Rather sell them at 80% off than hand them over to Wayland for nothing.

In the end Wayland received nothing as all assets were transferred over to Robs other businesses before liquidation could start.

Angry over the whole affair Rob puts up the notice we can now see on Maelstroms website, portraying themselves as the victims of unjust business practises.

Waylands response is the pdf on their site where they claim they were trying to protect their own interests and the industry as a whole.


This is basically how the story goes so far. I'm 100% convinced Wayland will try to take Maelstrom to court for fraudulent behaviour over the transfer of assets from Maelstrom to EotS, Mierce and Maunsfeld.

Robs goal is to start over from scratch and build up his webstore and the Mierce product line. Which will take a very LONG time due to having his reputation ruined. He may or may not try to honour any outstanding orders to try and win some cred back and make Wayland stand out as a business bully who ruined Maelstrom.

Waylands goal is to make sure there is absolutely nothing left of Rob and his game stores and product lines. If Wayland can't have it then no one shall (reverse roles now).

How will it end?

If I'm right about Rob then perhaps he will get back on his feet again, build up the new webstore and by some miracle honour all outstanding orders either with refunds or the orders themselves. I'd say this will be nearly impossible as I'm sure very few will be willing to deal with EotS, Maunsfeld etc.
The only salvation I see is if he can find some big sponsor as he needs a large injection of cash. Perhaps all the money he managed to siphon off from Maelstrom will be enough.
With the debt no longer his responsibility perhaps there is enough capitol to buy everything with cash up front from now on.

If I'm wrong (which I'm 100% sure I am) then Rob will do nothing to honour the outstanding orders, will keep to the brick and mortar store or sell off the whole thing to anyone other than Wayland Games. Then taking the money from the sale and simply retiring.


Wayland on the other hand will pursue Maelstrom for all it's worth, they will try to drive EotS, Mierce and Maunsfeld out of business by demanding the outstanding debt and claiming fraudulent behaviour on Robs part. Will probably be a drawn out process which will probably lead to the bankruptcy of Rob forcing him to sell all his companies, he will do so (or burn them to the ground) but to anyone other than Wayland Games.



I'm looking at the whole situation with a pessimistic/realistic point of view. I could of course be wrong but in the end I believe I will never see my money or my miniatures.

My terms are a bit rusty here so bear with me.

A Ltd company has three basic methods of winding up.

Receivership
Adminstration
Liquidation.

Receivership is usually at the behest of a creditor, Administration is usually at the behest of a secured or preferential creditor IE a bank or IRS. Liquidation is usually at the behest of the company for one reason or another. While a company can and may take that decision it will take a few weeks/months for that company to seek and request the appointment of a 'Liquidator', or they can seek the aid of the 'Official Receiver' to appoint a 'Liquidator' aka an Accountant licenced to practice Insolvency.

It's not a quick process.

However, it will show up any practise by Maelstrom to transfer assets, the Liquidator has the right to seize assets unfairly transferred and they will report fairly on the reasons behind the liquidation. The liquidator also has the ability to accept a payment schedule for debts and convert it to a receivership. However this option seems unlikely in the face of the statement on Maelstroms webpage. Wayland may actually precipitate the actual event they were worried about as a lot of suppliers will have to write off debts that previously may/would have been paid off. The Preliminary/Final Statement of Affairs and the Narrative would be interesting to see. Anyone going to register an unsecured claim?


@ForTheEmperor while your efforts are laudable they are, unfortunately, not worth the effort as legally it wont do anything.

Cheers

Andrew

The other thing to remember in this discussion is that this figure of 100K being tossed around is only what they owed to one creditor/supplier.

If some of the information that was posted much earlier in this thread is accurate there's at least half a million outstanding - could be much higher by the time that they went under.

There was no chance that they were going to make this money back in the fire sale (which would have left many with unfulfilled orders anyway - for items which MG could no longer obtain). Plus all the lies about the warehouse move and them moving all the assets into shell companies.

And I do believe Wayland that one of the reasons for taking the debt was to make sure that Simple was sound, and could continue on.

@MadCowCrazy

you're overlooking something important here: it's *not* that Rob Lane started siphoning off assets after wayland went after their debt; no way that if SMG was looking to sell that debt (which would be the only way it could actually be useful to WL as as a tool to threaten MG) back when mierce, EoTS etc. were established as separate entities and mr. Lane started funneling assets there that it would have taken so long to come to this.
rather, SMG kept supplying MG for quite some time longer, meaning they were still hoping MG could dig themselves out. now remember, this was in **may**.
Maelstrom's filing of accounts (see duedil ) on april 29th. showed a book value of -132,432 GBP already.
if they'd have shown improvement, SMG would not have sold that debt (rather, they'd have given MG time to pay them in full!) so we can safely assume that MG was moving further and further down the drain. even if that only meant, say, ~150.000 GBP debt - how the ^&&* is a company already struggling to not *lose* money going to dig itself out of that? they were dead at that point, no matter what WL did.

now further consider that 'activating' Mierce started back in march at the latest (duedil, Mierce, name change filed march 23rd but that's not something you do on a whim, that means you had a plan brewing) and they incorporated Maunsfeld Gaming Ltd (then EoTS) june 20th, they were *clearly* moving assets to safe harbors.
those suppliers wouldn't have gotten paid a dime if Rob Lane had had a thing to say about it and the last round of customers would have gotten screwed just the same in what is precisely the game of miniatures ponzi, if you will, you're seeing here.
and really, is getting a competitor like this which would have died soon anyway gonna be worth ~60.000 GBP to WL? because that's about what they'll have paid for that debt, and I'll be damned if they're going to see much of anything of it.
again, *sure* WL has some benefit from this. largely though, it prevented a much larger Charlie Foxtrot than has happened now and with some luck, the transfer of assets from MG to Mierce will be found to be improper and those assets will (as a whole, since it's worth most that way) be sold off to someone else. it can't really get into worse hands than mr. Lane's, as far as customers are concerned.

Ashitaka wrote:The other thing to remember in this discussion is that this figure of 100K being tossed around is only what they owed to one creditor/supplier.

If some of the information that was posted much earlier in this thread is accurate there's at least half a million outstanding - could be much higher by the time that they went under.

There was no chance that they were going to make this money back in the fire sale (which would have left many with unfulfilled orders anyway - for items which MG could no longer obtain). Plus all the lies about the warehouse move and them moving all the assets into shell companies.

And I do believe Wayland that one of the reasons for taking the debt was to make sure that Simple was sound, and could continue on.

Didn't someone post a link to a website which stated how much liabilities Maelstrom had? Some duedil.org link
Found it "They owe £567,388 to creditors and are due £130,137 from trade debtors"
https://www.duedil.com/company/04724863/maelstrom-games-limited/financials

I'll be very honest. I don't think Wayland games is the cause of Maelstrom going down, no matter WHAT maelstrom says. The company OWES 1/2 a MILLION pounds in debt and Waylands only has 100k of that.

MadCowCrazy wrote:
Maelstrom has allot of debt, they are trying desperately to work it off which is why the started the banelegions and other resin miniature ranges. They may or may not have been slowly paying off their debt. If they were paying off £500 a day that is still £15 000 a month, it would have taken
about 7 months to pay off the whole debt (if the debt was around £100K).

Generally people do not try and raise money for a sinking business by starting new capital intensive ventures. Plus they owed 500k in debt, not 100k.

Wayland offered to buy the debt, at a higher rate than a normal creditor would buy for or at a normal rate with the promise of paying instantly instead of the drawn out process that would otherwise have taken place. In either case this was obviously a quick deal.

This is probably true that Wayland bought the debt at a higher rate than a normal bank/institution would. It makes the most sense.

Rob at Maelstrom basically said FETH YOU and started having huge sales to try and get rid of any physical assets that Maelstrom had left which would have been taken from them once the time limit was over and liquidation started.

Rob figured that if he couldn't have Maelstrom then no one could so he emptied all assets out of the company and transferred them over to his other businesses. There is probably paperwork stating how all these funds were transferred, all with "legit" reasons like debts, work relate or anything else you can think of.

As Rob didn't want to hand over any Bane miniatures to Wayland they honoured the sales and sent everything they could out to the people who bought from them. Rather sell them at 80% off than hand them over to Wayland for nothing.

In the end Wayland received nothing as all assets were transferred over to Robs other businesses before liquidation could start.

Angry over the whole affair Rob puts up the notice we can now see on Maelstroms website, portraying themselves as the victims of unjust business practises.

Waylands response is the pdf on their site where they claim they were trying to protect their own interests and the industry as a whole.

After all the shenanigans, I can see the owner of Maelstrom doing something like this...

Is it usual for companies such as Simple Miniatures to give their clients such a massive tab ?
sounds a bit much for me !
Its sad to see them finally go, it was good while it lasted but i will leave EotS well alone after this debacle, Wayland too i think.

 Rayvon wrote:

Is it usual for companies such as Simple Miniatures to give their clients such a massive tab ?
sounds a bit much for me !

If you owe me £10 and can't pay - you have a problem

If you owe me £100,000 and can't pay - I have a problem

Just as we are seeing in Greece(!) people will keep extending credit in the hopes that it will "all come right".

Clearly Simple Miniatures guessed wrong - a fact possibly not helped by the fact that the growng debt pile at MG was not solely derived from poor sales but the use of MG assests to start-up new ventures which could then be "spun off" leaving the debt with MG whilst the new ventures got a clean balance sheet and no start-up costs.

MG had debts of over £500K and was owed less than £140K - so the net debt was in excess of £360K.

Wayland only bought up £100K of that debt - that means there was still £250K+ of debt to be called in by others at any time.

Blaming Wayland for the fact that MG didn't honour their promises is fatuous in the extreme - if it hadn't been them it would have been someone else or in the end it would have MG itself pulling the plug once they had transferred enough out of the business to their new ventures.

MG was being run as a ponzi scheme and a feature of a ponzi scheme is that when the music stops the last people in get left holding the gakky end of the stick.

Those people who paid by Credit Card and/or PayPal and who claimed in time should get their money back hopefully, the others will have to hope the courts maybe sort it out - but I'm afraid customers are at the back of the queue in these situations - and as MG had a net debt of £360K+ you'd have to be over the optimism event horizon and accelerating madly to believe you will ever see either your goods or a penny of your money again.


I do also wish people would stop going on about "traders having a loyalty to the gaming community".

There is no such thing - traders are businesses - they are in it to make money, feed the family, have a nice life. They may share your passions, but they are not a charity.

How would people feel if traders kept popping up demanding "loyalty from the gaming community" and suggesting we all agreed to buy set amounts of figures from them every month to guarantee their cash flow?

Traders are businesses - and customers need to be business-like in the way they make their purchases - not just assume because Mr Bloggs Ltd does a good line in Space Halfings with Tutus and talked to you for 2 hours at a show about them he's automatically trustworthy.

The one thing everyone can (and should) take from this debacle is the intention to make their purchases in a business-like manner using the various consumer and financial safeguards to protect their own financial interests so that at least if the the worst happens their money is safe.

Caveat Emptor - and if it seems to good to be true it almost certainly is....

You speculate to accumulate, especially with credit.

I'm guessing in Simples position, why wouldn't you extend allot of credit to one of the three biggest international wargames retailers?

Thus is the story of many failing business, over extending themselves.

Well done Wayland for holding up Simples end but his was onl one debt of many. However you judge Wayland actions (correct IMHO), all of this is precipitated by Maelstrom's poor business decisions and management.

I will take measures to avoid any Rob Lane company, clearly no great business man but MG's last missive shows him to be a schister and charlatan of the grandest order. MG have always had live stock levels so no reason not to forfill all orders and refund advance orders.

So in the end, Simple Miniatures' decision to give Maelstrom a 100,000 £ credit brought the UK tabletop gaming industry into trouble. Any background, why Simple Miniatures did such a thing? Sounds like a bad idea and indeed proved to be one. Esp. when giving the money to a company whose business model is based on undercutting its global competitors in profit marges.

The thing is that starting up a miniature range isn't going to be cheap. Especially not if you hire the top talents in the industry for sculpting and painting. That tells me that MG wanted Banelegion/Mierce Miniatures to take a share of the market quickly. To do this, they had to spend quite a lot of money on it in the beginning, which they took from MG, which also caused a bigger debt. They most likely calculated that with Mierce Miniatures, they would earn the money back.

Wayland, obviously picked up on this, and figured they wanted a piece of the cake. They attempted to buy MG. When their offer was refused, they instead wanted to remove a competetor, which was growing larger quickly. As someone mentioned above, when they realised MG had over-stretched with Mierce Miniatures, they went in for the kill.

For the hobby, what Wayland did isn't benefitting us, the customers.
1.) MG went under, meaning less options to chose from for us, the customers.
2.) When MG went under, it's a big risk that Mierce Miniatures will bite the dust too. So, perhaps a promising range of miniatures will go down the drain. It's a shame because they had some really great stuff.
3.) When MG went under, the customers with standing orders got shafted. If Wayland wanted to help the community, they would have worked out a way for the debt to be paid off.
4.) When Wayland demanded their newly collected debt to be paid right away, but what happens now with the other that MG owns? There is no way in hell any of them will get anything back now. Before Wayland sunk MG, there still was a chance. How will this affect the customers?

Without having in depth knoledge of simples business, past history with MG, turnover, payment history etc we will never know. MG might have been paying Simple in full every month for years. They then get in to trouble and stop paying, buy which point it is too late to know there is a problem.

Without access to simples sales ledger and credit policy you will never know if they made a right or wrong choice giving £100k of credit. It may have been a very reasonable credit limit being paid every month. By all accounts it seems MG were on 90 days terms. £30k turnover a month is not that much. It means that MG had a turnover of about £400k with one of the biggest distributors in the UK. Not that big at all.

Blaiming simple is wrong. Blaiming Wayland, whatever they may or may not have done is wrong. Only MG are responsble for there debt. Even if a big chunk of there market went they were already dependant on future trade to pay past debt before they got in to trouble.

As for the debt, all we have is MGs word that they were paying it and lets face it, how can anyone give them any credibility any more. I'm much more likely to believe Wayland when they say MG were not paying there debt and were not willing to talk about it.

infoengineering wrote:
"Info Engineering is a leading manufacturers and Exporters of Biscuit die, Bakery equipment accessories and Biscuit die in India."


For More Details
Please Contact:
http://www.infoengineering.in

Hehe, hehehehe, heh.. Biscuits. Only took us what? 42 pages? But finally, there's biscuits!

If you believe that there was a chance that MG would some how have mysteriously recovered then sorry I have to disagree. You also seem intend on painting this as Wayland fault when no one ran up this and other debts other than MG/Rob Lane.

It appears (somewhat rarely in my experience) that MG did have a chance to save the company by another benefactor, that was Wayland Games. This was ignored. To then paint WG as the party that then ensured that customers wouldn't get their orders is rather churlish.

You seem to be unhappy as you are out an order, fine but you have the opportunity to recover your money from CC/PayPal, you should action this.

It appears WG are down to the tune of £60k and what benefit is the loss of a "competitor" which is clearly not really competing with anyone and hasn't for the last year that their operation has been getting poorer and poorer.

It appears they deal in spam as well as biscuits!

Smart move, spamming on a wargaming forum!

 Kroothawk wrote:
Esp. when giving the money to a company whose business model is based on undercutting its global competitors in profit marges.

As someone on the receiving end of GW's 80% Feth Australia surcharge, you'll forgive me if I don't see that business model as a bad thing.

Vorlon25 wrote:

If you owe me £10 and can't pay - you have a problem

If you owe me £100,000 and can't pay - I have a problem

Just as we are seeing in Greece(!) people will keep extending credit in the hopes that it will "all come right".

Clearly Simple Miniatures guessed wrong - a fact possibly not helped by the fact that the growng debt pile at MG was not solely derived from poor sales but the use of MG assests to start-up new ventures which could then be "spun off" leaving the debt with MG whilst the new ventures got a clean balance sheet and no start-up costs.

MG had debts of over £500K and was owed less than £140K - so the net debt was in excess of £360K.

Wayland only bought up £100K of that debt - that means there was still £250K+ of debt to be called in by others at any time.

Blaming Wayland for the fact that MG didn't honour their promises is fatuous in the extreme - if it hadn't been them it would have been someone else or in the end it would have MG itself pulling the plug once they had transferred enough out of the business to their new ventures.

MG was being run as a ponzi scheme and a feature of a ponzi scheme is that when the music stops the last people in get left holding the gakky end of the stick.

Those people who paid by Credit Card and/or PayPal and who claimed in time should get their money back hopefully, the others will have to hope the courts maybe sort it out - but I'm afraid customers are at the back of the queue in these situations - and as MG had a net debt of £360K+ you'd have to be over the optimism event horizon and accelerating madly to believe you will ever see either your goods or a penny of your money again.


I do also wish people would stop going on about "traders having a loyalty to the gaming community".

There is no such thing - traders are businesses - they are in it to make money, feed the family, have a nice life. They may share your passions, but they are not a charity.

How would people feel if traders kept popping up demanding "loyalty from the gaming community" and suggesting we all agreed to buy set amounts of figures from them every month to guarantee their cash flow?

Traders are businesses - and customers need to be business-like in the way they make their purchases - not just assume because Mr Bloggs Ltd does a good line in Space Halfings with Tutus and talked to you for 2 hours at a show about them he's automatically trustworthy.

The one thing everyone can (and should) take from this debacle is the intention to make their purchases in a business-like manner using the various consumer and financial safeguards to protect their own financial interests so that at least if the the worst happens their money is safe.

Caveat Emptor - and if it seems to good to be true it almost certainly is....

Wholeheartedly agree with all your points - it's just unrealistic to think the retailers are our buddies - they are a business and are in it to make money. The culprit here is MG, as they misinformed the community for months and tried to sell items which they knew they never would get - trying to assign blame to Wayland Games is just childish, although I can understand the frustration of some people.

I was lucky enough to get my money refunded by my CC company but many others are still out large sums of money - and the icing on this situation can only be MG's attempt to blame Wayland - and this little gem here: "Maelstrom Games Ltd. can only apologise to those customers whose orders have not been fulfilled as it is now impossible for Maelstrom Games Ltd. to fulfil them"

Wayland appear to have tried a buyout knowing that there were debts, they didn't find out about the debts afterwards and buy those as an alternative means to remove Maestrom.

I'm not sure what the alternative was to what was happening here. The idea that Wayland were trying to destroy competition, not really because Maelstrom were destroying themselves. If Wayland wanted their competition gone they could have just let Maelstrom carry on and go under. The problem with that is their debts would continue to rise and how many other companies would be sucked in after being left out of pocket?

Some people say that Wayland wanted Maelstrom gone which is why they called in the debt fast. I get the impression that Maelstrom needed to be shot through the head because leaving it ongoing just meant that the debts were growing and anything of value remaining was being put into other new companies belonging to Maelstrom's owners. You can't ignore the fact that debts were growing, the longer you wait the more everyone is out of pocket when it does implode, and then people on here would be complaining that no one did anything when the writing had been on the wall for a year.

Don't you just love how some people are coming up with all these extensive theories where Wayland is now somehow to blame for Maelstrom's feth-ups, even though those theories are based on nothing more than nonsense speculation on their part.

grefven wrote:
The thing is that starting up a miniature range isn't going to be cheap. Especially not if you hire the top talents in the industry for sculpting and painting. That tells me that MG wanted Banelegion/Mierce Miniatures to take a share of the market quickly. To do this, they had to spend quite a lot of money on it in the beginning, which they took from MG, which also caused a bigger debt. They most likely calculated that with Mierce Miniatures, they would earn the money back.

Wayland, obviously picked up on this, and figured they wanted a piece of the cake. They attempted to buy MG. When their offer was refused, they instead wanted to remove a competetor, which was growing larger quickly. As someone mentioned above, when they realised MG had over-stretched with Mierce Miniatures, they went in for the kill.

For the hobby, what Wayland did isn't benefitting us, the customers.
1.) MG went under, meaning less options to chose from for us, the customers.
2.) When MG went under, it's a big risk that Mierce Miniatures will bite the dust too. So, perhaps a promising range of miniatures will go down the drain. It's a shame because they had some really great stuff.
3.) When MG went under, the customers with standing orders got shafted. If Wayland wanted to help the community, they would have worked out a way for the debt to be paid off.
4.) When Wayland demanded their newly collected debt to be paid right away, but what happens now with the other that MG owns? There is no way in hell any of them will get anything back now. Before Wayland sunk MG, there still was a chance. How will this affect the customers?

This is a LOT of assumptions.

How bout you blame Maelstrom for not managing their own finances better.
And seriously, where are you getting the opinion that Wayland wanted Mierce miniatures?

I dont think Maelstrom was destroing itself. They put their chin out there to start a new miniature range. This was most likely why they were getting into debt. Rather than taking a bank loan they tried to fund it themselves. But they were never given the time to bounce back before Wayland went for the throat.

Biscuits aside.

MG would have gone under, no matter who pulled the trigger. I don't blame Wayland one bit.

Still, Imagine the impotent rage fury if it had been GW who had pulled the plug.

Sining wrote:

grefven wrote:
The thing is that starting up a miniature range isn't going to be cheap. Especially not if you hire the top talents in the industry for sculpting and painting. That tells me that MG wanted Banelegion/Mierce Miniatures to take a share of the market quickly. To do this, they had to spend quite a lot of money on it in the beginning, which they took from MG, which also caused a bigger debt. They most likely calculated that with Mierce Miniatures, they would earn the money back.

Wayland, obviously picked up on this, and figured they wanted a piece of the cake. They attempted to buy MG. When their offer was refused, they instead wanted to remove a competetor, which was growing larger quickly. As someone mentioned above, when they realised MG had over-stretched with Mierce Miniatures, they went in for the kill.

For the hobby, what Wayland did isn't benefitting us, the customers.
1.) MG went under, meaning less options to chose from for us, the customers.
2.) When MG went under, it's a big risk that Mierce Miniatures will bite the dust too. So, perhaps a promising range of miniatures will go down the drain. It's a shame because they had some really great stuff.
3.) When MG went under, the customers with standing orders got shafted. If Wayland wanted to help the community, they would have worked out a way for the debt to be paid off.
4.) When Wayland demanded their newly collected debt to be paid right away, but what happens now with the other that MG owns? There is no way in hell any of them will get anything back now. Before Wayland sunk MG, there still was a chance. How will this affect the customers?

This is a LOT of assumptions.

How bout you blame Maelstrom for not managing their own finances better.
And seriously, where are you getting the opinion that Wayland wanted Mierce miniatures?

I am saying that I believe that Wayland wanted to buy Maelstrom at several occasions, and, at the time before the split, Mierce Miniatures was a part of Maelstrom. I am sure that if they had bought Maelstrom, they wouldn't put MM to the sack.

grefven wrote:
I dont think Maelstrom was destroing itself. They put their chin out there to start a new miniature range. This was most likely why they were getting into debt. Rather than taking a bank loan they tried to fund it themselves. But they were never given the time to bounce back before Wayland went for the throat.

They couldn't fulfill customer orders nor could they pay suppliers. MG hived off the best bits and left the rest to rot.

They destroyed themselves. Wayland just took old yella out the back to try and stop the rabid backlash.

I wonder if MM is worth £99k of debt?

 Mr. Burning wrote:

grefven wrote:
I dont think Maelstrom was destroing itself. They put their chin out there to start a new miniature range. This was most likely why they were getting into debt. Rather than taking a bank loan they tried to fund it themselves. But they were never given the time to bounce back before Wayland went for the throat.

They couldn't fulfill customer orders nor could they pay suppliers. MG hived off the best bits and left the rest to rot.

They destroyed themselves. Wayland just took old yella out the back to try and stop the rabid backlash.

They just started up a brand new miniature range, hiring some of the top sculptors and painters in the business. They most likely thought that they could fund it themselves, rather than taking a bank loan or doing a Kickstarter (like everyone else). They should get some credits for trying to bring something new to us, the customers. Yes, everything went to hell, and Maelstrom did some terrible decisions. But I highly doubt that this was their intention all along.

grefven wrote:
For the hobby, what Wayland did isn't benefitting us, the customers.
1.) MG went under, meaning less options to chose from for us, the customers.
2.) When MG went under, it's a big risk that Mierce Miniatures will bite the dust too. So, perhaps a promising range of miniatures will go down the drain. It's a shame because they had some really great stuff.
3.) When MG went under, the customers with standing orders got shafted. If Wayland wanted to help the community, they would have worked out a way for the debt to be paid off.
4.) When Wayland demanded their newly collected debt to be paid right away, but what happens now with the other that MG owns? There is no way in hell any of them will get anything back now. Before Wayland sunk MG, there still was a chance. How will this affect the customers?

Since we're playing the game of assumptions... if we make the assumption that the debt owed to Simple was a threat to Simple's ability to continue trading, what do you think the impact of Simple collapsing would have had on UK wargaming, particularly the Indie stores?

grefven wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

grefven wrote:
I dont think Maelstrom was destroing itself. They put their chin out there to start a new miniature range. This was most likely why they were getting into debt. Rather than taking a bank loan they tried to fund it themselves. But they were never given the time to bounce back before Wayland went for the throat.

They couldn't fulfill customer orders nor could they pay suppliers. MG hived off the best bits and left the rest to rot.

They destroyed themselves. Wayland just took old yella out the back to try and stop the rabid backlash.

They just started up a brand new miniature range, hiring some of the top sculptors and painters in the business. They most likely thought that they could fund it themselves, rather than taking a bank loan or doing a Kickstarter (like everyone else). They should get some credits for trying to bring something new to us, the customers. Yes, everything went to hell, and Maelstrom did some terrible decisions. But I highly doubt that this was their intention all along.

And where did that capital come from?, they couldnt go to the banks as they have no secruity, how much would it cost to start a miniature line?, how long to draw a profit from that? it is NOT a short term fix, nor is it a cheap start up. There is a good chance that they were using customers money (lets face it there should not have been any profit within MG being taken) to fund meirce,

Everything since July or even sooner you do not know, nor do we what their intention was, but I will stand by this next comment, their best intentions were not for the customers/

grefven wrote:
They just started up a brand new miniature range, hiring some of the top sculptors and painters in the business. They most likely thought that they could fund it themselves, rather than taking a bank loan or doing a Kickstarter (like everyone else).

They used MG as a cash cow to fund the start up costs of a new business leaving MG as the debt vehicle, the fact that even at the end they were still trying to get money when they knew full well they had no chance of supplying the goods because their suppliers had cut them off speaks volumes about the ethics of MG, MM, EOTS etc. and the people running them

They should get some credits for trying .....

Yes at the last count they had over £500K of credits - enough is enough don't you think?


I am sorry for those people out of pocket - but the constant sniping and blaming of Wayland and other MG creditors is just ridiculous.

MG created a ponzi scheme to fund their new enterprises and spun the debt off into MG leaving the customers at the bottom of the pyramid to catch a cold.

This didn't happen by accident, you don't suddenly wake up one morning and go - "ooh look I've just discovered I'm £500K in debt - lets have a firesale to make the money back".

Regardless of the orginal intention, this was a long time coming and shows evidence of detailed financial planning to create a toxic asset vehicle that would allow the spin off businesses to start out debt-free.

No wonder they didn't get a bank loan - this way the start-up costs have been interest-free - much cheaper than a business loan.

grefven wrote:

They just started up a brand new miniature range, hiring some of the top sculptors and painters in the business. They most likely thought that they could fund it themselves, rather than taking a bank loan or doing a Kickstarter (like everyone else). They should get some credits for trying to bring something new to us, the customers. Yes, everything went to hell, and Maelstrom did some terrible decisions. But I highly doubt that this was their intention all along.

Careful, with all that bending backwards to try and defend Maelstrom you might hurt yourself!

Maelstrom has been lying to its customers for the past 6+ months, stating that all the delivery issues was due to a warehouse change while setting of offshoot companies to move assets and leaving the debt with Maelstrom.

During this period they have committed what IMO is fraud by advertising products taking money for orders and PRE-ORDERS that they could never fulfil thanks to their massive debts to their suppliers! If their suppliers were in such trouble as to consider selling a debt to a direct competitor, there is no way that that supplier is continuing to just "give you" stuff!

Wayland has just bought of their debt 1 month ago, I doubt that they did it solely for the motives they claim but it takes a special kind to try and pin this situation on anyone other than Maelstrom and Rob Lane...

 Kroothawk wrote:
So in the end, Simple Miniatures' decision to give Maelstrom a 100,000 £ credit brought the UK tabletop gaming industry into trouble. Any background, why Simple Miniatures did such a thing? Sounds like a bad idea and indeed proved to be one. Esp. when giving the money to a company whose business model is based on undercutting its global competitors in profit marges.

You keep banging on about that, page after page after page. One might think you have a vested interest somewhere? As has been explained to you more than once, the occasional sales were significant, but simply offering UKRRP with cheap shipping is enough to undercut many "global competitors".

I ain't defending Maelstrom at all. I've stated at several occasions that they blew it themselves, with their lack of communication with their customers, with their lies regarding their warehouse move, etc. I am definately not saying that MG is without blame for this situation. It obviously wouldn't have happened without some bad business decisions.

I see it that their firesales in the last couple of days in the end of october was an attempt to actually amend for their difficulties. They wanted to sell their stock in order to fulfill some of their obligations to their customers and in order to raise the money to satisfy Wayland. Obviously, I also agree that it is close to fraudulent to take money for pre-orders they most likely knew wouldn't be able to send out.

However, I am stating that MG isn't the lone part in this. I am stating that in my opinion, the attempt to "force a resolution" by Wayland most likely caused an equal amount of grief to the community, to the customers and to the others MG were owning money to.

grefven wrote:
I ain't defending Maelstrom at all. I've stated at several occasions that they blew it themselves, with their lack of communication with their customers, with their lies regarding their warehouse move, etc. I am definately not saying that MG is without blame for this situation. It obviously wouldn't have happened without some bad business decisions.

I see it that their firesales in the last couple of days in the end of october was an attempt to actually amend for their difficulties. They wanted to sell their stock in order to fulfill some of their obligations to their customers and in order to raise the money to satisfy Wayland. Obviously, I also agree that it is close to fraudulent to take money for pre-orders they most likely knew wouldn't be able to send out.

However, I am stating that MG isn't the lone part in this. I am stating that in my opinion, the attempt to "force a resolution" by Wayland most likely caused an equal amount of grief to the community, to the customers and to the others MG were owning money to.

No, you are wrong.

If that fire sale happened without any context I could even contemplate your view point, but when it is taken in the context of the prior 6+ months of lies, when is taken in the context of the shell companies created months ago, created for the sole purpose of leaving Maelstrom saddled with the massive debts, all that says that this move of leaving Maelstrom and its customers and suppliers to drown had been planned months ago and that Wayland only forced Rob Lane to go along with its plan earlier than what was intended.

Simple Miniatures shares none of the blame for this, Wayland shares none of the blame for this, this one is solely on Rob Lane's back!

PhantomViper wrote:
Simple Miniatures shares none of the blame for this

I can't agree with that. To let a customer run up a critical level of debt is extremely poor business.

 Baragash wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Simple Miniatures shares none of the blame for this

I can't agree with that. To let a customer run up a critical level of debt is extremely poor business.

If a supplier cuts off one of its clients, chances are that that client will NEVER pay the supplier back, since he stops having actual merchandise to sell. This will make it that suppliers will extend a larger credit line than it would be advisable so that the client will have a chance to get back on their feet.

Since we don't know what Maelstrom orders with Simple Miniatures looked like in their glory days of the Australian GW market, we don't even know if the 100k was a obscene amount or not...

Just seen this posted on the Wyrd forum, looks like the debt happened quickly after MG had paid a bunch of other invoices so wasn't noticed, and by the sound of it was also completely unexpected. I suppose if a big customer like MG promises to pay you back sharpish you'd believe them if there weren't any previous problems.

All sounds to me like Simple just got entirely fed up with all the BS from Rob Lane and has chosen Wayland to sort it out in the hope that because they are in the same industry they won't want to hack off all their potential customers. It's a good point ...... other debt type companies would have just have destroyed MG and everything he owns and sold it for firewood. I suppose we'll have to wait and see how Wayland play it.........

Good to know Simple are mainly unaffected, if a bit hacked off by the sound of it, 10 years work to build up a nice little pot and MG drains it all

http://www.wyrd-games.net/showthread.php?36615-Retro-Fate-Deck-out-of-stock

grefven wrote:


I see it that their firesales in the last couple of days in the end of october was an attempt to actually amend for their difficulties. They wanted to sell their stock in order to fulfill some of their obligations to their customers and in order to raise the money to satisfy Wayland. Obviously, I also agree that it is close to fraudulent to take money for pre-orders they most likely knew wouldn't be able to send out.

I'm sorry but you're trying to have it both ways - you seem to be claiming that selling goods you don't have to customers and using their money to pay off debts/satisfy previous orders was somehow "making amendments" - and then you admit that this practice is actually close to fraudulent (I'd suggest more than close...)

However, I am stating that MG isn't the lone part in this. I am stating that in my opinion, the attempt to "force a resolution" by Wayland most likely caused an equal amount of grief to the community, to the customers and to the others MG were owning money to.

The grief arose solely because whether through fault or design (with evidence tending to the latter) MG put itself in the financial hurt locker whilst simultaneously transferring assets out of MG into EOTS. (The latter moves suggest MG being loaded with £500K+ of debt was hardly "an accident")

You seem to be blaming the creditors for wanting their money back whilst at the same time feeling hard done by because customers didn't get what they were owed?

MG did this, just them, nobody else.

Without Rob Lane's actions, business practices and behaviour there would have been no debt to call in to start with.

Blaming WL or anyone else for the final result is like blaming the iceberg for sinking Titanic.

MG ran a ponzi scheme - end of.

PhantomViper wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Simple Miniatures shares none of the blame for this

I can't agree with that. To let a customer run up a critical level of debt is extremely poor business.

If a supplier cuts off one of its clients, chances are that that client will NEVER pay the supplier back, since he stops having actual merchandise to sell. This will make it that suppliers will extend a larger credit line than it would be advisable so that the client will have a chance to get back on their feet.

Since we don't know what Maelstrom orders with Simple Miniatures looked like in their glory days of the Australian GW market, we don't even know if the 100k was a obscene amount or not...

Also as far as I can tell simple are not a ltd company and as suchthe owner would be libal for any debt they were in.

As such there is an incentive to continue to supply maelstrom sothat theyhave a chance to pay there debt.

Well, here is the transcript of Simple Miniatures statement:

Statement Regarding Maelstrom Games Ltd
On the 1st October we made the difficult decision to assign the debt owed to Simple Miniature Games to Wayland Games Ltd for a nominal fee.

This debt at the point sold stood at just under £100,000 and has been outstanding at that level and higher for over 12 months. This debt built up during a short space of time during the busiest period in our 10 year history just after significant amounts had been paid for other invoices. Promises were made to clear a large portion of the debt within a short space of time but that payment never materialised. A repayment plan was then agreed which should have seen the debt reduced significantly beyond the point that it actually has been. Unfortunately many of these payments were consistently declined and at the last the payments were continually declined.

It was around this point in conjunction with our reading into the accounts of Maelstrom Games that we contacted debt recovery and debt purchase specialists in order to take further action and begin the recovery of assets to cover some the debt.

Demands for the reimbursement of the failed payments and for payment of stock supplied on the 12th September for Maelstrom Games customer orders were completely ignored. As such on October 1st 2012 the debt was sold to the company which offered the best solution, not immediately for us, but for what I considered the best long term solution for our industry in the UK. We chose Wayland Games as they have a vested interest in the hobby and industry and will offer better protection to potential customers, suppliers and manufacturers, other companies would not.

We have continued to trade as normal during the entire period of this debt and continue to order from our suppliers and pay them on time. Maelstrom Games are only one customer out of several dozen and our whole customer base is far, far greater than any one company.

You should understand that Simple Miniature Games have supported Maelstrom through the last year even though we knew they were struggling but with our support they would continue to trade. However there are only so many broken promises that you can listen to and it became perfectly clear that assets of Maelstrom Games were being moved to other companies that had been funded by monies which should have been paid to suppliers including ourselves. There was no way Maelstrom Games could pay the debt and it would appear that steps were being taken to avoid the debts and protect other assets.

This debt has not adversely affected Simple Miniature Games as a company as we can afford to continue to trade with this debt outstanding due to the reliability of our customer base and strong product lines. It has however affected myself and my wife personally as the reserves we have built over 10 years of hard work have had to cover the debt. It was always our intention to use around half of this profit to expand our warehouse and bring in another two or three new ranges including manufacturing our own. However this will now have to wait whilst we consolidate and build up the reserves for our future once again.

Vorlon25 wrote:

grefven wrote:


I see it that their firesales in the last couple of days in the end of october was an attempt to actually amend for their difficulties. They wanted to sell their stock in order to fulfill some of their obligations to their customers and in order to raise the money to satisfy Wayland. Obviously, I also agree that it is close to fraudulent to take money for pre-orders they most likely knew wouldn't be able to send out.

I'm sorry but you're trying to have it both ways - you seem to be claiming that selling goods you don't have to customers and using their money to pay off debts/satisfy previous orders was somehow "making amendments" - and then you admit that this practice is actually close to fraudulent (I'd suggest more than close...)

No, then I wasn't clear enough. I am saying that selling your existing stock in order to get cash in to fulfill orders is something good. It's where they still accepted pre-orders or money for items not in stock that is close to fraudulent. One of these things is good (selling remaning stock), one is quite distasteful (taking money for pre-orders and items not in stock).

Previous to the debt purchase, Maelstrom Games Ltd. was servicing the debt owed to Simple Miniature Games at the rate of �500 per working day, claimed by the creditor when convenient for him by charging a credit card owned by Maelstrom Games Ltd., which had been occurring since mid-June and continued to late September

Anyone else spot anything slightly weird about the second half of Maelstrom's statement here?

Firstly:

- The debt to SMG was being paid "when convenient for him by charging a credit card own by Maelstrom Games Ltd." -

That seems like an awfully informal setup which, in all honesty, seemed to shield MG from the full extent of the cost of their debt. The owner at SMG could use an MG credit card to charge stuff, when convenient for him. That's decidedly not the same as a systematic debt repayment plan, hammered out and agreed at the bank. It sounds to me a lot like MG was using its superior size and the fact that it owed SMG so much debt that SMG was effectively paralysed (as someone else astutely said, if you owe me £10 then you're in trouble, if you owe me £100,000 then I'm in trouble) to enable MG to effectively force extremely lenient and informal repayment terms onto SMG, who was struggling massively as a result but couldn't do anything. I could be wrong there, but it's what it sounds like to me.

Secondly:

- "which had been occurring since mid-June and continued to late September" -

So this was a fairly new development then, and so really can't be that related to MG running itself into crippling debts that it fundamentally could not manage.

In all honesty, it sounds to me like MG was effectively using size - both its organisation mass and the size of its debt - to cow SMG into accepting an awfully poor repayment setup. It took a larger and more confident company to come in and call MG on its appalling behaviour.

I should say upfront that I'm not a huge fan of WG generally. Their service is slow and their customer service reps a bit underpowered when it comes to interacting with their own online system (on the plus side, they have always been honest, and have never lied to me, unlike MG). However They did absolutely the right thing here. MG was clearly entering into the start of a very long and unpleasant death spiral (their failure to fulfill orders to customers and their masses of debt started long before October 1st - I should know, I had to get a full refund for an order back in August!) and seemed quite content to damage customers and suppliers alike as they desperately tried to stall their demise. This led to countless fabrications such as the great warehouse myth of 2012 and repeated email claims to baffled and upset customers that their order hadn't reached them because of someone else's fault (for me personally, 5 weeks of 'we get our orders from that supplier on a specific day each week, your order will arrive on that day and be shipped next day delivery after that' defied belief tbh).

The truth appears to be that no matter what anyone in the gaming community did - suppliers or customers - a lot of people were going to get hit by MG's appalling business decisions and behavior. WG did the right thing in shortening their demise as quickly as possible.

After all, here you had a company that had a huge debt, who was attempting to dig themselves out of a hole by....committing themselves further and further (especially those advance ticket orders they were taking and investing hundreds of thousands of pounds into new lines of miniatures)...eventually there was going to be a collapse. Imagine it like a balloon. MG wanted to keep on blowing the balloon, bigger and bigger. It was always going to burst, but had they had their way, they would have lasted a bit longer and it would have been a much bigger and more spectacular burst. WG put a needle in before that could happen. Yes, there was a loud bang, but I honestly believe it would have been a lot louder done the line had they not done so.

I should add that WG have provided communication when asked to do so. Given that they are only owned 20% of the entire debt run up by MG, they were probably quite surprised to be named by MG as the sole destroyer of their company in their statement. My advice to WG: Don't be surprised: the former owner of MG (and now owner of about another gazillion offshoot companies) was always going to find another fall guy rather than accept responsibility. The fact that he singled you out for solitary blame in such a stark and unpleasant fashion is just another example of what we have come to expect from that man. If you are pursuing legal action (including possibly libel for those public accusations?) then good luck to you! I don't think you are a white knight in shining armour, but a company that did what you had to do and did it as it should have been done.

Well that makes it clearer - looks like Simple kept supplying them in the hope that they would continue to pay but once Rob Lane started stripping assets from MG and moving them to EOTS and Mierce AND stopped paying they had to act.

All sounds to me like MG were being stripped down to go to a pre-pack administration which would cancel the debts he owed and then he could just continue with EOTS / Mierce like nothing ever happened ....but Simple got there first by using Wayland.

redknight27 wrote:
[...]

Good post!

grefven wrote:
No, then I wasn't clear enough. I am saying that selling your existing stock in order to get cash in to fulfill orders is something good. It's where they still accepted pre-orders or money for items not in stock that is close to fraudulent. One of these things is good (selling remaning stock), one is quite distasteful (taking money for pre-orders and items not in stock).

I would not disagree with your distinction.

However it is quite clear from the posts of people who never got their goods, from the suppliers and creditors who never got paid and from the fact the MG were advertising and taking money for goods they not only did not have and had no expectation of having that they fall firmly into the latter category.

They were not holding a fire-sale to pay off their creditors, they were selling goods they didn't have to fund MM, EOTS and the like.

The fact that some orders went out towards the end I suspect had more to do with trying to keep the income stream going for as long as possible (salting the mine) rather than any genuine desire to make "amends".

If MG had simply stopped sending anything to anybody the truth would have come out sooner, but everytime somebody popped up on Dakka saying "well I got my order (or a bit of) it's just the warehouse move" - another buyer might well have placed an order or held off raising a PayPal dispute - to their ultimate loss.

It is the breathtaking cynicism and contempt for their customers that puts MM, EOTS etc in the "never buy from again" category.

I do not expect my suppliers to be my bestest ever chums - I do expect them to be honest - Rob Lane isn't.

PhantomViper wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Simple Miniatures shares none of the blame for this

I can't agree with that. To let a customer run up a critical level of debt is extremely poor business.

If a supplier cuts off one of its clients, chances are that that client will NEVER pay the supplier back, since he stops having actual merchandise to sell. This will make it that suppliers will extend a larger credit line than it would be advisable so that the client will have a chance to get back on their feet.

Since we don't know what Maelstrom orders with Simple Miniatures looked like in their glory days of the Australian GW market, we don't even know if the 100k was a obscene amount or not...

This is why you cut them off early instead of letting them keep taking from the pot and filling it with promises. Break down the stock orders into smaller amounts so you can get a flowing working capital cycle going again.

Since we're playing the game of assumptions... if we make the assumption that the debt owed to Simple was a threat to Simple's ability to continue trading, what do you think the impact of Simple collapsing would have had on UK wargaming, particularly the Indie stores?

Not much apart from a month or two of limited supply whilst Gamecraft ramp up their WM/H/PP distribution. I am sure that Gamecraft and other suppliers would quickly take up the slack created should one supplier vanish, as will retailers take MG customers.

I am no expert in finances or law but Wayland buying the debt and giving one month for MG to settle the debt would not possible if MG were indeed complying with the repayment plan they agreed with Simple. You bank can't sell your mortgage to a company and then have the new company demanding you pay your mortgage in a month right? That would only be possible if you aren't complying with the agreed contract right?

Also for the one saying that simple shouldn't let the debt grown so much you need to know what was the monthly turnover of orders from MG in the first place. If they were given credit for 90 days and the normally monthly payments were in that region that could mean maybe one or two months of MG not paying to them only

Actually in that situation lenders can pull the plug at pretty much any point.

I had one of my supplier/subcontractors have their financing pulled by RBS at weeks notice simply because RBS downgraded its construction loans generally. My supplier was a profitable company with a full work book (with me!) and only had a loan on their management buyout. The differance would be that they had assets to cover the loan so RBS called it.

It's annoying but fairly common for lenders to make arbitrary decisions like that.

With MG its not arbitrary, they were digging themselves more and more In a whole inspite of their obvious outward signs of failure. Seems rob lame could have saved everyone else allot of pain with selling to WG but chose hubris instead by trying to move off assets and leave others to stump up for his failure. I have no sympathy for him.

It reminds me of a mate who sold scaffolding material to a chap that did this. Scaffolders not being one to necessarily take the formal route turned up on his door in Christmas day and threaten to repossessed whatever they could lay their hands on. They had their cash before the turkey was cooked!

 Bacms wrote:
You bank can't sell your mortgage to a company and then have the new company demanding you pay your mortgage in a month right? That would only be possible if you aren't complying with the agreed contract right?

OFT guidance says the new owner of a debt has no obligation to accept a payment plan agreed with the previous owner of the debt.

 Baragash wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:

 Baragash wrote:

PhantomViper wrote:
Simple Miniatures shares none of the blame for this

I can't agree with that. To let a customer run up a critical level of debt is extremely poor business.

If a supplier cuts off one of its clients, chances are that that client will NEVER pay the supplier back, since he stops having actual merchandise to sell. This will make it that suppliers will extend a larger credit line than it would be advisable so that the client will have a chance to get back on their feet.

Since we don't know what Maelstrom orders with Simple Miniatures looked like in their glory days of the Australian GW market, we don't even know if the 100k was a obscene amount or not...

This is why you cut them off early instead of letting them keep taking from the pot and filling it with promises. Break down the stock orders into smaller amounts so you can get a flowing working capital cycle going again.

Unfortunatly thats not how it works in the real world. What normaly happens is the customer keeps paying then stops, and this is the first you know about it. Its not that you keep extending credit when someone dose not pay but that they build up debt which they are paying then stop. I am sure they did not increase there exposure once they were aware that MG were not paying, but if they are on 90 day terms it can take a while for it to become clear there is a problem.

In theory you try and do that, but that only works if a company tells you they have problems before they stop paying, which they almost never do.

From the Simple Miniatures statement it seems clear that MG weren't meeting their financial obligations so it sort of blows any arguments about that right out of the water, I also haven't seen anything to suggest that any of the income from the massive fire-sale that would have brought in many £1000's has gone to pay off any of the debts. Question is where has it gone???? someone's pocket or one of the other companies? If wayland or Simple Miniatures were offered a substantial sum surely that could have delayed /helped things.

It seems to me from that obvious bit of missing info from MG's statement that he had no intention of even attempting to pay the debt. With the new EOTS/ mierce and what I've read about them it is now all about protecting the new companies and getting whatever cash Rob Lane can out of MG.

I've been told by someone in the industry there is £100K+ (could be double that) of customer orders/money outstanding but that'll become 100% confirmed when the administrators go in and publish their results, there is no way MG could have traded out of that one and he was getting further into trouble each day that passed.

This couldn't have come sooner for the paying consumer and whether or not it's Wayland doing it or not - someone needed to put a stop to MG. I;m just glad it's all happening finally and we'll get some closure one way or the other.

 notprop wrote:
Actually in that situation lenders can pull the plug at pretty much any point.

I had one of my supplier/subcontractors have their financing pulled by RBS at weeks notice simply because RBS downgraded its construction loans generally. My supplier was a profitable company with a full work book (with me!) and only had a loan on their management buyout. The differance would be that they had assets to cover the loan so RBS called it.

It's annoying but fairly common for lenders to make arbitrary decisions like that.

With MG its not arbitrary, they were digging themselves more and more In a whole inspite of their obvious outward signs of failure. Seems rob lame could have saved everyone else allot of pain with selling to WG but chose hubris instead by trying to move off assets and leave others to stump up for his failure. I have no sympathy for him.

It reminds me of a mate who sold scaffolding material to a chap that did this. Scaffolders not being one to necessarily take the formal route turned up on his door in Christmas day and threaten to repossessed whatever they could lay their hands on. They had their cash before the turkey was cooked!

Also, Simply were not a lender, they were a supplier. There was no loan and no repayment agreement. In trade credit you can withdraw a repayment plan at any time. You don't need a month, or a week, or even a day. If you know what you are doing you can cancel the agreement , issue a letter before action and have a CCJ within the day. It's not easy or a safe thing to do unless you really need to, but it can be done.

I don't know the details, but I've met Graham who runs simply. He's a decent bloke, I'd guess he'd give them a chance to pay off the debt, but eventually had enough

Sounds like Rob Lane committed a lot of economic crimes lately. Is there a public investigation? How are the chances that he is allowed to keep on running businesses with that history?

 Kroothawk wrote:
Sounds like Rob Lane committed a lot of economic crimes lately. Is there a public investigation? How are the chances that he is allowed to keep on running businesses with that history?

We don't know if any crime was committed, since we are guessing at what has transpired through out this whole f'd up affair.

Wayland will know some of it, Simply will be aware of some of it, and bar official statements we don't know squat, we only make 'educated ' guesses.

Regardless of what did or did not go on, Rob lanes companies will not get any of my cash.

One particular fiendish element of this whole saga is that Maelstrom has attempted to position as a sort of dispute between them (as victim) and Wayland games (as bully).

I assume the end goal is for people to say 'well, they both share blame and so we can't really fault either company too much' or something like that. Almost like they're trying to position us in the role of a teacher having to adjudicate between two kids in a playground who started fighting. We're supposed to see it as a sort of shared fault, and believe that both sides made mistakes and both suffered from the other simultaneously.

Don't believe any of this hogwash. As I see it:

- Maelstrom games got itself into huge amounts of debt (presumably through bad business decisions, but who knows for sure?)
- Maelstrom games hid that truth from its customers and suppliers.
- Maelstrom games started treating its customers and suppliers worse and worse as their problems got worse and worse, still without saying anything at all.
- Maelstrom games then switched from hiding the truth to peddling falsehoods and fabrications (such as a warehouse move and their stocks not coming through due to problems on their suppliers' end, not theirs).
- Maelstrom games set up a myriad of new companies, to which one can only assume it began moving its stock across in what seems to have been a very underhanded (albeit possibly legal) fashion.
- Maelstrom games then went bust, and still didn't tell anyone (claiming their website was down due to technical problems, ahem).
- Maelstrom games then finally admitted to going bust, but still refused to accept any blame and pointed the finger at whoever it felt could be most easily accused (who will also be a rival for their new offshoot companies - EOTS and Maunsfield etc - so presumably this represents an early and rather disingenuous attempt to mire their competition in the very same egg that they have gotten all over their own faces).

As far as I can see, Maelstrom games is the main creator of its problems, the main perpetrator of its endless fabrications, and the ultimate bringer about of its own destruction. I've yet to see any evidence to the contrary. The only real contribution of Wayland Games to the fiasco seemed to have been to put the flailing beast out of its misery before it hurt anymore people than it was already poised to do...

 Kroothawk wrote:
Sounds like Rob Lane committed a lot of economic crimes lately. Is there a public investigation? How are the chances that he is allowed to keep on running businesses with that history?

Seriously?

Judging by some of posts you seem to have a dry sense of humour, so I hope this is one of those.

There will be no 'public enquiry' as what he has apparently done is so common in British business it's silly.

If there are any irregularities in the way business has been done, it would normally be detected by HMRC, who would pass the details on to the police if necessary.

I strongly suspect this won't happen.

I think he meant public investigation as in. "An investigation where the public is legally allowed to find out there is an investigation going on." I doubt he's meaning a big hoo-hah about a minor toy company.

On a side note, I wonder where Wayland got the stock for their recent hallowean sale? Sadly I was unaware of it, or I would have leapt on the seeds of war items being sold at 60+% off. That looks like far too big a discount to be a trade supply. From a shop? From suppliers of MS?

 azreal13 wrote:
There will be no 'public enquiry' as what he has apparently done is so common in British business it's silly.

Actually, it does sound like like Maelstrom's actions may constitute fraudulent conveyance.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
There will be no 'public enquiry' as what he has apparently done is so common in British business it's silly.

Actually, it does sound like like Maelstrom's actions may constitute fraudulent conveyance.

Definitely.

This is what I was on about in the other discussion, the mother fether that runs Maelstrom should be sent to jail.

There is no way that the bloke didn't know what he was doing, he took my money within an hour of me making an order, and then after ten days of silence, told me I wasn't getting my gear, and then, utterly ignored several emails, and all phone calls.

Basically, its fething outrageous, and If I could be bothered, I would drive down there, drag the snake out of his hole, and boot him all the way to Elgin.

Hence my disagreement with Steve Jackson, who insists that current law is fine and dandy, even though it is utterly unenforceable.

Nobody will ever convince me that the head honcho at MG didn't knowing and willingly take money off people knowing full well he wasn't going to be able to ship them their stuff. Ergo, the man is a walking toilet. How is that any different from knocking on an old ladies door dressed as the gas-man, asking to read her meter, and then ransacking her house while she puts the kettle on?

 mattyrm wrote:
Basically, its fething outrageous, and If I could be bothered, I would drive down there, drag the snake out of his hole, and boot him all the way to Elgin.

And get arrested for, by the sounds of it, a minimum of assault? Please, go right ahead...

 mattyrm wrote:
Hence my disagreement with Steve Jackson, who insists that current law is fine and dandy, even though it is utterly unenforceable.

Source, please?

 mattyrm wrote:
Nobody will ever convince me that the head honcho at MG didn't knowing and willingly take money off people knowing full well he wasn't going to be able to ship them their stuff. Ergo, the man is a walking toilet. How is that any different from knocking on an old ladies door dressed as the gas-man, asking to read her meter, and then ransacking her house while she puts the kettle on?

Well, for a start, he hasn't come onto your property, so there goes the sense of violation of home angle...

The_Real_Chris wrote:
On a side note, I wonder where Wayland got the stock for their recent hallowean sale? Sadly I was unaware of it, or I would have leapt on the seeds of war items being sold at 60+% off. That looks like far too big a discount to be a trade supply. From a shop? From suppliers of MS?

From the looks of it, Wayland's halloween sale was very specifically done. I would take a guess that it was a combination of making specific orders with the intention of doing them 'for the halloween sale' combined with a load of old things they couldn't get rid of.

Yeah, from the Wayland site it sounded like they hit up suppliers for stuff they had lying around and wanted to shift.

I agree completely with the sentiment that Maelstrom made their own bed and have to lie in it (although they also did a lot of lying outside of it around it, and all over the place!).

But I also think it's really naive for anybody to take Wayland's explanation at face value. They weren't interested in saving their industry; we don't have any idea whether or not Simple was truly at risk, or how long they could have maintained financial health waiting for Maelstrom to fulfill its debt via the patchy/unreliable repayment installments. Their earlier offer to buy Maelstrom was also not a generous olive branch that would have preserved Maelstrom. All of Wayland's moves were performed with the intention of neutralizing Maelstrom (who are responsible for putting themselves in a terrible position in which they could be neutralized).

At the end of the day, I don't really care or have special loyalty about or to any of these companies. There will always be webstore discounters and suppliers, and the collapse of individual parties will never kill the industry permanently. My one hope at the end of all this is that Mierce Minis survives, because their products ARE a unique and irreplaceable thing, and it sucks whenever a nice line of miniatures goes forever OOP.

 Dysartes wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:
Hence my disagreement with Steve Jackson, who insists that current law is fine and dandy, even though it is utterly unenforceable.

Source, please?

Read the thread... I wasnt talking about an actual legal precedent, just a conversation, Ravvon and I see things similarly, ie - It is so hard to prosectute people for internet fraud, the legislation might as well not be there.

http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/487961.page

 Dysartes wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:
Nobody will ever convince me that the head honcho at MG didn't knowing and willingly take money off people knowing full well he wasn't going to be able to ship them their stuff. Ergo, the man is a walking toilet. How is that any different from knocking on an old ladies door dressed as the gas-man, asking to read her meter, and then ransacking her house while she puts the kettle on?

Well, for a start, he hasn't come onto your property, so there goes the sense of violation of home angle...

Obviously you are being pedantic, I clearly didn't mean its the exact same sort of crime.. because robbing people over the internet isnt the same as stealing the biscuit tin someone keeps all their money i, but it IS outright theft to take money off people when you know full well you will not be sending them what they paid you for before you even take the orders, would you not agree? If someone makes an ebay account selling tickets for a boxing match, sells 500 pairs, but doesn't actually have any tickets, and doesn't mail any out, would you not expect them to go to prison? Its pretty much the exact same thing. The crux is the same as my lighthearted robbing the pensioners house analogy..

Namely, theft and fraud.

I'm curious as to your feelings on the matter, you are arguing with me why exactly?

Do you see this different from the majority? Are you defending MGs actions? If so, why?

Do you not think that the two main gripes I have raised....

1. MG knowingly took cash from people when they had no intention of honouring the order.

2. MG purposely ignored all attempts at communication.

Are entirely sound?

The company have behaved reprehensibly, it is rude as feth, it is theft, and it is fraud.

Please enlighten me as to why I should not be annoyed at MGs actions, if you have any information that may quell my rage, I'm all ears.

On the basis of what we know, or can reasonably assume, in the context of transfer of assets, MG have done nothing wrong illegal as long as they have been exchanged for fair market value.

In the context of taking money for goods they had no intention of supplying? Perhaps more of a case, but unless management have been naive in the extreme and left emails lying around that incriminate them, I challenge you to prove it.

It's not about what you know, it's what you can prove.

Altruizine wrote:
I agree completely with the sentiment that Maelstrom made their own bed and have to lie in it (although they also did a lot of lying outside of it around it, and all over the place!).

But I also think it's really naive for anybody to take Wayland's explanation at face value. They weren't interested in saving their industry; we don't have any idea whether or not Simple was truly at risk, or how long they could have maintained financial health waiting for Maelstrom to fulfill its debt via the patchy/unreliable repayment installments. Their earlier offer to buy Maelstrom was also not a generous olive branch that would have preserved Maelstrom. All of Wayland's moves were performed with the intention of neutralizing Maelstrom (who are responsible for putting themselves in a terrible position in which they could be neutralized).

At the end of the day, I don't really care or have special loyalty about or to any of these companies. There will always be webstore discounters and suppliers, and the collapse of individual parties will never kill the industry permanently. My one hope at the end of all this is that Mierce Minis survives, because their products ARE a unique and irreplaceable thing, and it sucks whenever a nice line of miniatures goes forever OOP.

Sorry but you assume some things (Waylands were not interested in perserving the industry they are in) and say you dont know other things (how much 100k loss would affect Simple). Their offer to buy Maelstrom would have been better for the industry at large and customers, they offered to take on all debt and comminetments. Yes part of Waylands intention probably was to remove a compeitior, is there anything wrong with that in business?



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 azreal13 wrote:
On the basis of what we know, or can reasonably assume, in the context of transfer of assets, MG have done nothing wrong illegal as long as they have been exchanged for fair market value.

In the context of taking money for goods they had no intention of supplying? Perhaps more of a case, but unless management have been naive in the extreme and left emails lying around that incriminate them, I challenge you to prove it.

It's not about what you know, it's what you can prove.

In regards to selling what they do not have, very easy to prove, say they sold x amount of Dark vengeance which they didnt have the stock for in September, and these orders were not fulfilled and not refunded, nor was any stock ordered then they sold more Dark vegeance in October with the same, that is 100% fraud. I have used DV as a example but I have no idea if this was the case with it or not,

 azreal13 wrote:
On the basis of what we know, or can reasonably assume, in the context of transfer of assets, MG have done nothing wrong illegal as long as they have been exchanged for fair market value.

In the context of taking money for goods they had no intention of supplying? Perhaps more of a case, but unless management have been naive in the extreme and left emails lying around that incriminate them, I challenge you to prove it.

It's not about what you know, it's what you can prove.

Oh yeah, hence the reason I said "Nobody will ever convince me that..."

I know for a fact they wont get in the gak, which is the point I was making in the other thread. Legislation sucks, and I think that the top man at MG is an absolute scumbag, sure I cant prove it, but I'm entitled to my opinion.

Honestly.. you would have to be an absolute fool to think that the guy in charge of the purse strings at MG didn't know exactly what was happening, but as you say, proving it is another matter, and thats why I was dripping about the whole legislation thing in the morality thread.

 Dysartes wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:
Basically, its fething outrageous, and If I could be bothered, I would drive down there, drag the snake out of his hole, and boot him all the way to Elgin.

And get arrested for, by the sounds of it, a minimum of assault? Please, go right ahead...

 mattyrm wrote:
Hence my disagreement with Steve Jackson, who insists that current law is fine and dandy, even though it is utterly unenforceable.

Source, please?

 mattyrm wrote:
Nobody will ever convince me that the head honcho at MG didn't knowing and willingly take money off people knowing full well he wasn't going to be able to ship them their stuff. Ergo, the man is a walking toilet. How is that any different from knocking on an old ladies door dressed as the gas-man, asking to read her meter, and then ransacking her house while she puts the kettle on?

Well, for a start, he hasn't come onto your property, so there goes the sense of violation of home angle...

I think he means me... Matty had a little bit of a strop because I said, after 15 years of working in credit and dealing with hundreds of bankrupcys and liquidations, I think the law works fine just has problems with at times with improper trading not being properly enforced.

Matty on the otherhand thinks we should go back to the world of workhouses and debtors prison, dispite not understanding the basics of company law and the concept of limited liability (which I have pointed him to and he has clearly refused to read - and he wonders why I won't be drawn in to an argument with him...).

MarkyMark wrote:

In regards to selling what they do not have, very easy to prove, say they sold x amount of Dark vengeance which they didn't have the stock for in September, and these orders were not fulfilled and not refunded, nor was any stock ordered then they sold more Dark vegeance in October with the same, that is 100% fraud. I have used DV as a example but I have no idea if this was the case with it or not,

Exactly. Fraud and fething theft in my book. Taking peoples money when you know full well beforehand you aren't going to even attempt to send them their gak, is full on thievery, hence my ire.

Ok if we're assuming that they were actively behaving fraudulently, as opposed to being incompetent.

It would be so easy to create purchase orders, claim orders were placed on the phone etc..

Much of business accounting is done by the business itself, you would be frightened how easy fraud can be if you put your mind to it.

Steve steveson wrote:

Matty on the otherhand thinks we should go back to the world of workhouses and debtors prison, despite not understanding the basics of company law and the concept of limited liability (which I have pointed him to and he has clearly refused to read - and he wonders why I won't be drawn in to an argument with him...).

Mate I obviously don't, as I said, I was clearly taking the piss. I don't think we should put people on racks or make them break rocks.. the point was simply that I don't think the current system is working as intended, but you took my sarcastic "chain them all to sex offenders" thing far too seriously.

I fully understand the concept of limited liability.. for one, it encourages entrepreneurship, clearly I get that, I'm a Tory.

As I said, learn to take the more militant stuff I say with a pinch of salt. I mean... feth me, didn't the content of the sentence make you aware of the fact I was taking the mick? I even mentioned Jimmy Saville!

 mattyrm wrote:

MarkyMark wrote:

In regards to selling what they do not have, very easy to prove, say they sold x amount of Dark vengeance which they didn't have the stock for in September, and these orders were not fulfilled and not refunded, nor was any stock ordered then they sold more Dark vegeance in October with the same, that is 100% fraud. I have used DV as a example but I have no idea if this was the case with it or not,

Exactly. Fraud and fething theft in my book. Taking peoples money when you know full well beforehand you aren't going to even attempt to send them their gak, is full on thievery, hence my ire.

Pre orders are a bad example. You simply claim you didn't'receive enough.

When challenged you say ordered X amount, but didn't receive them all.

Your supplier says you didn't.

You say you did, did they not get the order?

You are now in a your word vs theirs situation. Nobody can prove you didn't place an order.

feth... Deleated by accident!

Steve steveson wrote:
Its like the parent who still says there 16 year old 18stone child is "just puppy fat".

Hey, that's what my Mum always said about me!

MarkyMark wrote:

Altruizine wrote:
I agree completely with the sentiment that Maelstrom made their own bed and have to lie in it (although they also did a lot of lying outside of it around it, and all over the place!).

But I also think it's really naive for anybody to take Wayland's explanation at face value. They weren't interested in saving their industry; we don't have any idea whether or not Simple was truly at risk, or how long they could have maintained financial health waiting for Maelstrom to fulfill its debt via the patchy/unreliable repayment installments. Their earlier offer to buy Maelstrom was also not a generous olive branch that would have preserved Maelstrom. All of Wayland's moves were performed with the intention of neutralizing Maelstrom (who are responsible for putting themselves in a terrible position in which they could be neutralized).

At the end of the day, I don't really care or have special loyalty about or to any of these companies. There will always be webstore discounters and suppliers, and the collapse of individual parties will never kill the industry permanently. My one hope at the end of all this is that Mierce Minis survives, because their products ARE a unique and irreplaceable thing, and it sucks whenever a nice line of miniatures goes forever OOP.

Sorry but you assume some things (Waylands were not interested in perserving the industry they are in) and say you dont know other things (how much 100k loss would affect Simple). Their offer to buy Maelstrom would have been better for the industry at large and customers, they offered to take on all debt and comminetments. Yes part of Waylands intention probably was to remove a compeitior, is there anything wrong with that in business?

Wayland are obviously interesting in preserving the industry they are in. However, we have no actual evidence that the industry would have really been in trouble in Maelstrom had hypothetically folded completely without any prodding, and not paid a penny back to any creditor. We aren't really privy to the proper scale of things and an understanding of how bad things could have gotten if Wayland had never intervened (just like we'll never know if Maelstrom could have pulled itself out of it's self-incurred debt if given more time).

There's nothing at all wrong with Wayland seeking to cripple Maelstrom. It's sort of badass, actually, and you better believe Maelstrom would have done the same thing if their positions had been reversed. My only problem is with Wayland's airy fairy idealistic explanation of their actions, which doesn't really ring true.

 mattyrm wrote:

Steve steveson wrote:

Matty on the otherhand thinks we should go back to the world of workhouses and debtors prison, despite not understanding the basics of company law and the concept of limited liability (which I have pointed him to and he has clearly refused to read - and he wonders why I won't be drawn in to an argument with him...).

Mate I obviously don't, as I said, I was clearly taking the piss. I don't think we should put people on racks or make them break rocks.. the point was simply that I don't think the current system is working as intended, but you took my sarcastic "chain them all to sex offenders" thing far too seriously.

I fully understand the concept of limited liability.. for one, it encourages entrepreneurship, clearly I get that, I'm a Tory.

As I said, learn to take the more militant stuff I say with a pinch of salt. I mean... feth me, didn't the content of the sentence make you aware of the fact I was taking the mick? I even mentioned Jimmy Saville!

Fair enough. I didn't take your comments about Jimmy Saville seriously, but the violence and hard work you were suggesting, I assumed that you were meaning that to some extent and toned it down to assume that when you said there should be more threat to debtors to mean the workhouse. And I assumed you did not understand limited liability because you are suggesting direct repercussions against the director of a failed business. Did I not go far enough?

Out of interest then, what do you suggest is done to improve the law?

 azreal13 wrote:
On the basis of what we know, or can reasonably assume, in the context of transfer of assets, MG have done nothing wrong illegal as long as they have been exchanged for fair market value.

In the context of taking money for goods they had no intention of supplying? Perhaps more of a case, but unless management have been naive in the extreme and left emails lying around that incriminate them, I challenge you to prove it.

It's not about what you know, it's what you can prove.

We can prove that they passed confidential customer information from Maelstrom to EotS, so right there you have a couple of information privacy type laws being breached.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive

And we don't know absolutely anything on how the assets were transferred from Maelstrom to EotS / Mierce, and I certainly wouldn't assume that they haven' done anything illegal during that transfer. Someone that is capable of the type of behaviour that Rob Lane has demonstrated can surely fidget some books to have some stock missing from MS just for it to magically appear in EotS...

 azreal13 wrote:

 mattyrm wrote:

MarkyMark wrote:

In regards to selling what they do not have, very easy to prove, say they sold x amount of Dark vengeance which they didn't have the stock for in September, and these orders were not fulfilled and not refunded, nor was any stock ordered then they sold more Dark vegeance in October with the same, that is 100% fraud. I have used DV as a example but I have no idea if this was the case with it or not,

Exactly. Fraud and fething theft in my book. Taking peoples money when you know full well beforehand you aren't going to even attempt to send them their gak, is full on thievery, hence my ire.

Pre orders are a bad example. You simply claim you didn't'receive enough.

When challenged you say ordered X amount, but didn't receive them all.

Your supplier says you didn't.

You say you did, did they not get the order?

You are now in a your word vs theirs situation. Nobody can prove you didn't place an order.

September and October were not pre orders mate, it was released by then (end of August wasnt it?).

Then you have to show your PO (purchase order) and the supplier will have a copy as well. So there are paper trails buddy


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Altruizine wrote:

MarkyMark wrote:

Altruizine wrote:
I agree completely with the sentiment that Maelstrom made their own bed and have to lie in it (although they also did a lot of lying outside of it around it, and all over the place!).

But I also think it's really naive for anybody to take Wayland's explanation at face value. They weren't interested in saving their industry; we don't have any idea whether or not Simple was truly at risk, or how long they could have maintained financial health waiting for Maelstrom to fulfill its debt via the patchy/unreliable repayment installments. Their earlier offer to buy Maelstrom was also not a generous olive branch that would have preserved Maelstrom. All of Wayland's moves were performed with the intention of neutralizing Maelstrom (who are responsible for putting themselves in a terrible position in which they could be neutralized).

At the end of the day, I don't really care or have special loyalty about or to any of these companies. There will always be webstore discounters and suppliers, and the collapse of individual parties will never kill the industry permanently. My one hope at the end of all this is that Mierce Minis survives, because their products ARE a unique and irreplaceable thing, and it sucks whenever a nice line of miniatures goes forever OOP.

Sorry but you assume some things (Waylands were not interested in perserving the industry they are in) and say you dont know other things (how much 100k loss would affect Simple). Their offer to buy Maelstrom would have been better for the industry at large and customers, they offered to take on all debt and comminetments. Yes part of Waylands intention probably was to remove a compeitior, is there anything wrong with that in business?

Wayland are obviously interesting in preserving the industry they are in. However, we have no actual evidence that the industry would have really been in trouble in Maelstrom had hypothetically folded completely without any prodding, and not paid a penny back to any creditor. We aren't really privy to the proper scale of things and an understanding of how bad things could have gotten if Wayland had never intervened (just like we'll never know if Maelstrom could have pulled itself out of it's self-incurred debt if given more time).

There's nothing at all wrong with Wayland seeking to cripple Maelstrom. It's sort of badass, actually, and you better believe Maelstrom would have done the same thing if their positions had been reversed. My only problem is with Wayland's airy fairy idealistic explanation of their actions, which doesn't really ring true.

Conversely you have no evidence to say it would not have affected the industry. I wouldnt never expect a company to publicy release their business plans, every company in the world puts a spin on pretty much everything, its nothing new and is not the first nor the last. Overall the reasons why Wayland purchased the debt is irrelvant at this point

 azreal13 wrote:
Pre orders are a bad example. You simply claim you didn't'receive enough.

When challenged you say ordered X amount, but didn't receive them all.

Your supplier says you didn't.

You say you did, did they not get the order?

You are now in a your word vs theirs situation. Nobody can prove you didn't place an order.

No, it's not a yours versus theirs situation, because you and they both have documentation stating you ordered Y amount.

And if it is a yours versus theirs situation, it's because you don't possess any documentation to suggest they owe you anything.

Steve steveson wrote:


Fair enough. I didn't take your comments about Jimmy Saville seriously, but the violence and hard work you were suggesting, I assumed that you were meaning that to some extent...

Out of interest then, what do you suggest is done to improve the law?

I don't know entirely, smarter men than us are supposed to run the bloody country, its above my pay grade anyway.

There are many aspects of law that don't seem fit for purpose, I don't think we should be satisfied and stop looking for a better way forwards.

Certainly the system seems to vary greatly around the world, I read an article about Scranton going bankrupt in the economist a few months back, and also an article about Iceland's rise from the ashes after their financial crisis, I don't think anyone has the ideal solution, but I definitely think that there should be bigger ramifications for people that behave irresponsibly like desperate gamblers, usually with other peoples bloody money.

I know its different for individuals than it is for corporations in the States (I lived there a while) I'm unsure if our system is similar, but it seems to me that there is no real incentive to pay your bills with an IVA when you can just go bankrupt instead.

PhantomViper wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
On the basis of what we know, or can reasonably assume, in the context of transfer of assets, MG have done nothing wrong illegal as long as they have been exchanged for fair market value.

In the context of taking money for goods they had no intention of supplying? Perhaps more of a case, but unless management have been naive in the extreme and left emails lying around that incriminate them, I challenge you to prove it.

It's not about what you know, it's what you can prove.

We can prove that they passed confidential customer information from Maelstrom to EotS, so right there you have a couple of information privacy type laws being breached.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Protection_Directive

And we don't know absolutely anything on how the assets were transferred from Maelstrom to EotS / Mierce, and I certainly wouldn't assume that they haven' done anything illegal during that transfer. Someone that is capable of the type of behaviour that Rob Lane has demonstrated can surely fidget some books to have some stock missing from MS just for it to magically appear in EotS...

So Maelstrom contravenes the DPA?

I'm sure they'll receive a hefty fine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
Pre orders are a bad example. You simply claim you didn't'receive enough.

When challenged you say ordered X amount, but didn't receive them all.

Your supplier says you didn't.

You say you did, did they not get the order?

You are now in a your word vs theirs situation. Nobody can prove you didn't place an order.

No, it's not a yours versus theirs situation, because you and they both have documentation stating you ordered Y amount.

And if it is a yours versus theirs situation, it's because you don't possess any documentation to suggest they owe you anything.

No, the don't have any documentation because you never sent any.

However you can claim you did and they lost it. Nobody can prove otherwise. Unless you're dumb enough to document what you're doing.

The adminstrator/liquidator has the power to set aside any trnasaction in the last 3 years (I think, it's been a while) and recover any goods transfered/sold to the detriment of the company.

One thing that people don't know about insolvency laws, is that the insolvent is/can be presumed guilty until proven innocent. They have no right to silence as a defence, they cannot claim incrimination as a defence and if they fail to answer any questions to the satisfaction of the A/L they can find themselves infront of a judge quicker than you would believe. With one sheet of paper a A/L can seize assets he believes part of the estate. He doesn't have to prove they are part, just that he believes they are. You have to prove they arn't before you get them back.

Lets wait to see what happens next before pillorying someone.

@MattRM, why Elgin

Cheers

Andrew

Forgive me for amateur lawyering here (I am most assuredly not licensed to practice law in the UK), but it seems superfluous to discuss some of these more exotic provisions of the law, when it appears that there is a fairly strong prima facia case to be made for criminal fraud under the Fraud Act of 2006.

Specifically, Section 2;

Fraud by false representation
(1)A person is in breach of this section if he—
(a)dishonestly makes a false representation, and
(b)intends, by making the representation—
(i)to make a gain for himself or another, or
(ii)to cause loss to another or to expose another to a risk of loss.
(2)A representation is false if—
(a)it is untrue or misleading, and
(b)the person making it knows that it is, or might be, untrue or misleading.
(3)“Representation” means any representation as to fact or law, including a representation as to the state of mind of—
(a)the person making the representation, or
(b)any other person.
(4)A representation may be express or implied.
(5)For the purposes of this section a representation may be regarded as made if it (or anything implying it) is submitted in any form to any system or device designed to receive, convey or respond to communications (with or without human intervention).

Several people have alleged that MG sold items that it had no capacity to obtain. Assuming, arguendo, that to be true, any such sales would seem under a plain language reading of the statute to constitute a fraud. Selling items which they had the means to obtain, but had no intention to obtain, or might not obtain, would similarly be fraud.

Please note that the offense being performed by a corporation is no insulation: under provision 12, Liability of company officers for offences by company, (2) "If the offence is proved to have been committed with the consent or connivance of" (a) "a director, manager, secretary or other similar officer of the body corporate, or" (b) "a person who was purporting to act in any such capacity," then "he (as well as the body corporate) is guilty of the offence and liable to be proceeded against and punished accordingly."

All that said, I am open to the idea that I am missing something here, as this is very different from my experiences with American law, where for a property crime there would typically be a range of value specified. If there is one, I have been unsuccessful in discovering it.

Also, please note that this provision is regarding criminal, rather then civil liability. My presumption is that there would be a procedure for the creditors to be made whole, but I am insufficiently familiar with UK law to discern it. Curious to hear from people more conversant with the relevant statutes on this matter.

All that said, it would seem the single mos pertinent information that this thread should be distributing is not blame, but that anyone with outstanding business with MG should immediately begin the process of seeking a refund.

 azreal13 wrote:
No, the don't have any documentation because you never sent any.

However you can claim you did and they lost it. Nobody can prove otherwise. Unless you're dumb enough to document what you're doing.

Then your claim is worthless. It's like trying to fraudulently claim you purchased something on layby - your argument will implode approximately five seconds after you refuse to provide a single iota of evidence that any contract exists.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
Also, please note that this provision is regarding criminal, rather then civil liability. My presumption is that there would be a procedure for the creditors to be made whole, but I am insufficiently familiar with UK law to discern it. Curious to hear from people more conversant with the relevant statutes on this matter.

Generally, limited liability only applies in the absence of wrongdoing. If Rob Lane is found to have been committing fraud it is likely that he will be personally liable for any debts - including to his customers - that his company cannot cover.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
No, the don't have any documentation because you never sent any.

However you can claim you did and they lost it. Nobody can prove otherwise. Unless you're dumb enough to document what you're doing.

Then your claim is worthless. It's like trying to fraudulently claim you purchased something on layby - your argument will implode approximately five seconds after you refuse to provide a single iota of evidence that any contract exists.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
Also, please note that this provision is regarding criminal, rather then civil liability. My presumption is that there would be a procedure for the creditors to be made whole, but I am insufficiently familiar with UK law to discern it. Curious to hear from people more conversant with the relevant statutes on this matter.

Generally, limited liability only applies in the absence of wrongdoing. If Rob Lane is found to have been committing fraud it is likely that he will be personally liable for any debts - including to his customers - that his company cannot cover.

Burden of proof does not lie with the defendant. Besides, I have My copy of the purchase order. I created one last week when it became apparent I'd need to prove I tried to order the goods.

 azreal13 wrote:

 AlexHolker wrote:

 azreal13 wrote:
No, the don't have any documentation because you never sent any.

However you can claim you did and they lost it. Nobody can prove otherwise. Unless you're dumb enough to document what you're doing.

Then your claim is worthless. It's like trying to fraudulently claim you purchased something on layby - your argument will implode approximately five seconds after you refuse to provide a single iota of evidence that any contract exists.

 Buzzsaw wrote:
Also, please note that this provision is regarding criminal, rather then civil liability. My presumption is that there would be a procedure for the creditors to be made whole, but I am insufficiently familiar with UK law to discern it. Curious to hear from people more conversant with the relevant statutes on this matter.

Generally, limited liability only applies in the absence of wrongdoing. If Rob Lane is found to have been committing fraud it is likely that he will be personally liable for any debts - including to his customers - that his company cannot cover.

Burden of proof does not lie with the defendant. Besides, I have My copy of the purchase order. I created one last week when it became apparent I'd need to prove I tried to order the goods.

Regards the fraud aspect, here is a good example of some proof that they were committing premeditated theft... remember me ranting about MG when the DV limited edition first came out?

The MG site said, as did Wayland and all the others, that GW had limited them to a set amount. When I went to get one on Wayland, they had it marked as "Sold out" as they had obviously burned through their allocation pronto.

Obviously I then went to MG, no sold out from them. So I ordered, and the money flew out of my account.

No correspondence back, and then obviously a fortnight later, they start saying most people aren't getting one.

Surely to feth, if they got told, and they even told us via their own website, that GW were limiting the numbers of the set given to retailers, they should have done what the other retailers seemed to do? You know, actually stop taking orders when they hit a set number? I had several replies on my thread people saying the same... so clearly this happened to gak loads of people! I cant know the numbers, but if plenty just here on dakka said the same, obviously they did it to loads of people.

So the fact that they endlessly took orders, proves beyond any shadow of a doubt that it was pre meditated, and they knew for a fact that people were never going to get their set anyway!

That make sense? Maybe they charged 2000 people, even though they were well aware they were only getting 100 boxes. Surely that's not just bang out of order and unprofessional, its bloody illegal right? I mean, think about If a football team has a 32,000 seater stadium, but they just keep charging everyone's cards even if they have burned through the 32,000.. to the point where two days before the game they have sold 80,000 tickets, and then forcing them into an epic feth about to obtain their cash back, its not kosher is it?

@ Andrew, Elgin is the most Northern place I have been in the UK..

IF you could prove that they knowingly sold more sets than they were allocated, I guess you'd have a case.

Small potatoes if you're looking for a meaningful prosecution though.

I'd just like to say that at some point I've started to feel like I'm arguing MGs point. This isn't the case, I'm afraid I'm just pretty pessimistic about anything being successfully done about their behaviour.

If anyone preordered product which was not fulfilled they should contact their local trading standards (UK). Same with anyone who has other money/stock owed. It`s worth doing this even if you got a refund from paypal or your credit card.

The more complaints and reports that trading standards receive, the more likely they are to investigate.

That investigationis, given what has happened, likely to stretch to HMRC and possibly the fraud squad of the local constabulary.

You'd have thought Simple Miniatures / Wayland would have a case against Maelstrom for fraud, too. It certainly *sounds* like Maelstrom knew a long time ago that they would never be paying their debt -- probably, when they placed the orders that created that debt.

In most supplier-retailer contracts, there's a clause that final title to the goods does not belong to the retailer until full payment has been made. So, could be, it's not just a question of Maelstrom owing Simple / Wayland a lot of cash; it is quite likely that Maelstrom quite knowingly 'stole' a load of goods from Simple with every intention of not paying for them.

 azreal13 wrote:
IF you could prove that they knowingly sold more sets than they were allocated, I guess you'd have a case.

Small potatoes if you're looking for a meaningful prosecution though.

I'd just like to say that at some point I've started to feel like I'm arguing MGs point. This isn't the case, I'm afraid I'm just pretty pessimistic about anything being successfully done about their behaviour.

Bolded the important bit: as you noted earlier, the burden of proof does not lie on MG, it does not, however, therefore lie on the wronged consumer (with regards to the criminal statute). It lies on the prosecutorial authorities, who, if there is a prima facia case, and the events as reported would seem to indicate so, would be authorized to investigate the behavior in question.

Again, I should very much like to hear from a UK attorney (or would that be barrister ?), as the reported facts would seem sufficient to proceed with a case of fraud at least to the investigatory stage, more to the point, multiple counts of fraud under the relevant statute.

Realize, the reach of any of the sites such as DakkaDakka is very small overall, and yet the number of people here victimized would seem to at least be in the double digits. How many victims would be discovered if MG were compelled to open their books? Defrauding hundreds of people of 10, 20, 50 or 100 pounds very quickly can escalate into the pattern of a criminal enterprise (again, local law may be different).

At least in the US, there would be certain remedies available to the victims of such a scheme: that a person wronged hundreds of people, but only to a small amount, would not eliminate their liability in civil or criminal court.

@Buzzsaw. In the UK we have Solicitors. They handle most day to day legal matters. Barristers are generally only retained as an advocate in a courtroom. They are the ones that typically wear the gowns and wigs.

Not relevant but you seemed interested!

Steve steveson wrote:
I think he means me... Matty had a little bit of a strop because I said, after 15 years of working in credit and dealing with hundreds of bankrupcys and liquidations, I think the law works fine just has problems with at times with improper trading not being properly enforced.

Matty on the otherhand thinks we should go back to the world of workhouses and debtors prison, dispite not understanding the basics of company law and the concept of limited liability (which I have pointed him to and he has clearly refused to read - and he wonders why I won't be drawn in to an argument with him...).

Ah, that makes more sense - when I saw Steve Jackson mentioned in this context, I was thinking Steve Jackson Games, hence the source request.

There is another option...

Local Mansfield newspapers, such as:

The Masfield and Ashfield Chad . With the 'contact us' link of newsdesk@chad.co.uk


Local newspapers are generally desperate for any stories that are remotely interesting. And finding out that someone local has allegedly ripped off dozens of people across Europe may be a bit of a coup compared to the local community "someone parked in my parking space" kind of thing.

 Compel wrote:
There is another option...

Local Mansfield newspapers, such as:

The Masfield and Ashfield Chad . With the 'contact us' link of newsdesk@chad.co.uk


Local newspapers are generally desperate for any stories that are remotely interesting. And finding out that someone local has allegedly ripped off dozens of people across Europe may be a bit of a coup compared to the local community "someone parked in my parking space" kind of thing.

That sounds about right, give the local rag a call. One person will be a disgruntled crank a few more will be an outrageous slight on the dignity of Nottingham.

We can have a picture of 'Northern Man' Matty (age irrelevant) with his fists up - and pockets empty - standing outside EOTS on the front page.

'Notorious bare knuckled dog fighter, Matty, fights his sternest battle as he takes on the Evil Empire of Rob Lane.'

Can anyone in the netherlands please advise me where the best place is to go and complain about ordering a set of dark vengeance back in august that was never sent? thnx

If you ordered it from Maelstrom, you would be best served by filing a complaint to the British authorities about it not your local authorities.

Hi Chrisjuuh, I live in the Netherlands too and ordered the Dark Vengeance set on september 1st. If you paid with a credit card like me, you can get your money back. Call the telephone number at the back of the credit card and they will tell you what form to fill in to get a refund (if you paid by paypal you might be out of luck tough, with the 40 day limit to file a claim)

 azreal13 wrote:
IF you could prove that they knowingly sold more sets than they were allocated, I guess you'd have a case.

Small potatoes if you're looking for a meaningful prosecution though.

I'd just like to say that at some point I've started to feel like I'm arguing MGs point. This isn't the case, I'm afraid I'm just pretty pessimistic about anything being successfully done about their behaviour.

Oh yeah I agree entirely.. See what I mean though? Two more Dutch lads have turned up saying they also ordered DV, paid for it, and never got the bloody thing. I wonder just how many people they charged, I would love to know.

GFG and Wayland websites said they were only getting something like 75 copies or what have you, and yet MG seem to have taken.. well.. who knows? But I have identified about ten people on dakka alone, so maybe its in the thousands.

As I said, you cant convince me that this happened due to naivety or stupidity... Its premeditated fething theft and the bloke wants banging up.

Which clearly wont happen, and leads us back to my disagreement with Steve. I know for a fact that Lane wont be punished in any meaningful way for his actions, and its annoying, because he appears to have behaved in an appalling manner. He carried on charging peoples cards knowing full well they weren't going to get their goods. Why should the (possibly) thousands of people who he snatched money off despite being fully aware that he wasn't going to deliver/was entering administration have to jump through hoops to get their money back?

The bloke wants hauling over the coals in my eyes.

Bazz wrote:
Hi Chrisjuuh, I live in the Netherlands too and ordered the Dark Vengeance set on september 1st. If you paid with a credit card like me, you can get your money back. Call the telephone number at the back of the credit card and they will tell you what form to fill in to get a refund (if you paid by paypal you might be out of luck tough, with the 40 day limit to file a claim)

payed with paypal...didnt know there was a 45 day max.....very anoyed with myself...

 Kanluwen wrote:
If you ordered it from Maelstrom, you would be best served by filing a complaint to the British authorities about it not your local authorities.

which authotiries should i deal with? Trading standards?

I don't know exactly who, but "Trading Standards" has come up multiple times in this thread so it would not hurt to contact them.

chrisjuuuh wrote:

Bazz wrote:
Hi Chrisjuuh, I live in the Netherlands too and ordered the Dark Vengeance set on september 1st. If you paid with a credit card like me, you can get your money back. Call the telephone number at the back of the credit card and they will tell you what form to fill in to get a refund (if you paid by paypal you might be out of luck tough, with the 40 day limit to file a claim)

payed with paypal...didnt know there was a 45 day max.....very anoyed with myself...

You can still open a case with PayPal, 45 days or not.

I opened a case with paypal about a week ago. It was almost immediatly closed with no other form of contact. seemed pretty definitive. should i try again?

EDIT: just logged into paypal and cant dispute the claim so i gues thats that...will be a lot more carefull in future

This is my first post on Dakka, been lurking for a while but finally decided to dive in.

First off, I should mention that I haven't read this entire thread, just the first and last few pages.

I've used MG many times in the past with no trouble - but a couple of months back I placed a couple of orders for IN-STOCK goods, both of which got marked 'Dispatched' (on a Sunday? hmm)

At any rate, the goods never showed up, they stopped answering their phones and email (and I was phoning up to 5 times a day for weeks). I eventually opened a paypal claim which they didn't bother to contest, and ultimately got my money back.

At the expense of sounding cynical, I suspect they never sent the goods. 2nd class mail from ebayers was showing up in 2-3 days (and I was getting a LOT of it) yet somehow the packages from MG go missing - the ONLY post I've had trouble with in a decade of online shopping. More than a tad suspicious.

edit: ...and now I see the liquidation notice. D'oh. Debut post rendered pointless, lol

Bovrillor wrote:
This is my first post on Dakka, been lurking for a while but finally decided to dive in.

First off, I should mention that I haven't read this entire thread, just the first and last few pages.

I've used MG many times in the past with no trouble - but a couple of months back I placed a couple of orders for IN-STOCK goods, both of which got marked 'Dispatched' (on a Sunday? hmm)

At any rate, the goods never showed up, they stopped answering their phones and email (and I was phoning up to 5 times a day for weeks). I eventually opened a paypal claim which they didn't bother to contest, and ultimately got my money back.

At the expense of sounding cynical, I suspect they never sent the goods. 2nd class mail from ebayers was showing up in 2-3 days (and I was getting a LOT of it) yet somehow the packages from MG go missing - the ONLY post I've had trouble with in a decade of online shopping. More than a tad suspicious.

edit: ...and now I see the liquidation notice. D'oh. Debut post rendered pointless, lol

I wouldn't say pointless. It just adds to a point others have made that how many people who are not regular posters have also been ...how can I put it?...ill-served by Maelstrom? Forum posters are the tip of an iceberg.

As the company has not went into adminstration/liquidation, first point of contact would be the local trading standards or even Citizens Advice. Please note go to the local branch, not the national one. Check MG address and then try to carry out a branch check for those two.

Prosecution for fraud/embezzlement will not be legal authorities in this case. If an application for liquidation has went in it will be for responsibilty of the Administrator/Liquidator to prepare a report to the court for any possible illegal actions as to the trading of the business. I would hope that once someone had been appointed to that position then his details will be made available on MGs' website. Or you could ask WG as they will be the second to know.

The order position may just be an extreme attempt to trade them out of the red and that there was no attempt at fraud. I have seen it before I finished working in Insolvency.

@Matt I asked because I left Elgin a year ago, I was wondering if you were one of the few to have been posted to Fort George or Kinloss.

Cheers

Andrew

Have any of you noticed that nowadays nothing means what it used to mean

When somebody used to say that they were “moving to a bigger warehouse” they were basically …..moving to a bigger warehouse. But now it seems to mean that they are about to asset-strip the joint to setup shop next door! Or as seems to be in this case they couldn’t even be bothered to do that and just changed the shop sign!

From now on if any company says they are “moving warehouse” I am running for the hills (and that’s not an easy thing to do living in Holland! )

Move to Limburg son, unless you already reside there.

Them's foreign parts, for sure, down south.

I guess taking the money for special edition 40k starters, not delivering them and still keeping the money is illegal even in UK, right?

chrisjuuuh wrote:
I opened a case with paypal about a week ago. It was almost immediatly closed with no other form of contact. seemed pretty definitive. should i try again?

EDIT: just logged into paypal and cant dispute the claim so i gues thats that...will be a lot more carefull in future

If you pay paypal with your credit card, you can still call the credit card company with good chances of success. If you pay paypal with your bank account, bad luck.

Bazz wrote:
Have any of you noticed that nowadays nothing means what it used to mean

When somebody used to say that they were “moving to a bigger warehouse” they were basically …..moving to a bigger warehouse. But now it seems to mean that they are about to asset-strip the joint to setup shop next door! Or as seems to be in this case they couldn’t even be bothered to do that and just changed the shop sign!

From now on if any company says they are “moving warehouse” I am running for the hills (and that’s not an easy thing to do living in Holland! )

Rob lanes Guide to Language:

'We are moving to a new warehouse' = 'I just set up a new company, with your money'.

'In stock' = 'It's in stock some where on the planet, but not here.'

'Buy with confidence' = 'Of getting the shaft'.

'Worldwide shipping' = 'It'll never turn up'.

'DV limited edition' = 'C'mon suckers give me your cash'.

'Restrictive trade terms of of trading partners' = 'We can't pay the bills, but you are not to know that'.

'We were paying Simple Games' = 'You were paying simple games'.

'Wayland screwed us' = 'We were found out'.

'Eye of the storm' = 'Don't come in here'

'Mierce Miniatures' = 'Those non existent DV sets funded this range'.

 Shandara wrote:
Them's foreign parts, for sure, down south.

And no mistake! The good ol'boyz down here think anything below the Rhine is a mysterious foreign land shrouded in ...... well basically it's Southern Europe....well actually that's where Greece starts.

 Mr. Burning wrote:
'We were paying Simple Games' = 'You were paying simple games'.

Wouldn't that always be the case, Mr. Burning?

 Mr. Burning wrote:
'Mierce Miniatures' = 'Those non existent DV sets funded this range'.

And that is more than a slight exaggeration, given we've had Banelords/legions figures since at least February last year (going by the first post of this thread). I've tried going further back, but I couldn't find solid information. Given the earliest reference I can find on Dakka to the DV pre-order information is Aug 24th 2012, that's 18 months of models at a minimum before you can claim MG were taking DV money to fund a model line...

I've got less issues with your other points, but those two stuck out

I normally frequent several other wargaming forums, but I also just signed up to agree than a very large number of people appear to be getting shafted. Quite a few people I know are out of money, but this is the most informed discussion about it I found. I am not out of pocket, but only because I used paypal and a creditcard.

I ordered dark vengence- the ordinary version not the special edition, and a few other things from Maelstrom and they strung me along for a few weeks. Fortunately a web search turned up this thread (20+ pages ago), so next day I filed a complaint with paypal (which is much better than it used to be- I remember getting the "yeah, you win, but you can't have any money back because they emptied their account"). I then ordered the same stuff from Wayland- I had to pay postage, but then that is not a bad trade off for actually getting the goods. They weren't super quick but it was listed as out of stock when I ordered it and I think it was reasonable.

Oddly enough I made a second order from Maelstrom when it hit 70% discount- some black library and specialist games stuff. I noticed that some of the in stock stuff was getting through so a £20 gamble did not seem too bad, particularly when I could claim it back from the credit card company if it went wrong. All my items arrived ~3 days after I ordered them! In fact they arrived more than a week before I got a "dispatched" email. By this point, Maelstrom must have known they were stuffed, so why send out anything at all?

I have noticed that a couple of people in this thread seem to be giving Maelstrom the benefit of the doubt- I find it hard to agree with this: they lied about what they were doing for months (warehouses....), they lied about deliveries to me on the phone, they stopped responding to phone calls and emails, Paypal dumped them (probably due to numbers of complaints), they stopped paying their creditors, so had no chance of getting the miniatures they were still selling on their site and their statements try to make it seem as if it is all everyone else's fault. Did Wayland screw them over? I don't think that that was possible at that stage- they needed shutting down.

All I can hope is that the EotS venue survives- it is not like we have lots of good tournament venues. However I do hope it survives under new management.

small_furry_spider wrote:
All I can hope is that the EotS venue survives- it is not like we have lots of good tournament venues. However I do hope it survives under new management.

That remains to be seen, as a great many people may boycott both EotS and Mierce now, whether they were stung or not by this most villainous of behaviour.

small_furry_spider wrote:
I have noticed that a couple of people in this thread seem to be giving Maelstrom the benefit of the doubt- I find it hard to agree with this: they lied about what they were doing for months (warehouses....)

If MG had gone out and told us, the customers, "Hey, we are in heavy debts, and we will most likely fold our business shortly," how would you react to that? Would you continue buying or would you rather not?

 Dysartes wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:
'We were paying Simple Games' = 'You were paying simple games'.

Wouldn't that always be the case, Mr. Burning?

 Mr. Burning wrote:
'Mierce Miniatures' = 'Those non existent DV sets funded this range'.

And that is more than a slight exaggeration, given we've had Banelords/legions figures since at least February last year (going by the first post of this thread). I've tried going further back, but I couldn't find solid information. Given the earliest reference I can find on Dakka to the DV pre-order information is Aug 24th 2012, that's 18 months of models at a minimum before you can claim MG were taking DV money to fund a model line...

I've got less issues with your other points, but those two stuck out

yeah I struggled fitting Mierce in there.

Though I have just noticed this.

Mierce Miniatures is comprised of the exact same team within Maelstrom Games that had, until then, produced the BaneLegions and Templar's Forge ranges. The company retains all of the same materials, equipment, products and outlook on life, and thus you can be assured that the high production quality of our ranges will continue into 2013 and beyond!

The same outlook on life, I hope that isn't work life, then (ever decreasing circles of Ltd Companies).

grefven wrote:
If MG had gone out and told us, the customers, "Hey, we are in heavy debts, and we will most likely fold our business shortly," how would you react to that? Would you continue buying or would you rather not?

It would have been the right thing to do instead of letting it end like this.

I found this in a couple of places online, it's from Simple Miniature Games:

"Statement Regarding Maelstrom Games Ltd
On the 1st October we made the difficult decision to assign the debt owed to Simple Miniature Games to Wayland Games Ltd for a nominal fee.
This debt at the point sold stood at just under £100,000 and has been outstanding at that level and higher for over 12 months. This debt built up during a short space of time during the busiest period in our 10 year history just after significant amounts had been paid for other invoices. Promises were made to clear a large portion of the debt within a short space of time but that payment never materialised. A repayment plan was then agreed which should have seen the debt reduced significantly beyond the point that it actually has been. Unfortunately many of these payments were consistently declined and at the last the payments were continually declined.
It was around this point in conjunction with our reading into the accounts of Maelstrom Games that we contacted debt recovery and debt purchase specialists in order to take further action and begin the recovery of assets to cover some the debt.
Demands for the reimbursement of the failed payments and for payment of stock supplied on the 12th September for Maelstrom Games customer orders were completely ignored. As such on October 1st 2012 the debt was sold to the company which offered the best solution, not immediately for us, but for what I considered the best long term solution for our industry in the UK. We chose Wayland Games as they have a vested interest in the hobby and industry and will offer better protection to potential customers, suppliers and manufacturers, other companies would not.
We have continued to trade as normal during the entire period of this debt and continue to order from our suppliers and pay them on time. Maelstrom Games are only one customer out of several dozen and our whole customer base is far, far greater than any one company.
You should understand that Simple Miniature Games have supported Maelstrom through the last year even though we knew they were struggling but with our support they would continue to trade. However there are only so many broken promises that you can listen to and it became perfectly clear that assets of Maelstrom Games were being moved to other companies that had been funded by monies which should have been paid to suppliers including ourselves. There was no way Maelstrom Games could pay the debt and it would appear that steps were being taken to avoid the debts and protect other assets.
This debt has not adversely affected Simple Miniature Games as a company as we can afford to continue to trade with this debt outstanding due to the reliability of our customer base and strong product lines. It has however affected myself and my wife personally as the reserves we have built over 10 years of hard work have had to cover the debt. It was always our intention to use around half of this profit to expand our warehouse and bring in another two or three new ranges including manufacturing our own. However this will now have to wait whilst we consolidate and build up the reserves for our future once again."

“We are the Wayland. Lower your firewalls and surrender your debt. We will add your retail and stocking distinctiveness to our own. Your customers will adapt to buy from us. Resistance is futile.” - Locutus, of Wayland.

With all due respect to those that got ripped off by Maelstrom - do we know what's happening with Merice miniatures? Because some of the Banebeasts line were downright stunning, and I was still planning on grabbing some for Fantasy (like the Chimera).

grefven wrote:
If MG had gone out and told us, the customers, "Hey, we are in heavy debts, and we will most likely fold our business shortly," how would you react to that? Would you continue buying or would you rather not?

If they had been upfront about it, and had been selling stock that they actually had on hand, then yes, absolutely I would have continued buying.

What turned me off Maelstrom towards the end was the whole selling stuff they didn't actually have thing. That put me off well before the shell game shenanigans started.

ted1138 wrote:
I found this in a couple of places online, it's from Simple Miniature Games:

"Statement Regarding Maelstrom Games Ltd
On the 1st October we made the difficult decision to assign the debt owed to Simple Miniature Games to Wayland Games Ltd for a nominal fee.
This debt at the point sold stood at just under £100,000 and has been outstanding at that level and higher for over 12 months. This debt built up during a short space of time during the busiest period in our 10 year history just after significant amounts had been paid for other invoices. Promises were made to clear a large portion of the debt within a short space of time but that payment never materialised. A repayment plan was then agreed which should have seen the debt reduced significantly beyond the point that it actually has been. Unfortunately many of these payments were consistently declined and at the last the payments were continually declined.
It was around this point in conjunction with our reading into the accounts of Maelstrom Games that we contacted debt recovery and debt purchase specialists in order to take further action and begin the recovery of assets to cover some the debt.
Demands for the reimbursement of the failed payments and for payment of stock supplied on the 12th September for Maelstrom Games customer orders were completely ignored. As such on October 1st 2012 the debt was sold to the company which offered the best solution, not immediately for us, but for what I considered the best long term solution for our industry in the UK. We chose Wayland Games as they have a vested interest in the hobby and industry and will offer better protection to potential customers, suppliers and manufacturers, other companies would not.
We have continued to trade as normal during the entire period of this debt and continue to order from our suppliers and pay them on time. Maelstrom Games are only one customer out of several dozen and our whole customer base is far, far greater than any one company.
You should understand that Simple Miniature Games have supported Maelstrom through the last year even though we knew they were struggling but with our support they would continue to trade. However there are only so many broken promises that you can listen to and it became perfectly clear that assets of Maelstrom Games were being moved to other companies that had been funded by monies which should have been paid to suppliers including ourselves. There was no way Maelstrom Games could pay the debt and it would appear that steps were being taken to avoid the debts and protect other assets.
This debt has not adversely affected Simple Miniature Games as a company as we can afford to continue to trade with this debt outstanding due to the reliability of our customer base and strong product lines. It has however affected myself and my wife personally as the reserves we have built over 10 years of hard work have had to cover the debt. It was always our intention to use around half of this profit to expand our warehouse and bring in another two or three new ranges including manufacturing our own. However this will now have to wait whilst we consolidate and build up the reserves for our future once again."

Whoa... I don't even know what this means?

So, a company called Simple Miniature Games was owed £100,000 by Maelstrom for over a year (am I reading that right)? And now, rather than wait longer to be repaid, sold off the debt to Wayland Games? I'm not sure why Wayland would want it or why it had to be another miniatures distributor / what protection that gives to customers, as they mention.

It does seem to be very shady that Maelstrom tried to spin off the Banebeasts portion... I guess they knew all this was coming. I do hope someone picks up that line, as certainly it's more profitable to continue to make those nice sculpts than to just bury them!

See the last few pages of this thread for more details.

Though It is always useful to keep highlighting how douchey MG and Rob lane are.

 RiTides wrote:

ted1138 wrote:
I found this in a couple of places online, it's from Simple Miniature Games:

"Statement Regarding Maelstrom Games Ltd
On the 1st October we made the difficult decision to assign the debt owed to Simple Miniature Games to Wayland Games Ltd for a nominal fee.
This debt at the point sold stood at just under £100,000 and has been outstanding at that level and higher for over 12 months. This debt built up during a short space of time during the busiest period in our 10 year history just after significant amounts had been paid for other invoices. Promises were made to clear a large portion of the debt within a short space of time but that payment never materialised. A repayment plan was then agreed which should have seen the debt reduced significantly beyond the point that it actually has been. Unfortunately many of these payments were consistently declined and at the last the payments were continually declined.
It was around this point in conjunction with our reading into the accounts of Maelstrom Games that we contacted debt recovery and debt purchase specialists in order to take further action and begin the recovery of assets to cover some the debt.
Demands for the reimbursement of the failed payments and for payment of stock supplied on the 12th September for Maelstrom Games customer orders were completely ignored. As such on October 1st 2012 the debt was sold to the company which offered the best solution, not immediately for us, but for what I considered the best long term solution for our industry in the UK. We chose Wayland Games as they have a vested interest in the hobby and industry and will offer better protection to potential customers, suppliers and manufacturers, other companies would not.
We have continued to trade as normal during the entire period of this debt and continue to order from our suppliers and pay them on time. Maelstrom Games are only one customer out of several dozen and our whole customer base is far, far greater than any one company.
You should understand that Simple Miniature Games have supported Maelstrom through the last year even though we knew they were struggling but with our support they would continue to trade. However there are only so many broken promises that you can listen to and it became perfectly clear that assets of Maelstrom Games were being moved to other companies that had been funded by monies which should have been paid to suppliers including ourselves. There was no way Maelstrom Games could pay the debt and it would appear that steps were being taken to avoid the debts and protect other assets.
This debt has not adversely affected Simple Miniature Games as a company as we can afford to continue to trade with this debt outstanding due to the reliability of our customer base and strong product lines. It has however affected myself and my wife personally as the reserves we have built over 10 years of hard work have had to cover the debt. It was always our intention to use around half of this profit to expand our warehouse and bring in another two or three new ranges including manufacturing our own. However this will now have to wait whilst we consolidate and build up the reserves for our future once again."

Whoa... I don't even know what this means?

So, a company called Simple Miniature Games was owed £100,000 by Maelstrom for over a year (am I reading that right)? And now, rather than wait longer to be repaid, sold off the debt to Wayland Games? I'm not sure why Wayland would want it or why it had to be another miniatures distributor / what protection that gives to customers, as they mention.

It does seem to be very shady that Maelstrom tried to spin off the Banebeasts portion... I guess they knew all this was coming. I do hope someone picks up that line, as certainly it's more profitable to continue to make those nice sculpts than to just bury them!

Yeah, it's the

"and it became perfectly clear that assets of Maelstrom Games were being moved to other companies that had been funded by monies which should have been paid to suppliers including ourselves."

part that interests me. I guess they mean the EotS website...

 Mr. Burning wrote:

Bazz wrote:
Have any of you noticed that nowadays nothing means what it used to mean

When somebody used to say that they were “moving to a bigger warehouse” they were basically …..moving to a bigger warehouse. But now it seems to mean that they are about to asset-strip the joint to setup shop next door! Or as seems to be in this case they couldn’t even be bothered to do that and just changed the shop sign!

From now on if any company says they are “moving warehouse” I am running for the hills (and that’s not an easy thing to do living in Holland! )

Rob lanes Guide to Language:

'We are moving to a new warehouse' = 'I just set up a new company, with your money'.

'In stock' = 'It's in stock some where on the planet, but not here.'

'Buy with confidence' = 'Of getting the shaft'.

'Worldwide shipping' = 'It'll never turn up'.

'DV limited edition' = 'C'mon suckers give me your cash'.

'Restrictive trade terms of of trading partners' = 'We can't pay the bills, but you are not to know that'.

'We were paying Simple Games' = 'You were paying simple games'.

'Wayland screwed us' = 'We were found out'.

'Eye of the storm' = 'Don't come in here'

'Mierce Miniatures' = 'Those non existent DV sets funded this range'.

Awesome post - the summary of genius!!!

grefven wrote:

Wayland, obviously picked up on this, and figured they wanted a piece of the cake. They attempted to buy MG. When their offer was refused, they instead wanted to remove a competetor, which was growing larger quickly. As someone mentioned above, when they realised MG had over-stretched with Mierce Miniatures, they went in for the kill.

For the hobby, what Wayland did isn't benefitting us, the customers.
1.) MG went under, meaning less options to chose from for us, the customers.
2.) When MG went under, it's a big risk that Mierce Miniatures will bite the dust too. So, perhaps a promising range of miniatures will go down the drain. It's a shame because they had some really great stuff.
3.) When MG went under, the customers with standing orders got shafted. If Wayland wanted to help the community, they would have worked out a way for the debt to be paid off.
4.) When Wayland demanded their newly collected debt to be paid right away, but what happens now with the other that MG owns? There is no way in hell any of them will get anything back now. Before Wayland sunk MG, there still was a chance. How will this affect the customers?

Nah, the best thing Wayland could have done for themselves would just have been to let MG struggle and die off. But there would be the risk that MG failing like that would kill off some of the suppliers and hurt Wayland. So bailing out one of their suppliers seems like a credible thing to do.

At this point, I think Maelstrom was failing anyway; they were losing credit and had to liquidate most of it's stock, leaving it with no stock, no money and no credit. If the debt figures are correct then I can't imagine them correcting things.

I also dobut the BaneLegions range would have gone OOP, it'd have been worth something and therefore could be sold off to try and repay the debt, and someone would have been apply to continue production.

 insaniak wrote:

What turned me off Maelstrom towards the end was the whole selling stuff they didn't actually have thing. That put me off well before the shell game shenanigans started.

No no no. They were selling miniature futures. Maelstrom Games was just being innovative and pushing the envelope of miniature trading business!

 RiTides wrote:

So, a company called Simple Miniature Games was owed £100,000 by Maelstrom for over a year (am I reading that right)? And now, rather than wait longer to be repaid, sold off the debt to Wayland Games?

It wasn't the question of "waiting longer to be repaid", it was question of either getting pennies on their pound, or nothing at all.

Anyone who has been following the forums should have been able to see that Maelstrom was basically engaged in a fire sale.

And, despite the many signs and topics and all the posts (and there is a ton of them) many people still continued to spend money with them?

Hopefully people will remember this and vote with their cash when it comes down to attending events at "The Eye of the Storm" and buying into "mierce mini's"

Backfire wrote:

No no no. They were selling miniature futures. Maelstrom Games was just being innovative and pushing the envelope of miniature trading business!

They were Discworld/Ankh Morpokian Futures, hence the existence of the non existent warehouse to store all that potential stock.

 Mr. Burning wrote:

Backfire wrote:

No no no. They were selling miniature futures. Maelstrom Games was just being innovative and pushing the envelope of miniature trading business!

They were Discworld/Ankh Morpokian Futures, hence the existence of the non existent warehouse to store all that potential stock.

The warehouse is actually packed!
It contains not only the present stock, but also previous already sold stock and all future miniatures that still have to be produced.
They only seem to be lacking future miniatures from Mierce. As if they go bankrupt soon, because some totally different company with the same staff and adress robbed a lot of their potential customers.
But you have to order fast, as things seem to be dissappearing in a luggage that's runnning loose.

MG's homepage...

OFFICIAL NOTICE

Maelstrom Games Ltd. has ceased trading and will enter liquidation at some point over the next few months.

A creditor of Maelstrom Games Ltd., Wayland Games Ltd., issued a Statutory Demand under section 123(1)(a) or 221(1)(a) of the Insolvency Act, 1986 on the 17th of October, 2012 for �99,773.61 plus costs of issuing and serving the demand.

This debt was purchased from Simple Miniature Games by Wayland Games Ltd on the 1st of October, 2012 and payment of this debt was demanded in full by Wayland Games after seven days had elapsed. Unfortunately, Maelstrom Games Ltd. could not pay Wayland Games Ltd. this debt in full within those seven days.

Previous to the debt purchase, Maelstrom Games Ltd. was servicing the debt owed to Simple Miniature Games at the rate of �500 per working day, claimed by the creditor when convenient for him by charging a credit card owned by Maelstrom Games Ltd., which had been occurring since mid-June and continued to late September, the last payment being taken on the 25th. Maelstrom Games Ltd. did not cancel these payments and were not aware that this debt was being transferred.

Maelstrom Games Ltd. offered to pay the debt purchased by Wayland Games Ltd. in the same manner as it had paid Simple Miniature Games, but this was not taken up by Wayland Games Ltd.

Maelstrom Games Ltd. can only apologise to those customers whose orders have not been fulfilled as it is now impossible for Maelstrom Games Ltd. to fulfil them, excepting those for Mierce Miniatures products (fulfilled by Mierce Miniatures in November) and Battlefront Miniatures products (fulfilled by Maelstrom Games in partnership with Battlefront Miniatures and Maunsfeld Gaming in November), all of which will be sent by Maelstrom Games Ltd. Other customer orders for certain ranges may be fulfilled in the future and any customers whose orders can be fulfilled will be contacted by Maelstrom Games in due course.

All creditors will be issued the relevant notices by the assigned Insolvency Practitioner when Maelstrom Games Ltd. enters liquidation.

Reads very much like, poor hard done by us, we wanted to sort it all out but the evil competitor didn't sob, sob

Personall I don't buy it after having read on this thread and others about MG...

EDIT: Just seen this was already posted on pg39...

Certainly looks like there is potentially a case of, if not fraudulent trading, then certainly wrongful trading (i.e. a situation in which you continue to trade or enter into contracts after you, as a director or shadow director, knew or ought to have known that there was no reasonable prospect of avoiding insolvent liquidation).

In a case of wrongful trading a court can hold a director personally liable for all debts of a company.

I think its disgusting that maelstrom games folds, leaving many customers out of pocket ( I was lucky as my money was refunded by paypal), then the company eye-of-the-storm appears with exacttly the same web page layout and apparently owned by the same people. Is there no justice I myself will not be buying anything from this "new" company and anyone with an ounce of sense will be steering clear

think its disgusting that maelstrom games folds, leaving many customers out of pocket ( I was lucky as my money was refunded by paypal), then the company eye-of-the-storm appears with exacttly the same web page layout and apparently owned by the same people. Is there no justice I myself will not be buying anything from this "new" company and anyone with an ounce of sense will be steering clear.

I second that!!!!

Devoted of Slaanesh wrote:
think its disgusting that maelstrom games folds, leaving many customers out of pocket ( I was lucky as my money was refunded by paypal), then the company eye-of-the-storm appears with exacttly the same web page layout and apparently owned by the same people. Is there no justice I myself will not be buying anything from this "new" company and anyone with an ounce of sense will be steering clear.

I second that!!!!

Ditto.

But of course there will be people who haven't lost money and did get good prices from MG in the past and who may want some of the stuff Mr Lane will have so miraculously rescued from the financial wreckage.

And in the current climate who's to say where the next insolvency will occur?

The most important lesson for everyone to take from this - regardless of where you buy your wargaming "fix" - is to protect yourself as a customer.

But even though I had good deals from MG in the past, and even though I got my money back (PayPal) - there is no way I will put my business the way of someone who seems more crooked than a GW Finecast Power Sword......

I have no lost any money. Got my 40 pounds
via my CC back. But I hate what they did to my fellow gamers - a lot of them were not that lucky! Two close friends of mine lost quite a bit. And they preordered in August, so ...
If some one wants to buy from them - fine. Won't be me ...

The wait is now on the first stories about people making a big fuss at the EotS store/events.

It's a bit surprising actually that no incidents have happened yet (that we know of).

Contacted my Bank about the charge back I submitted last week and it's currently at the point were they contact the supplier for their side of the story (that made me laugh) - given Maelstrom have ignored Paypal I assume they will do the same with the credit card company and I should have a credit back in a week to 10 days.

grefven wrote:

small_furry_spider wrote:
I have noticed that a couple of people in this thread seem to be giving Maelstrom the benefit of the doubt- I find it hard to agree with this: they lied about what they were doing for months (warehouses....)

If MG had gone out and told us, the customers, "Hey, we are in heavy debts, and we will most likely fold our business shortly," how would you react to that? Would you continue buying or would you rather not?

I would have cancelled my pre-ordered copy of X-wing, and if MG then told me they could only give me store credit, I would have used it to buy paints/books/whatever were in stock. Thus I, the customer would be a little bit happier, the amount owed by MG would be a little bit less, and I would not be pissed at Rob Lane. Depending on when they announced it, I might have continued to buy stuff in stock from them, thus helping to them to clear the debt.

Then I might order other stuff from Eye of the Storm when it starts up. Now I won't.

[Edited for clarity]

raykey wrote:
I think its disgusting that maelstrom games folds, leaving many customers out of pocket ( I was lucky as my money was refunded by paypal), then the company eye-of-the-storm appears with exacttly the same web page layout and apparently owned by the same people. Is there no justice I myself will not be buying anything from this "new" company and anyone with an ounce of sense will be steering clear

What about people like me, they have had tickets for ages for future events, should i just not bother and effectively lose my money?.

 DaveC wrote:
Contacted my Bank about the charge back I submitted last week and it's currently at the point were they contact the supplier for their side of the story (that made me laugh) - given Maelstrom have ignored Paypal I assume they will do the same with the credit card company and I should have a credit back in a week to 10 days.

Hi,

This is an important point:

1) If you paid by Credit Card in the UK

2) If the amount you paid was over £100

You are covered by Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act

See Below

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/shopping/section75-protect-your-purchases

The REALLY important thing to note is this:

If points 1 & 2 above apply then the Credit Card company is JOINTLY LIABLE

This means you do NOT have to wait while they try and get the money back - they will of course tell you that's what they are doing.

Taken from the website:

Sometimes the card company will tell you it will try to reclaim the cash from the company in administration. You can simply answer: "Great news, I wish you the best of luck. However you are completely liable for my goods yourself, and I would like the full amount I'm entitled to please, regardless of that claim."

Take time to read the link above - even if it cannot help anyone now - it is worth using the advice to protect yourself in the future.

Vorlon - I'm not in the UK so that does not apply to me.

The Bank needs to give the supplier an opportunity to respond to my claim - given Maelstrom is not responding to claims it's a non issue any way - it's part of the process it won't affect the final outcome as I have already provided evidence that they can't and could not fulfill my order - it's just a formality I will get the refund I don't mind waiting a week or 2 having waited 3 months for the order to be fulfilled.

 DaveC wrote:
Vorlon - I'm not in the UK so that does not apply to me.

The Bank needs to give the supplier an opportunity to respond to my claim - given Maelstrom is not responding to claims it's a non issue any way - it's part of the process it won't affect the final outcome as I have already provided evidence that they can't and could not fulfill my order - it's just a formality I will get the refund I don't mind waiting a week or 2 having waited 3 months for the order to be fulfilled.

That's fine, I suspected as much from the flag......

But it is important for those of us in the UK to realise that if we paid by Credit Card and it was over £100 we do NOT have to wait while they "try and get the moeny back" - the Credit Card company has to pay up straight away - legally.

Also if you paid from your debit account, you are covered by the credit act *if* the money was paid out of your overdraft, as that's a form of credit. Strangely enough, you are safer spending their money and not your own.

Vorlon25 wrote:
we do NOT have to wait while they "try and get the moeny back" - the Credit Card company has to pay up straight away - legally.

They're not trying to get the money back.
They're trying to make sure the vendor actually failed to provide the service.

What you're saying is that I could go charge $5000 on my credit card, get the stuff delivered, call my credit card company and have it all reversed. It doesn't work that way.
Yes - they have to pay if the complaint is legitimate. First they have to ascertain that it's actually legitimate though.

rigeld2 wrote:

Vorlon25 wrote:
we do NOT have to wait while they "try and get the moeny back" - the Credit Card company has to pay up straight away - legally.

They're not trying to get the money back.
They're trying to make sure the vendor actually failed to provide the service.

What you're saying is that I could go charge $5000 on my credit card, get the stuff delivered, call my credit card company and have it all reversed. It doesn't work that way.
Yes - they have to pay if the complaint is legitimate. First they have to ascertain that it's actually legitimate though.

Well yes obviously I was assuming that there weren't any budding Rob Lane's here on the board and that we were all talking about genuine claims.....

But I have been in this situation where the company went bust and we were out £300+ on a credit card, had a letter from the company confirming they were going bust and would not be able to provide the holiday.

I passed this to the Credit Card company who tried to fob me off with - "when & if we get the money back".

I banged in a Section 75 form letter from Martin's website and the money was back with me inside 5 working days.

Whether they got the money back from the firm concerned I neither knew nor cared - Joint Liability - got to love it when just occasionally the little guy doesn't get screwed...

And don't forget - all banks have insurance. If you pay with CC, you are paying with their money. Hellas, something goes wrong - their money are gone, so if they can't get them from the company in bancrupcy, then the insurance clears it for them.

It's much easy to tell to the client - uh, we don't know or something.
I got my money back in a week, only by declaring I didn't get what I ordered 28 days ago.
But here in Austria can be different from other countries.

UK dakkanauts, if your Bank or CCC gives you grief about this, threaten to take them to the Financial Ombudsman Service. This service will charge them an automatic 500pounds for being referred, so they may be smart and just settle up before the case is referred, if you word it to them correctly (and don't admit the knowledge that they'll be charged as a lever...).

FOS here:

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

Basically you must go through the bank or CCC's complaint handling service initially and if not happy with their outcome, after 8 weeks of them processing and coming to a conclusion, then you go on to the FOS.

Yeah, the FOS are awesome... just unrelatedly had my bank pay me nearly £3000 (that they owed me) by threatening to take 'em to the Ombudsman.

 MeanGreenStompa wrote:
UK dakkanauts, if your Bank or CCC gives you grief about this, threaten to take them to the Financial Ombudsman Service. This service will charge them an automatic 500pounds for being referred, so they may be smart and just settle up before the case is referred, if you word it to them correctly (and don't admit the knowledge that they'll be charged as a lever...).

FOS here:

http://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/

Basically you must go through the bank or CCC's complaint handling service initially and if not happy with their outcome, after 8 weeks of them processing and coming to a conclusion, then you go on to the FOS.

All good information especially the bit about not trying to use the fact that you know they will automatically be charged as leverage, however also be aware that the FOS are at the best of times glacially slow and currently have around a 15 month back log if you do intend to take things further.

They are slow, but are usually start in a position of sympathy to the individual and challenging to the business in question.

There are some key words to making the initial complaint to the bank or credit card company, 'Treated unfairly' being one, 'Obstacles' or 'barriers' being some others.

Also, all financial companies are required to respond within 8 weeks, many of them still think this means send an acknowledgement of receiving your complaint, that is incorrect and a response must be a proposed remedy to the complaint or their judgement on why the complaint is not being upheld. If they fail to send that out, their ass is grass...

 TBD wrote:
The wait is now on the first stories about people making a big fuss at the EotS store/events.

It's a bit surprising actually that no incidents have happened yet (that we know of).

Right. The behaviour was disgraceful, I'm waiting for someone to go down to EoTS with 'the boys' and make a collection of owed goods in person.

 Pacific wrote:

 TBD wrote:
The wait is now on the first stories about people making a big fuss at the EotS store/events.

It's a bit surprising actually that no incidents have happened yet (that we know of).

Right. The behaviour was disgraceful, I'm waiting for someone to go down to EoTS with 'the boys' and make a collection of owed goods in person.

I can imagine it... An angry mob of 13-year old boys hoisting torches and pitchforks in the air.

 Pacific wrote:
Right. The behaviour was disgraceful, I'm waiting for someone to go down to EoTS with 'the boys' and make a collection of owed goods in person.

It sounds like a reverse Boston Tea Party. Quick, what's the opposite of a Native American?

 Pacific wrote:

 TBD wrote:
The wait is now on the first stories about people making a big fuss at the EotS store/events.

It's a bit surprising actually that no incidents have happened yet (that we know of).

Right. The behaviour was disgraceful, I'm waiting for someone to go down to EoTS with 'the boys' and make a collection of owed goods in person.

Well, if you are owed items/money from Maelstrom, and went to EotS to find them sitting there on the shelves I can imagine a certain level of justified angryness.

Does this Rob Lane character work at the store himself?

It's probably why they seem to have given UK customers less of a screwjob than overseas people... less chance someone shows up at their doorstep.

If someone is willing to pay my flight and trip to EotS I'd be willing to go there. Then again the trip there costs more than the money I'm owed by them...

Anyone any idea how to claim if not using paypal when maelstrom take your money send you nothing and shaft you. Legal action seems like the only course :(

 HellFire Sin wrote:
Anyone any idea how to claim if not using paypal when maelstrom take your money send you nothing and shaft you. Legal action seems like the only course :(

Call your CC or debit card provider/bank.

 AlexHolker wrote:

 Pacific wrote:
Right. The behaviour was disgraceful, I'm waiting for someone to go down to EoTS with 'the boys' and make a collection of owed goods in person.

It sounds like a reverse Boston Tea Party. Quick, what's the opposite of a Native American?

Everyone else?

 HellFire Sin wrote:
Anyone any idea how to claim if not using paypal when maelstrom take your money send you nothing and shaft you. Legal action seems like the only course :(

If you paid with a credit card for £100 or more then your card issuer is equally liable, and will have to refund you. If you paid less than £100 then there is no LEGAL obligation, but many CC companies will help anyway, contact your card issuer

Several debit cards are part of a volunarty scheme which opperated in a similar way to CC protection, again talk to your card issuer about how to take things further.

If you paid via a cheque, or direct from your bank account you're probably in trouble (but talk to your bank anyway, just in case)

If you sent them cash, well keep an eye on thinks and put in a claim with the official reciever/liquidator when appointed. You may get some part of your money back

good luck

Not that it particularly matters now, but my MG order that transferred over to EOTS has now disappeared from the EOTS website too.

I find it shocking that there are still people on the web making excuses for these guys.

Got a full refund from my credit card provider today. Sent them the paperwork last week spoke to them this morning and done.

Important point is my order was only £44 and they didn’t bat an eyelid they just processed it as normal i was told. They were pretty understanding to be honest which was a nice change.

The sad thing is that this debt won’t hang over Rob Lane it will just die with MaelstromGames.

My bank said that it could take up to two months with VISA chargebacks, but they were pretty confident about my prospects.

If you only receive part of your order, are you still entitled to a refund?

ted1138 wrote:
If you only receive part of your order, are you still entitled to a refund?

Its a matter of good faith actually - whether you report the whole transaction to your bank or only the part, which was not fulfilled. If they start digging details and IF MG suddenly start to cooperate, then this would not look that nice and you might get less or no money... But I have no idea who is going to contact MG and what will be the level of communication, but since my bank was asking for English terminology, I guess that they are transferring the info to VISA or something like that.

As it was too late to do a paypal chargeback I checked and for debit cards you can do a chargeback, though it isn't enforced by law. When I called the bank they had no idea what I was talking about so I checked online and it seems customer support aren't told about this (banking conspiracy HOOOOOOOOO). When I found out about this I went to the bank to talk to someone there and they helped me fill out an application. I honestly didn't think anything would come of it but today I received this from paypal:

Hello Daniel Karlsson,

We recently received notice from your credit card company that you filed a
chargeback stating that you did not receive merchandise you paid for.

Please review the details of the disputed transaction below and the steps
for what to do next.


-----------------------------------
Transaction Details
-----------------------------------

Seller's name: Maelstrom Games
Seller's email: [email]webstore@maelstromgames.co.uk[/email]
Seller's Transaction ID: 4TX76381AD700663M


Transaction date: Aug 28, 2012
Transaction amount: -47.91 GBP
Case #: PP-002-073-366-538

With some luck I might be able to get back half of what Maelstrom owes me. I placed 2 orders for 2 DV boxes. The problem with the other transaction is that I was sent money over paypal by a guy I had agreed with to split 2 boxes. As the money was sent to my paypal and then to maelstrom it's not possible for me to dispute that payment any more.
He could dispute it but that would be a dispute against me which would bend me over, put a red gagball in my mouth and play the music from the cellar scene from Pulp Fiction.

I posted the replacement models to the guy this monday so if I get money back from this I will feel a bit better but it still doesn't cover anything because of the value of the replacement models I sent the guy.

So if you paid by debit card it may still be possible to get your money back.

If you got part of your order you should still be covered (via CC or paypal) for the rest

Just claim for whatever is outstanding

(PLEASE don't try to claim for the full order if part did arrive, it's illegal and stupid..... not that I'm saying anybody here would)

mierce-transfers@maelstromgames.co.uk wrote:

Dear [[Bolognesus]],

Mierce Miniatures have offered to fulfil all of the orders made through the Maelstrom Games website (for Mierce Miniatures products only) that, due to Maelstrom Games ceasing trading, cannot now be completed.


YOUR MIERCE MINIATURES ORDERS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your Mierce Miniatures orders, and their contents, are listed below:

#12345678901
- 2 x Alassar, Bearer of the Dragon Standard
- 2 x Cynuise of Old, Barrow Knight Banner Bearer
- 1 x Erec One-Arm, Dwarf of Càrn Corm
- 1 x Ornung, Bone Orc Shaman
#23456789012
- 1 x Oácyning, Lord of the Oak-Enta


Mierce Miniatures have offered to fulfil the above orders at their own cost and as a gesture of goodwill towards all Mierce Miniatures customers.

However, because of the limitations of the Data Protection Act, as a Maelstrom Games customer you must agree to share your details and the details of your orders with Mierce Miniatures before they can send your order.

PLEASE AGREE TO SHARE YOUR DETAILS
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In order to fulfil your order, Mierce Miniatures will require you to:

a) have your account details - held by Maelstrom Games - transferred to their website (if you haven't already created an account with Mierce Miniatures)
b) have your outstanding Mierce Miniatures orders transferred to their website, in order to process and send your order to you

If you agree to be registered on the Mierce Miniatures website and agree to the transfer of all of your outstanding orders, please reply to this e-mail before the 30th of November, 2012 stating:

'I would like to be registered on the Mierce Miniatures website, and I would like Maelstrom Games to transfer all my outstanding orders for Mierce Miniatures products to the Mierce Miniatures website in order to fulfil them.'


FULFILLING YOUR ORDER
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Once Mierce Miniatures receives this confirmation from Maelstrom Games, you will be registered on their website and your orders will be transferred automatically. Mierce Miniatures will then contact you and let you know when you can expect to receive your order.

Please note that Mierce Miniatures cannot refund you for your orders under any circumstance - they have only offered to fulfil the orders.

If you do not agree to be registered and to transfer your orders, I am afraid your order cannot now be fulfilled and you will, in due course, be contacted by the Insolvency Practitioner that will deal with Maelstrom Games' liquidation.

good to see some progress there (the other parts of those orders have been reported as shipped already an honestly, in one order that was just a brush, in another it was just 3 of the same blister so there can't possibly be that much missing

 OrlandotheTechnicoloured wrote:
If you got part of your order you should still be covered (via CC or paypal) for the rest

Just claim for whatever is outstanding

(PLEASE don't try to claim for the full order if part did arrive, it's illegal and stupid..... not that I'm saying anybody here would)

I wouldn't, it's just that from my experience, and from what I've read of others, I thought maybe there was a reason why MG were sending out orders with missing items...

So here is the story as I understood it
MG is expanding from e-commerce to mini production. In order to gain in the long run from higher profit margins and answer back to the GW evil plan of ruling the mini world . To do that they spend a lot of funds in designing, producing and promoting their mini line as a premium product. To a point they succeeded.

They already have a strong card played against their trading competition. Free shipping! An established mini line would lift them even higher. They would have some serious assets and intellectual property instead of just being middleman. The competition worries a lot.

Poor managing decisions and business ethics lead to a substantial amount of dept to suppliers. The giant has clay feet but he is still a giant and able to force his conditions on smaller fish like Simple. They say to them we will pay you soon trust us. The same time they probably owe money to other associates. Then they change it to an informal paying arrangement. Simple worries they won't get their money.

MG already has problems with other suppliers and with customers due to their system of lying about their stocked items (as the whole industry does, to be honest). They start a pyramid system where new orders fund older overdue ones. Simple really worries as probably this kind of dept can cripple them. They go to a dept managing agency or bank and they don't like what they hear at all.

Meanwhile at Wayland the initial terror of an overgrown MG gives place to the hope of buying off a financial cornered competitor. They make an offer which is declined. Is it a bad offer? Is it just stubbornness? Only Rob Lane knows. I don't know the man but usually some businessmen have much in common with gamblers. They think that a good dice will save the day in the end. MG continues to receive orders and execute them problematically. At first they try to deny the problem. Simple freaks out and there comes Wayland with an offer to buy the dept right here right now with more favorable conditions than a bank or dept crows. They sell and get back what they can.

Wayland makes its move. Demands the full payment at an impossible deadline. I think that this move is a combined one. Take out a serious competitor AND a ticking bomb from the foundations of the English wargame industry. I believe them when they say that when MG was going to explode many small to medium companies would be affected. But off course that wasn't the only reason.

MG launches a desperate last charge with a series of sales. They know that they are going under but they deliberately defraud their customers by accepting orders they can't possibly execute. Zero communication, just more and more desperate sales ads. At the end were all is lost some would assume that the company would try to lift the mystery veil. No. They claim maintenance reasons for their closed down eshop. Somewhere on the globe some idiots still believe that everything is ok. After several days they come up with the truth of them closing down. And at the same time they blame Wayland for taking advantage of their leverage on them. Hello Rob! That's why they are called competitors and not friends and family!

 The Stranger wrote:
So here is the story as I understood it
MG is expanding from e-commerce to mini production. In order to gain in the long run from higher profit margins and answer back to the GW evil plan of ruling the mini world . To do that they spend a lot of funds in designing, producing and promoting their mini line as a premium product. To a point they succeeded.

They already have a strong card played against their trading competition. Free shipping! An established mini line would lift them even higher. They would have some serious assets and intellectual property instead of just being middleman. The competition worries a lot.

Poor managing decisions and business ethics lead to a substantial amount of dept to suppliers. The giant has clay feet but he is still a giant and able to force his conditions on smaller fish like Simple. They say to them we will pay you soon trust us. The same time they probably owe money to other associates. Then they change it to an informal paying arrangement. Simple worries they won't get their money.

MG already has problems with other suppliers and with customers due to their system of lying about their stocked items (as the whole industry does, to be honest). They start a pyramid system where new orders fund older overdue ones. Simple really worries as probably this kind of dept can cripple them. They go to a dept managing agency or bank and they don't like what they hear at all.

Meanwhile at Wayland the initial terror of an overgrown MG gives place to the hope of buying off a financial cornered competitor. They make an offer which is declined. Is it a bad offer? Is it just stubbornness? Only Rob Lane knows. I don't know the man but usually some businessmen have much in common with gamblers. They think that a good dice will save the day in the end. MG continues to receive orders and execute them problematically. At first they try to deny the problem. Simple freaks out and there comes Wayland with an offer to buy the dept right here right now with more favorable conditions than a bank or dept crows. They sell and get back what they can.

Wayland makes its move. Demands the full payment at an impossible deadline. I think that this move is a combined one. Take out a serious competitor AND a ticking bomb from the foundations of the English wargame industry. I believe them when they say that when MG was going to explode many small to medium companies would be affected. But off course that wasn't the only reason.

MG launches a desperate last charge with a series of sales. They know that they are going under but they deliberately defraud their customers by accepting orders they can't possibly execute. Zero communication, just more and more desperate sales ads. At the end were all is lost some would assume that the company would try to lift the mystery veil. No. They claim maintenance reasons for their closed down eshop. Somewhere on the globe some idiots still believe that everything is ok. After several days they come up with the truth of them closing down. And at the same time they blame Wayland for taking advantage of their leverage on them. Hello Rob! That's why they are called competitors and not friends and family!

I think you are part way there, but to consider MG a threat to established mini producing companies is a stretch too far. Free shipping isnt really a threat to WG either.

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 The Stranger wrote:
So here is the story as I understood it
MG is expanding from e-commerce to mini production. In order to gain in the long run from higher profit margins and answer back to the GW evil plan of ruling the mini world . To do that they spend a lot of funds in designing, producing and promoting their mini line as a premium product. To a point they succeeded.

They already have a strong card played against their trading competition. Free shipping! An established mini line would lift them even higher. They would have some serious assets and intellectual property instead of just being middleman. The competition worries a lot.

Poor managing decisions and business ethics lead to a substantial amount of dept to suppliers. The giant has clay feet but he is still a giant and able to force his conditions on smaller fish like Simple. They say to them we will pay you soon trust us. The same time they probably owe money to other associates. Then they change it to an informal paying arrangement. Simple worries they won't get their money.

MG already has problems with other suppliers and with customers due to their system of lying about their stocked items (as the whole industry does, to be honest). They start a pyramid system where new orders fund older overdue ones. Simple really worries as probably this kind of dept can cripple them. They go to a dept managing agency or bank and they don't like what they hear at all.

Meanwhile at Wayland the initial terror of an overgrown MG gives place to the hope of buying off a financial cornered competitor. They make an offer which is declined. Is it a bad offer? Is it just stubbornness? Only Rob Lane knows. I don't know the man but usually some businessmen have much in common with gamblers. They think that a good dice will save the day in the end. MG continues to receive orders and execute them problematically. At first they try to deny the problem. Simple freaks out and there comes Wayland with an offer to buy the dept right here right now with more favorable conditions than a bank or dept crows. They sell and get back what they can.

Wayland makes its move. Demands the full payment at an impossible deadline. I think that this move is a combined one. Take out a serious competitor AND a ticking bomb from the foundations of the English wargame industry. I believe them when they say that when MG was going to explode many small to medium companies would be affected. But off course that wasn't the only reason.

MG launches a desperate last charge with a series of sales. They know that they are going under but they deliberately defraud their customers by accepting orders they can't possibly execute. Zero communication, just more and more desperate sales ads. At the end were all is lost some would assume that the company would try to lift the mystery veil. No. They claim maintenance reasons for their closed down eshop. Somewhere on the globe some idiots still believe that everything is ok. After several days they come up with the truth of them closing down. And at the same time they blame Wayland for taking advantage of their leverage on them. Hello Rob! That's why they are called competitors and not friends and family!

I think you are part way there, but to consider MG a threat to established mini producing companies is a stretch too far. Free shipping isnt really a threat to WG either.

I think that they were a threat to the industry due to their immense debts. From what i understand except GW all the other companies are medium to small. Im talking about pure wargamming companies not scalemodel ones. Its common practice in trading for companiew to work with credits. But when a company creates a big debt that can cause the closing down or crippling of a series of assosiates then yes I would call it an industry threat.
As for the free shipping, it was the main reason that non Brits chose MG over WG or any other ventor.

 The Stranger wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 The Stranger wrote:
So here is the story as I understood it
MG is expanding from e-commerce to mini production. In order to gain in the long run from higher profit margins and answer back to the GW evil plan of ruling the mini world . To do that they spend a lot of funds in designing, producing and promoting their mini line as a premium product. To a point they succeeded.

They already have a strong card played against their trading competition. Free shipping! An established mini line would lift them even higher. They would have some serious assets and intellectual property instead of just being middleman. The competition worries a lot.

Poor managing decisions and business ethics lead to a substantial amount of dept to suppliers. The giant has clay feet but he is still a giant and able to force his conditions on smaller fish like Simple. They say to them we will pay you soon trust us. The same time they probably owe money to other associates. Then they change it to an informal paying arrangement. Simple worries they won't get their money.

MG already has problems with other suppliers and with customers due to their system of lying about their stocked items (as the whole industry does, to be honest). They start a pyramid system where new orders fund older overdue ones. Simple really worries as probably this kind of dept can cripple them. They go to a dept managing agency or bank and they don't like what they hear at all.

Meanwhile at Wayland the initial terror of an overgrown MG gives place to the hope of buying off a financial cornered competitor. They make an offer which is declined. Is it a bad offer? Is it just stubbornness? Only Rob Lane knows. I don't know the man but usually some businessmen have much in common with gamblers. They think that a good dice will save the day in the end. MG continues to receive orders and execute them problematically. At first they try to deny the problem. Simple freaks out and there comes Wayland with an offer to buy the dept right here right now with more favorable conditions than a bank or dept crows. They sell and get back what they can.

Wayland makes its move. Demands the full payment at an impossible deadline. I think that this move is a combined one. Take out a serious competitor AND a ticking bomb from the foundations of the English wargame industry. I believe them when they say that when MG was going to explode many small to medium companies would be affected. But off course that wasn't the only reason.

MG launches a desperate last charge with a series of sales. They know that they are going under but they deliberately defraud their customers by accepting orders they can't possibly execute. Zero communication, just more and more desperate sales ads. At the end were all is lost some would assume that the company would try to lift the mystery veil. No. They claim maintenance reasons for their closed down eshop. Somewhere on the globe some idiots still believe that everything is ok. After several days they come up with the truth of them closing down. And at the same time they blame Wayland for taking advantage of their leverage on them. Hello Rob! That's why they are called competitors and not friends and family!

I think you are part way there, but to consider MG a threat to established mini producing companies is a stretch too far. Free shipping isnt really a threat to WG either.

I think that they were a threat to the industry due to their immense debts. From what i understand except GW all the other companies are medium to small. Im talking about pure wargamming companies not scalemodel ones. Its common practice in trading for companiew to work with credits. But when a company creates a big debt that can cause the closing down or crippling of a series of assosiates then yes I would call it an industry threat.
As for the free shipping, it was the main reason that non Brits chose MG over WG or any other ventor.

Ah, ok. I read your post as MG being a threat due to them producing their own range of minis, not, as we all know, due to the level of debt.

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 The Stranger wrote:

 Mr. Burning wrote:

 The Stranger wrote:
So here is the story as I understood it
MG is expanding from e-commerce to mini production. In order to gain in the long run from higher profit margins and answer back to the GW evil plan of ruling the mini world . To do that they spend a lot of funds in designing, producing and promoting their mini line as a premium product. To a point they succeeded.

They already have a strong card played against their trading competition. Free shipping! An established mini line would lift them even higher. They would have some serious assets and intellectual property instead of just being middleman. The competition worries a lot.

Poor managing decisions and business ethics lead to a substantial amount of dept to suppliers. The giant has clay feet but he is still a giant and able to force his conditions on smaller fish like Simple. They say to them we will pay you soon trust us. The same time they probably owe money to other associates. Then they change it to an informal paying arrangement. Simple worries they won't get their money.

MG already has problems with other suppliers and with customers due to their system of lying about their stocked items (as the whole industry does, to be honest). They start a pyramid system where new orders fund older overdue ones. Simple really worries as probably this kind of dept can cripple them. They go to a dept managing agency or bank and they don't like what they hear at all.

Meanwhile at Wayland the initial terror of an overgrown MG gives place to the hope of buying off a financial cornered competitor. They make an offer which is declined. Is it a bad offer? Is it just stubbornness? Only Rob Lane knows. I don't know the man but usually some businessmen have much in common with gamblers. They think that a good dice will save the day in the end. MG continues to receive orders and execute them problematically. At first they try to deny the problem. Simple freaks out and there comes Wayland with an offer to buy the dept right here right now with more favorable conditions than a bank or dept crows. They sell and get back what they can.

Wayland makes its move. Demands the full payment at an impossible deadline. I think that this move is a combined one. Take out a serious competitor AND a ticking bomb from the foundations of the English wargame industry. I believe them when they say that when MG was going to explode many small to medium companies would be affected. But off course that wasn't the only reason.

MG launches a desperate last charge with a series of sales. They know that they are going under but they deliberately defraud their customers by accepting orders they can't possibly execute. Zero communication, just more and more desperate sales ads. At the end were all is lost some would assume that the company would try to lift the mystery veil. No. They claim maintenance reasons for their closed down eshop. Somewhere on the globe some idiots still believe that everything is ok. After several days they come up with the truth of them closing down. And at the same time they blame Wayland for taking advantage of their leverage on them. Hello Rob! That's why they are called competitors and not friends and family!

I think you are part way there, but to consider MG a threat to established mini producing companies is a stretch too far. Free shipping isnt really a threat to WG either.

I think that they were a threat to the industry due to their immense debts. From what i understand except GW all the other companies are medium to small. Im talking about pure wargamming companies not scalemodel ones. Its common practice in trading for companiew to work with credits. But when a company creates a big debt that can cause the closing down or crippling of a series of assosiates then yes I would call it an industry threat.
As for the free shipping, it was the main reason that non Brits chose MG over WG or any other ventor.

Ah, ok. I read your post as MG being a threat due to them producing their own range of minis, not, as we all know, due to the level of debt.

Producing their own minis would be good for the industry, but for sure bad for their competitors like WG. If it had worked out it would make a huge difference in profit aspects. It was am ambitious move but I think that it was a bad call for a small business. The only way I could see a project like this working out, would be a combined effort of various investors of the industry. The demanded high standards are very expensive. You need to set up a group of assosiates with great skills and pay them much better than the established brands, in order to turn them to you. The same time you have to keep your prices considerably lower in order to root to the community.

Wow, just when I think this FUBAR couldn't get any more FUBAR'd. Saw something on BF official forum advising that BF were going to look into making sure all outstanding customers got any FOW models or money returned. EOTS now has a plethora of FOW stock and what happens go to log into my MG account somehow transferred to EOTS and guess what I can no longer log in. So MG/EOTS now has stock but my transferred account has magically vanished.

I'm assuming and I reiterate I'm only assuming but it seems like MG/EOTS has went cap in hand to BF - please give us some stock so we can help customers - then they've taken that stock and flushed all remaining accounts. Its an assumption but at this moment in time it wouldn't surprise me...

So that post which showed the email form Mierce seems ok - they're asking for permission to send the customer's info from Maelstrom to Mierce.

But from what I can gather in this thread Maelstrom, without permission had already transferred info and accounts to EOTS.

This seems to be a massive violation of data protection, and a legal issue, if EOTS and Maelstrom are indeed, different companies.

OTOH it's probably a good faith mistake by folks without sufficient knowledge of relevant laws/regulations to at least 'fix' part of the problem and get people what they paid for.

if they'd been a Dutch store and they'd done precisely that, without asking permission, it'd been considered perfectly okay; they just used an intermediary (EOTS) to supply products to customers in some way. Down here, it'd been okay.
I can see why they might have sort of assumed it would be so in the UK as well. Now of course we all know what happens when you assume, but this is really, really the least of any of their flaws.
Good heavens, they're hardly selling your account data to spammers to fund mr Lane's cruise to the Bahama's

Posted By John-Paul on 13 Nov 2012 12:04 PM
It is Rob's intention to fullfill all the orders for FOW product he has outstanding and we are working with him to help facilitate this as best we can.
His business issues are out of our control but we are working with him to make sure all FOW customers get either stock or thier money.
I honestly could not tell you how this will play out in the end as we are a bystander in the mix like you but having recently met with Rob in person I am willing to take him at his word about his intentions as our working relationship over the years has earnt him that. I doubt the closure of his business is something he wanted but we will do what we can to help make sure FOW players are not left out in the cold.

So now looks to me like MG/EOTS is gone beyond taking the biscuit but is now robbing the biscuit factory.

Prior to this email - MG/EOTS No FOW stock and at least several dozen people had there accounts transferred to EOTS

After this email MG/EOTS seems to have enough FOW stock to clear quite a lot of there outstanding orders but magically no accounts seem to be working anymore.

 Corso Vitt wrote:
Wow, just when I think this FUBAR couldn't get any more FUBAR'd. Saw something on BF official forum advising that BF were going to look into making sure all outstanding customers got any FOW models or money returned. EOTS now has a plethora of FOW stock and what happens go to log into my MG account somehow transferred to EOTS and guess what I can no longer log in. So MG/EOTS now has stock but my transferred account has magically vanished.

I'm assuming and I reiterate I'm only assuming but it seems like MG/EOTS has went cap in hand to BF - please give us some stock so we can help customers - then they've taken that stock and flushed all remaining accounts. Its an assumption but at this moment in time it wouldn't surprise me...

... you guys realize this is why Mierce and BF never dropped below 50% during the firesale right? This was planned all along. I suspect an email similar to the Mierce one today will go out to all the people with outstanding BF orders shortly.

skarsol wrote:

 Corso Vitt wrote:
Wow, just when I think this FUBAR couldn't get any more FUBAR'd. Saw something on BF official forum advising that BF were going to look into making sure all outstanding customers got any FOW models or money returned. EOTS now has a plethora of FOW stock and what happens go to log into my MG account somehow transferred to EOTS and guess what I can no longer log in. So MG/EOTS now has stock but my transferred account has magically vanished.

I'm assuming and I reiterate I'm only assuming but it seems like MG/EOTS has went cap in hand to BF - please give us some stock so we can help customers - then they've taken that stock and flushed all remaining accounts. Its an assumption but at this moment in time it wouldn't surprise me...

... you guys realize this is why Mierce and BF never dropped below 50% during the firesale right? This was planned all along. I suspect an email similar to the Mierce one today will go out to all the people with outstanding BF orders shortly.

I can edit my personal details out of two invoices and post them for you if you like - both of them with a 70% discount on mierce models.
BF, I wouldn't know. have heard terrible, terrible things about the ruleset so wasn't really inclined to check them out even at that price

Received my charge back refund today from the credit card company so all in it took 8 working days to get my money back.

Pretty sure you'll find that BF will be making sure their customers aren't out of pocket and that MG/EOTS will be paying for this through Battlefront use of venue at no cost for foreseeable future.

It is win-win for BF.....they look (and are) the good guys making sure customers don't lose and they have secure venue for their GTs

 The Stranger wrote:
So here is the story as I understood it
MG is expanding from e-commerce to mini production. In order to gain in the long run from higher profit margins and answer back to the GW evil plan of ruling the mini world . To do that they spend a lot of funds in designing, producing and promoting their mini line as a premium product. To a point they succeeded.

They already have a strong card played against their trading competition. Free shipping! An established mini line would lift them even higher. They would have some serious assets and intellectual property instead of just being middleman. The competition worries a lot.

Poor managing decisions and business ethics lead to a substantial amount of dept to suppliers. The giant has clay feet but he is still a giant and able to force his conditions on smaller fish like Simple. They say to them we will pay you soon trust us. The same time they probably owe money to other associates. Then they change it to an informal paying arrangement. Simple worries they won't get their money.

MG already has problems with other suppliers and with customers due to their system of lying about their stocked items (as the whole industry does, to be honest). They start a pyramid system where new orders fund older overdue ones. Simple really worries as probably this kind of dept can cripple them. They go to a dept managing agency or bank and they don't like what they hear at all.

Meanwhile at Wayland the initial terror of an overgrown MG gives place to the hope of buying off a financial cornered competitor. They make an offer which is declined. Is it a bad offer? Is it just stubbornness? Only Rob Lane knows. I don't know the man but usually some businessmen have much in common with gamblers. They think that a good dice will save the day in the end. MG continues to receive orders and execute them problematically. At first they try to deny the problem. Simple freaks out and there comes Wayland with an offer to buy the dept right here right now with more favorable conditions than a bank or dept crows. They sell and get back what they can.

Wayland makes its move. Demands the full payment at an impossible deadline. I think that this move is a combined one. Take out a serious competitor AND a ticking bomb from the foundations of the English wargame industry. I believe them when they say that when MG was going to explode many small to medium companies would be affected. But off course that wasn't the only reason.

MG launches a desperate last charge with a series of sales. They know that they are going under but they deliberately defraud their customers by accepting orders they can't possibly execute. Zero communication, just more and more desperate sales ads. At the end were all is lost some would assume that the company would try to lift the mystery veil. No. They claim maintenance reasons for their closed down eshop. Somewhere on the globe some idiots still believe that everything is ok. After several days they come up with the truth of them closing down. And at the same time they blame Wayland for taking advantage of their leverage on them. Hello Rob! That's why they are called competitors and not friends and family!

I'm not sure Maelstrom opening its own miniature lines would have had its competitors quaking in their boots. It's basically 2 different businesses
Plus I doubt that the Mierce line would have been exclusive to maelstromgames online store. When people offer you money to stock your stuff, it generally doesn't make business sense to say no

Update from me, bank can't do anything and Paypal doesn't even respond the my emails.
The official notice on the website from maelstromgames does give a bit hope though.

"Maelstrom Games Ltd. can only apologise to those customers whose orders have not been fulfilled as it is now impossible for Maelstrom Games Ltd. to fulfil them, excepting those for Mierce Miniatures products (fulfilled by Mierce Miniatures in November) and Battlefront Miniatures products (fulfilled by Maelstrom Games in partnership with Battlefront Miniatures and Maunsfeld Gaming in November), all of which will be sent by Maelstrom Games Ltd. Other customer orders for certain ranges may be fulfilled in the future and any customers whose orders can be fulfilled will be contacted by Maelstrom Games in due course. "

But I doubt that will be for the Citadel range :(

 The Stranger wrote:
Poor managing decisions and business ethics lead to a substantial amount of dept to suppliers. The giant has clay feet but he is still a giant and able to force his conditions on smaller fish like Simple. They say to them we will pay you soon trust us. The same time they probably owe money to other associates. Then they change it to an informal paying arrangement. Simple worries they won't get their money.

I was talking about the Maelstrom situation with the owner of my most local LGS, and it turned out that he'd used to deal with SMG. He'd arranged for SMG to take payment for an order from the company credit card once an order was shipped. Unfortunately, despite multiple reminders, SMG failed to charge him for any orders for an entire year...

After a year, SMG came and pointed out that he hadn't been paid for any orders

My friend, who had been putting funds to one side once he noticed the lac of charges, agreed to pay each invoice by cheque, on the condition that SMG sent him a receipt - cheques for the first three invoices went in, but no receipts were forthcoming.

Once the debt was cleared, my LGS stopped dealing with SMG, due to the poor organisation.

After that conversation, MG's point about giving SMG CC details to charge to at £X/day to clear the debt when SMG feels like charging seems to be more believable than it was originally.

Btw, my account on the EOTS, which showed an outstanding processing order from the Maelstrom is gone from the site too - now when I try to log in, I get the response "e-mail not registered". Either EOTS shipped the item and decided not to bother with me anymore, or the whole thing was just a distraction.

 Dysartes wrote:

 The Stranger wrote:
Poor managing decisions and business ethics lead to a substantial amount of dept to suppliers. The giant has clay feet but he is still a giant and able to force his conditions on smaller fish like Simple. They say to them we will pay you soon trust us. The same time they probably owe money to other associates. Then they change it to an informal paying arrangement. Simple worries they won't get their money.

I was talking about the Maelstrom situation with the owner of my most local LGS, and it turned out that he'd used to deal with SMG. He'd arranged for SMG to take payment for an order from the company credit card once an order was shipped. Unfortunately, despite multiple reminders, SMG failed to charge him for any orders for an entire year...

After a year, SMG came and pointed out that he hadn't been paid for any orders

My friend, who had been putting funds to one side once he noticed the lac of charges, agreed to pay each invoice by cheque, on the condition that SMG sent him a receipt - cheques for the first three invoices went in, but no receipts were forthcoming.

Once the debt was cleared, my LGS stopped dealing with SMG, due to the poor organisation.

After that conversation, MG's point about giving SMG CC details to charge to at £X/day to clear the debt when SMG feels like charging seems to be more believable than it was originally.

Is this a common practice in the UK? Using the company CC to pay off suppliers? It just seems very strange