Stricken Evesham says will honour warranties and support
'Business as usual' as union demands entry
Evesham Technology's founder and chairman Richard Austin has said that DTE Leonard Curtis has been appointed administrator of the firm's accounts. Following on from a very difficult few days for many ex-employees of the firm, Austin finally confirmed yesterday that Evesham had indeed entered administration on Friday 3 August.
He added that the British computer maker had retained 138 staff following last Friday's culling in which many employees, some of whom had worked at Evesham for over 15 years, were asked to leave immediately.
"Although we are all very sad that we have to continue trading without valuable, long standing Evesham staff, we will continue to trade in the UK… We hope that we have now past [sic] this unfortunate time in our company's history and can look to a positive future," said Austin in a statement released yesterday.
Austin told The Register that bailiffs had not been at the firm following our previous story in which sources at Evesham said that "heavies" had turned up and turfed them out.
He said: "This is complete fiction I have neither suggested nor confirmed such; in fact I can categorically assure you that none will turn up."
When asked why many had drawn the conclusion that the people who had arrived at Evesham's Vale Park headquarters were bailiffs, Austin said: "I think that administrators were confused as bailiffs, there have been no bailiffs."
As we had previously learned from documents obtained via Companies House, Austin was appointed as managing director of the newly created Geemore Ltd on 20 July. It detailed the same address as Evesham's head office and also has ties to TimeUK founders Tahir Mohsan and Tariq Mohammed.
Last week, Mohsan had coughed up a rescue package of $22m for Evesham via investment from his Dubai-based PCC Technology firm. He had said in a statement that PCC would take a hands-off approach with Evesham and that customers could expect "business as usual".
By late last Friday, however, it was a very different story with all but two of the stores being closed and many staff being asked to leave.
But Austin yesterday insisted that "it is business as usual." He also added that customers can expect that warranties and support will be honoured by Geemore. He told us: "this was absolutely key to the deal."
As we reported in June, Austin had blamed the government's withdrawal of the Home Computer Initiative (HCI) scheme for Evesham's sorry financial state.
Meanwhile, Matthew Burns confirmed to us that he will be working on the case out of DTE's Manchester office and added that more information about the status of Evesham will be released shortly.
Several representatives from general worker's union GMB are believed to be present at the Vale Park site this morning. According to one Reg reader, the union had called for at least 50 per cent of ex-employees to show up at Evesham's gates in order to gain access to the office. ®
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COMMENTS
so long and thanks for all the fish
Having been instrumental a few years ago in building up another UK based PC manufacturer I have nothing but sympathy for what has happenned at Evesham- a company who's business model we worked hard to emulate at the time.
Surviving in a market where you are constantly competing for oxygen and sunlight against huge monolithic players with vast advertising budgets and low far east production costs and where the value of unsold boxes drops measurably by the day - well it isnt an business for the get rich quick brigade by any means and hasnt been for at least 10 years.
As regards Matey Next or whatever his name is - just put yourself on the other side of the fence will you man: Lets face it a sizeable minority of computer purchasers who call manufacturers support lines are idiots, theri craniums are a total IQ free zone .
This isnt poking criticism at their lack of technical knowledge but because:
1. they claim a higher level of skill and knowledge than they actually possess, which inevitably leads to more confusion.
2. an apparent determination to waffle and bluster and avoid at all costs providing a clear and succint description of the problem encountered, in plain english.
3. a lack of objectivity and realism.
I love a good debate!
Hi all you sad people (like me) who are trying to get on with their jobs in between reading all the forums about the demise of Evesham. My experiences of the big E over the years were thankfully somewhat better than Pali's. However, his problems (or some of them) may be similar to my problems with a recent PC I have had installed at work. (A Dell by the way.) Windows Vista is creating all sorts of issues - in a similar way to how things were when XP first came out around 2001-2002. (About the time Pali bought his PC from Evesham.) I feel that the software/OS manufacturers (in this case Microsoft) are always hell bent on getting their latest incarnation of Windows onto the market before the PC and component manufacturers (not to mention other software suppliers) are fully ready.
For example, my new Vista PC refuses to run some very recent photo software. The gadget side-bar (or whatever MS call it) that runs down the right hand side of the Vista desktop sometimes dissapears for days and then re-appears! Most annoyingly, a goodly number of my desktop icons never appear in the same place twice after re-booting. (I've tried selecting 'aline to grid' or not, makes no difference) Very annoying as I use a lot of file icons in my daily work. I also get quite a lot of unexplained 'hanging' when I start a program. It's all very tiresome for what is or should be a very stable operating system. XP was actually a lot more reliable and consistent than my experience so far with Vista. The fact you need three mouse clicks to select the onscreen 'off' button is a joke!
So while Pali may indeed have had legitimate issues and gripes with Evesham (I am sure they didn't always get things right for every customer) some of the problems may just have been symptomatic of a product made up from so many different 'generations' of component design and software/hardware compatibility. Is there another product in the whole world more full of idiosyncrasies (that spelling doesn't look right!) than a PC? I think not, they are pain in the arse at the best of times!
Richard Malin
Re: Bye & Good Riddance
ahh, you've selected option "4+" 'complain endlessly about the rubbish service'. This option also gives you added benefit of attacking anyone who questions your supreme knowledge.
Isn't choice a wonderful thing?
Have a great day and remember folks, a warranty is a legal agreement, you have rights, don't give in to the oppressors! ;-D
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