LLC update from Steve

[AndyH]

Sad all round really: Steve and family, those who haven’t managed to recoup funds, the confidence of the market.

 

I will never crowdfund another project. Cannot afford to.

[Captain Kernow]

On 26/09/2019 at 20:58, F-UnitMad said:

I spoke to another Manufacturer at Telford Guildex, who had looked at the possibility of taking over production of this model. They were categorical that there will be no more models from L.L.Co, & there's no money in the kitty either.

Essentially what I was told by another knowledgeable party at another show prior to Telford.

 

So very sad for all parties concerned.

 

 

Edited October 1, 2019 by Captain Kernow

[paulbb]

We could yet see a class 22 in O gauge. Dapol have done this in OO and will have the cad etc., and they may-if they use conventional technology rather than the gee whizz hydro mechanical (?) transmission that LLc proposed-be able to sell them for a lot less than £550 plus on offer before. We live in hope

[woodenhead]

8 minutes ago, paulbb said:

We could yet see a class 22 in O gauge. Dapol have done this in OO and will have the cad etc., and they may-if they use conventional technology rather than the gee whizz hydro mechanical (?) transmission that LLc proposed-be able to sell them for a lot less than £550 plus on offer before. We live in hope

But in the meantime back in the real world - do those who had paid a deposit now need to place a claim with their credit card provider as per DJM or has LLC not formally declared itself insolvent?

 

I think quite a few people were living in the hope that there could be a sale that would see their deposits secure and a model still produced.  If that is no longer the case then it needs to move in some direction to allow those with deposits to resolve their situation.

 

It's not a nice situation and the circumstances are very different to DJM but the practicalities for depositors is the same now.

[F-UnitMad]

Yes I still hope that an R-T-R Class22 comes to O Scale; but money already paid to LL.Co won't play a part in it or be deducted off the price. 

AFAIK there is a difference between paying a deposit for a model, & crowdfunding. Crowdfunding does hold the risk of losing your money if the model doesn't come about. This was the case with LL.Co, but just seemed highly unlikely as the Class15 was a decent model & the Ruston (which wasn't meant to be crowdfunded?) also looked promising. But if people paid a deposit for the Ruston, really shouldn't that be refunded?

[boxbrownie]

On 02/10/2019 at 14:29, woodenhead said:

But in the meantime back in the real world - do those who had paid a deposit now need to place a claim with their credit card provider as per DJM or has LLC not formally declared itself insolvent?

 

 

I assume that those of us who paid direct by Bank Transfer have no protection at all?

 

I am sure when I paid there was just the option of Cheque or BT, I do not recall a CC option.

[admiles]

6 minutes ago, boxbrownie said:

 

I assume that those of us who paid direct by Bank Transfer have no protection at all?

 

I am sure when I paid there was just the option of Cheque or BT, I do not recall a CC option.

 

Correct!

[Compbck]

Several attempts have been made to obtain a refund for the alleged returnable deposit in respect of the Class 22, but to date, it appears the owner is ducking and diving his legal responsibilities. The business website is still up and running and offering the Class 22 for sale. 

[woodenhead]

7 minutes ago, Compbck said:

Several attempts have been made to obtain a refund for the alleged returnable deposit in respect of the Class 22, but to date, it appears the owner is ducking and diving his legal responsibilities. The business website is still up and running and offering the Class 22 for sale. 

This thread describes well the situation and the position of people such as yourself.

 

I've just been on the site and whilst it does look like you can order a class 22, if you click add to basket nothing happens - perhaps the site has been partially disabled so no new orders can be taken.

 

It may be that the owner is still trying to find a buyer so taking out the website isn't necessary but i can appreciate and sympathise with your ire about the situation.

[Roy L S]

The company is still showing active at Companies House, the last micro-accounts filed were for the company's financial year ended October 2018. 

Edited December 11, 2019 by Roy L S

[F-UnitMad]

On 02/10/2019 at 14:16, paulbb said:

We could yet see a class 22 in O gauge. Dapol have done this in OO and will have the cad etc., and they may-if they use conventional technology rather than the gee whizz hydro mechanical (?) transmission that LLc proposed-be able to sell them for a lot less than £550 plus on offer before. We live in hope

I sent a message to Dapol on their website, expressing the hope they would consider doing the Class 22 in O, after all they have decent models of it in N & OO. I only mentioned this model in the context of a failed venture, so put it to them that the R-T-R market is still very much open for a Class 22.

Hopefully someone there with influence reads it.

 

As far as my crowdfunding money for L.L.Co is concerned, personally I have written that off, now. 

[Compbck]

To date several buyers have attempted to get our money back using the legal system. - To date bailiffs have stated that the company appears to be run from private addresses with no re-saleable business products available to seize. So it looks like a lot of customer monies have been misappropriated,  and as F-UnitMad states may now have to be written off.

 

Many of us are not very impressed with the practice of demanding money at the time of ordering resulting in massive losses to many prospective purchasers,, and a result could be to the detriment of the future of the company, even if it does sell to a new owner. From now on I will stick to the large suppliers such as Dapol, Heljan and outlets such as Tower Models who can be trusted, and from whom I have already purchased many goodies over the years.

[Captain Kernow]

11 hours ago, Compbck said:

Many of us are not very impressed with the practice of demanding money at the time of ordering resulting in massive losses to many prospective purchasers,, and a result could be to the detriment of the future of the company, even if it does sell to a new owner. From now on I will stick to the large suppliers such as Dapol, Heljan and outlets such as Tower Models who can be trusted, and from whom I have already purchased many goodies over the years.

As one of those who has lost out financially, I'm surprised that there is still any belief that the company will be sold, given the amount of time that has now passed since the problems were first made known.

 

[Hal Nail]

These situations are very difficult.

 

I dont even pre-order personally as there is always the risk that the shop might get into trouble.

 

What I do think is clear from the responses is not everyone is even aware there are risks and I do still think there should be some sort of code/rules/ombudsmen type thing in place as we have for investing.

[woodenhead]

1 hour ago, Hal Nail said:

These situations are very difficult.

 

I dont even pre-order personally as there is always the risk that the shop might get into trouble.

 

What I do think is clear from the responses is not everyone is even aware there are risks and I do still think there should be some sort of code/rules/ombudsmen type thing in place as we have for investing.

You can never remove all risk from an investment.

 

For the amounts involved at an individual level the financial impact of model railways is pretty low.  If the money you are spending cannot afford to be lost then you shouldn't be investing.

[Neil]

1 hour ago, woodenhead said:

You can never remove all risk from an investment.

 

For the amounts involved at an individual level the financial impact of model railways is pretty low.  If the money you are spending cannot afford to be lost then you shouldn't be investing.

 

Pre-ordering or crowd funding isn't marketed as an investment but as an opportunity to purchase. As such it must have seemed a safer bet than stocks and shares where we expect volatility and uncertainty. I think it's reasonable to expect that payments made in good faith are managed competently and prudently.

[F-UnitMad]

6 hours ago, Neil said:

 

Pre-ordering or crowd funding isn't marketed as an investment but as an opportunity to purchase. As such it must have seemed a safer bet than stocks and shares where we expect volatility and uncertainty. I think it's reasonable to expect that payments made in good faith are managed competently and prudently.

Agreed, although Pre-ordering & Crowdfunding are (or should be) two different things; a pre-order being just a deposit - hence it should be refundable, but crowdfunding is putting money into a project with the risk that said project still may fail, taking the funding with it.

So I can understand those who simply put in a pre-order being upset at not getting their money back, and that despite even trying legal means to do so. The risk of losing crowdfunding money was always there, but just seemed so unlikely, in this case.

"Mismanagement" is about right - this whole thing has done a great deal of damage to the idea of crowdfunding in the O Scale market, if not the rest of the hobby; I can't see anyone either proposing it again, or anyone else backing such an idea, however desirable the proposed model may be.

I for one won't ever touch Crowdfunding with a barge pole, ever again.

[Enterprisingwestern]

 

I am not attacking or defending anyone or anything, but crowdfunding is a way of the world these days and it allows you the possibility to get something you really want which wouldn't be available any other way. 

Like any form of giving money to others it is incumbent on the "loanee" to investigate what they are getting themselves into and weigh up the pro's and cons.

I don't know it's success rate in other fields, but it has huge popularity, so maybe we are unlucky, but whatever, it's here to stay.

Crowdfunding is a bit like gambling and as others have said, don't use money you can't afford to lose.

 

Mike.

[Revolution Mike]

3 hours ago, F-UnitMad said:

Agreed, although Pre-ordering & Crowdfunding are (or should be) two different things; a pre-order being just a deposit - hence it should be refundable, but crowdfunding is putting money into a project with the risk that said project still may fail, taking the funding with it.

So I can understand those who simply put in a pre-order being upset at not getting their money back, and that despite even trying legal means to do so. The risk of losing crowdfunding money was always there, but just seemed so unlikely, in this case.

"Mismanagement" is about right - this whole thing has done a great deal of damage to the idea of crowdfunding in the O Scale market, if not the rest of the hobby; I can't see anyone either proposing it again, or anyone else backing such an idea, however desirable the proposed model may be.

I for one won't ever touch Crowdfunding with a barge pole, ever again.

 

I'm not so sure that the way that you describe pre-ordering and crowdfunding is that different (I would describe pre-ordering as ordering without paying any deposit but that is a different matter). In both cases you describe people pay a deposit, both are refundable and there is the same level of risk.

 

I completely agree with you that managing projects properly is crucial for everyone concerned. Crowdfunding at its simplest is just a mechanism for funding a model to production.

 

But I would say that having delivered 7 crowdfunded projects with another 2 about to leave China and another 9 models at various stages of tooling/production (plus a few more in R&D/design).

 

Cheers Mike

[boxbrownie]

43 minutes ago, red death said:

 

I'm not so sure that the way that you describe pre-ordering and crowdfunding is that different (I would describe pre-ordering as ordering without paying any deposit but that is a different matter). In both cases you describe people pay a deposit, both are refundable and there is the same level of risk.

 

Cheers Mike

Every time I have “pre-ordered” from a large retailer it has invariably been with no deposit taken and full,funds taken at time of dispatch, a completely different scenario with no risk of money going with no goods, but with LLC I felt it was fairly secure as I had already had a Class 15 from Steve, how wrong was I......in for a penny in for nearly £500 

[F-UnitMad]

5 hours ago, red death said:

I'm not so sure that the way that you describe pre-ordering and crowdfunding is that different (I would describe pre-ordering as ordering without paying any deposit but that is a different matter). In both cases you describe people pay a deposit, both are refundable and there is the same level of risk.

A deposit/pre-order, refundable, yes, and I do take the point that with most retailers, "pre-order" doesn't actually involve the transfer of funds, but is crowd-funding refundable, in law? I was under the impression it isn't. Therefore it's different to a deposit.

All a moot point anyway, in this case, it seems, if Bailiffs haven't even been able to recover pre-order deposits.

[paulbb]

On the 23/2/2018 I recieved an email from LLC (Steven Leathers)  which discussed crowdfunding for the class 22  and invited my participation.

One of the risks was stated quite clearly;

 

'Another risk is that LLC could cease to trade for whatever reason. In that case also you would lose access to all paid sums, and depending on the nature of that cessation you may not receive any payment from the liquidation of LLCs assets.'

 

this and the fact that the technology for the loco looked , well a bit ambitous made me 'wait and see'.

 

[Osgood]

There are also the type of crowdfunding platforms where money is collected by an administrator and placed into a kind of escrow as they say in the USA, and should the project fail to deliver then monies are returned.

 

Two points - the developer cannot access the funds to develop the product, and the administrator charges a hefty fee (might be 10%) to the developer should the project succeed.

 

Small wonder then that so many developers use a direct type funding approach.

All in all a great shame and difficult circumstances for all concerned.

[delticfan]

On 13/12/2019 at 11:53, boxbrownie said:

Every time I have “pre-ordered” from a large retailer it has invariably been with no deposit taken and full,funds taken at time of dispatch, a completely different scenario with no risk of money going with no goods, but with LLC I felt it was fairly secure as I had already had a Class 15 from Steve, how wrong was I......in for a penny in for nearly £500 

I feel totally gutted for you, I nearly got stung for my first deposit with DJM APT fiasco fortunately I got the money refunded early and never went any further. I think the days of crowdfunding or taking a huge damn risk are over. I remember LLC selling the kits for the Class 04 which apart from the wheels and some fittings were basically junk as far as the etchings went, so I am really cautious where my hard earned goes now. I don’t think anything truly sells out and if you wait you can usually pick up a bargain.

[F-UnitMad]

5 hours ago, paulbb said:

On the 23/2/2018 I recieved an email from LLC (Steven Leathers)  which discussed crowdfunding for the class 22  and invited my participation.

One of the risks was stated quite clearly;

 

'Another risk is that LLC could cease to trade for whatever reason. In that case also you would lose access to all paid sums, and depending on the nature of that cessation you may not receive any payment from the liquidation of LLCs assets.'

 

this and the fact that the technology for the loco looked , well a bit ambitous made me 'wait and see'.

 

I had that email too, and read & digested the implications, especially of the part quoted above.

What I didn't anticipate was what has actually happened - after what seemed like a solid start with the Class 15, & the Ruston 'apparently' about to hit the shelves, there seemed no reason to doubt the Class 22 would be produced, & we'd all be happy bunnys. I expect many other funders felt the same. I have not sought or expected a return of my money, I am just extremely disappointed that it all went belly-up, and the manner in which it did so.