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DJM - Statement of Affairs released


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Can you please keep posts on topic. Off-topic content is being removed.

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Truffy I paid money in response to the invoice.

 

The invoice refers to an APT, not research and CAD.

 

Even if it was for research and CAD I have not received a copy of the research nor have I been sent the CAD files.

 

Therefore I am still a creditor.

 

 

Or to put it another way I paid the first of four payments for a completed model. To complete the contract I would have to make the three remaining payments and the model would have to be made and supplied to me.

 

Since the model is not now going to be made by DJmodels they are in breach of contract and owe me a refund of my payment.  That makes me a creditor. 

 

 

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2 minutes ago, Colin_McLeod said:

Since the model is not now going to be made by DJmodels they are in breach of contract and owe me a refund of my payment.  That makes me a creditor.

 

Then tell the liquidator. They can update the accounts.

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34 minutes ago, truffy said:

Unless they've purchased the research/CAD as the first stage of the production process.

Further payments to deliver a model were not taken, so no model could have been supplied, but that doesn't mean that money hasn't been used to produce something tangible (albeit valueless according to the SoA).

-ally? Or -aldo if you're in the US.

You could also try  -ikipedia. ;)

 

The question of the CADs continues to amuse me considerably as  I'm thinking the £33K was a figure plucked out of thin air or a Christmas cracker.  the Class 71 and  J94 CADs, however much they originally cost are involved in a dispute with a factory - along with whatever existed of the Class 17 and (first) Class 92 CADs.    I struggle to believe they were ever worth £33K and they inevitably didn't cost that much back then although their realisable value is indeed zero because they are involved in the dispute with the factory    There is also, somewhere or other, a CAD for the inaccurate Mermaid which might have cost something but because of it's inaccuracy is probably worth little or nothing.

 

We then come to the recent CADS - well the first question has to be did they even belong to DJM?  Because if the others are in the same situation and at the same factory as the 'King' they won't have been paid for anyway because of the way the factory's charges for its work are backloaded on to the tooling/production stage with no earlier payments required (if my information is correct, and it came from a reliable source).  I don't know if the APT had even reached the stage of factory CADs but in any case they are incomplete so - again - aren't really worth anything.   Ironically any 'research time' on RMweb in respect of information for the CADs could well have been charged as time by DJM. 

 

So in reality there doesn't appear to be much in that £33K figure that sensibly equates with even the cost of the CADs let alone their value allowing for the fact that some are involved in a dispute so possibly not even an asset of the company while at least one, and possibly more, definitely remain the property of the factory which produced them.  The only question mark is the extent to which APT work was carried out to progress the scan information to a state where it was suitable to send to the factory and that was presumably paid for out of DJM funds as (thus far) we haven't heard of anyone involved in that appearing as a creditor.

Edited by The Stationmaster
Correct punctuation typo
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Had a letter from my Credit Card company yesterday.  They have placed the money in question back into my account, whilst they investigate the matter. So if they are not happy they will debit the Account.  However, if I receive any refund or the requested item then I will obviously need to inform them.

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VAT is a rather more complicated beast if you are investing (in tooling) overseas and importing product.  

 

I seem to remember he blamed a delay on releasing his first product on HMRC.  

 

I guess he was unaware that VAT is due on the entire container upon docking unless he was creditworthy and had a deferment account.  Hence he probably had to find a pile of cash before making any sales to pay the VAT due.  

 

Then the VAT man would ask how were these trains made? Mention of tooling would then generate a second surprise VAT bill on the tooling value.  Or maybe he did not know and his accountant failed to declare the tooling.  In which case the VAT man is another creditor not shown on the Insolvency paperwork.  

 

Excuse me I need to catch that Omnibus to Clapham!

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10 minutes ago, GWRtrainman said:

VAT is a rather more complicated beast if you are investing (in tooling) overseas and importing product.  

 

I seem to remember he blamed a delay on releasing his first product on HMRC.  

 

I guess he was unaware that VAT is due on the entire container upon docking unless he was creditworthy and had a deferment account.  Hence he probably had to find a pile of cash before making any sales to pay the VAT due.  

 

Then the VAT man would ask how were these trains made? Mention of tooling would then generate a second surprise VAT bill on the tooling value.  Or maybe he did not know and his accountant failed to declare the tooling.  In which case the VAT man is another creditor not shown on the Insolvency paperwork.  

 

Excuse me I need to catch that Omnibus to Clapham!

 

If there is one constant in this whole debacle it this - whatever went wrong wasn't DJ's fault :rolleyes:

 

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There's some great off topic posts I'm having to hide just to stand a chance of keeping this one from self-defeating.

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On 01/07/2019 at 15:07, Fenman said:

 

Well, no, but a bit of human compassion might not go amiss. I doubt he’s sunning himself on a Caribbean island while nubile virgins pop grapes into his open mouth. Instead, I suspect he’s having a pretty miserable time (and no, I haven’t forgotten the financial “victims”, of whom I am one). 

 

Paul

I can’t speak for DJ, but when a partner company of my employer went under, the founder left 7 figure debts, but one week later was a guest speaker at a trade show in Monaco, and giving status updates on his linked in profile, whilst his 40 odd ex-employees lost 2 months salary, unpaid expenses and found out later their pension contributions hadn’t been paid that year either.

 

he got a consultancy with his ex-biggest customer with a remit to screw as best deal possible from the company buying his failed assets from the liquidator and were trying to rebuild those relationships and hire back as many of those staff as they could. You could imagine theirs (and my surprise) at turning up to a customer relationship meeting to find him on the other side of the table.

 

so not all those going under go to dark places.

 

Edited by adb968008
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8 hours ago, hayfield said:

 

May have been stated before but I though VAT was payable on sales ? no item has been made, so as nothing has been sold how can VAT have been paid?

 

HMRC have been very clear that UK raised crowdfunding efforts (in broad definition) are liable for VAT as it is income for the crowd-funder.

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1 hour ago, jjb1970 said:

 

If there is one constant in this whole debacle it this - whatever went wrong wasn't DJ's fault :rolleyes:

 

 

A.K.A. the 'Grayling Principle' named after a certain utterly inept Secretary of State for Transport who through a seemingly endless parade of cock ups has sought to blame absolutely everyone else except the one person who should have taken responsibility, i.e. himself!

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26 minutes ago, AY Mod said:

There's some great off topic posts I'm having to hide just to stand a chance of keeping this one from self-defeating.

Can we have another thread of all the hidden posts, with no additional context, bet it’d be great!

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1 hour ago, adb968008 said:

I can’t speak for DJ, but when a partner company of my employer went under, the founder left 7 figure debts, but one week later was a guest speaker at a trade show in Monaco, and giving status updates on his linked in profile, whilst his 40 odd ex-employees lost 2 months salary, unpaid expenses and found out later their pension contributions hadn’t been paid that year either.

 

he got a consultancy with his ex-biggest customer with a remit to screw as best deal possible from the company buying his failed assets from the liquidator and were trying to rebuild those relationships and hire back as many of those staff as they could. You could imagine theirs (and my surprise) at turning up to a customer relationship meeting to find him on the other side of the table.

 

so not all those going under go to dark places.

 

 

Indeed. But, as Stationmaster forcefully stated, none of us actually *know*. 

 

Looking at your chum, we can be sure that Dave hasn’t turned up one week later at a trade show in Monaco, or anywhere else; he hasn’t given us status updates on LinkedIn; and there seems little likelihood of him getting a consultancy with his ex-biggest customer. Or, frankly, anyone else.

 

So I’m not sure what the point is you’re making here? 

 

Paul

Edited by Fenman
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1 hour ago, Fenman said:

 

Indeed. But, as Stationmaster forcefully stated, none of us actually *know*. 

 

Looking at your chum, we can be sure that Dave hasn’t turned up one week later at a trade show in Monaco, or anywhere else; he hasn’t given us status updates on LinkedIn; and there seems little likelihood of him getting a consultancy with his ex-biggest customer. Or, frankly, anyone else.

 

So I’m not sure what the point is you’re making here? 

 

Paul

Simple...

i reserve my sympathy for those whom have lost out, not those who brought it about.

 

The events that occured, in my mind could have been handled differently

Edited by adb968008
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After the initial failure I expressed some sympathy for the man but not the failed business.  After some weeks of reading of the man's past and his apparent usage of money intended for "ringfenced" specific projects,  I now could care but nothing for him and hope that he remains loyal to his beloved F111's and leaves model railway manufacturing, or even consultancy, in the past.  It would seem that he may have financed the continuation of his business with crowdfunded money that contributors assumed was for specific projects, not perhaps wages, business expenses and advertising. 

 

Without the introduction of crowdfunding then the J94 may have been his only release and that alone did not merit building a reputation on.  I am not aware if crowdfunding finance was incoming when the class 71 was an ongoing project.  Perhaps we all will be more internet savvy and aware should another website appear announcing a new wave of quality and precision models and accept that those who criticise a new product or project are not necessarily trolls and when a crowdfunded project is announced be more active in pursuing the credentials of the proposer and whether they are actually buying a product or simply investing in a potentially risky project.  Let your hip pocket determine your interest in a project and not your head as it is far too easy these days for a proposer, intending a crowdfunded project,  to simply look at the most popular wished for product and announce a new release simply to fulfil a personal dream and not reality,  knowing that apart from a little time spent on research,  he will not be financially disadvantaged should the project fail.

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2 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Simple...

i reserve my sympathy for those whom have lost out, not those who brought it about.

 

The events that occured, in my mind could have been handled differently

 

I reserve primarily my sympathy for those who also lost out. But I equally pitty Dave for the situation he got himself into and feel sorry that he embarked on something - that was at least - way beyond his managment skills and/or resources. Anything else that could of caused the company failure would imply darker implications. I don't think he was a crook, as his announcement in May proved, he could completely grab the wrong end of the stick with some ideas that won't stand up legally. His APT deposit or investment or whatever was another such case.

 

I knew someone once (studying to be a lawyer too) that had a great business idea of selling £100 phones cheaper by offering them at £10 but only sending one out as soon as 10 people had paid £10! Fortunately his father pointed out that there was no way this could be legal let alone what you do when you have no new customers chipping in £10 anymore. But it shows how some people can rush into disaster with such flashes of inspiration. DJM  said he had the monies on each project ringfenced and money from one project was not used on another, but when I saw how many such ventures he launched, I was worried at a certain point that he might have been heading in a direction of having several crowdfunding projects taking payments to get one of them completed and then launching dozens more to pay for the several. That fortunately never happened. 

 

From day one, when so many products were announced and he even had CADs for them, but clearly not the resources to get them all produced, he must have already been living in a dream world. A year later, when nothing had yet appeared and only the J94 had progressed anywhere, he announced the Q6 and Class 59. He even commented at the time that he would not announce anything else for 2 years as he thought people would be complaining about non delivery. Here he was right there but how he expected to complete the big program from year 1 when all resources had been be sunk into a J94, that had yet to bring in money, the mind boggles. Some people, in highly stressful moments, are able to have their minds shut out certain realities. But I cannot believe that was the case here. But again we have few (mostly negative) alternatives to explain it.

His ongoing appearence on an Air show forum shows either he cannot see the real stressful situations that are happening or the same other (probably negative) alternative is still at work.

He said he had a thick skin, an omssion that he cannot see reality or he does not care????? Hmm, the more I think and read about it, the less I feel sorry for him.

Edited by JSpencer
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Here is a thought. 

 

Chatting to the accountant today about company matters and I mentioned this case, I mentioned that the early APT invoices were paid into DJ's personal paypal account and that invoices didn't have a VAT number on them. I said he had entered into voluntary liquidation and his initial statement was missing the many crowdfunders as creditors with just himself as the major creditor along with a trader and FC.     His suggestion was that as they were not recorded or shown as creditors then they were not bona fide company invoices, also with him receiving the monies into his personal account he could be pursued personally through the small claims court for reimbursement.

There is obviously a cost to this and no guarantee of success, but it did put another angle on it.

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27 minutes ago, JSpencer said:

 

I reserve primarily my sympathy for those who also lost out. But I equally pity Dave for the situation he got himself into and feel sorry that he embarked on something - that was at least - way beyond his management skills and/or resources. Anything else that could of caused the company failure would imply darker implications. I don't think he was a crook, as his announcement in May proved, he could completely grab the wrong end of the stick with some ideas that won't stand up legally. His APT deposit or investment or whatever was another such case.

 

 

But don't forget Dave had "form".  His previous respray business went under, and he has clearly had issues filing his accounts and tax in the last couple of years. 

 

Did he learn anything from his previous business collapse ? Leopards and spots etc.

 

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I thought the respray business (which also involved the sale of kits and building RTR versions of his kits) was quite small and very much part time. Its abandonment was all mixed up with domestic problems and his appointment at Dapol, IIRC. I heard that part of the conditions for joining Dapol was that he had to end all other model railway business activities. I know some orders were not fulfilled and it proved very challenging to get refunds. It was a totally different type and scale of business termination to the current DJM failure though.

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7 hours ago, adb968008 said:

Simple...

i reserve my sympathy for those whom have lost out, not those who brought it about.

 

The events that occured, in my mind could have been handled differently

 

I don’t actually have any sympathy for Dave. The word I used was compassion. 

 

Your last para is a statement I think we can we can all agree with. 

 

Paul

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6 hours ago, JSpencer said:

DJM  said he had the monies on each project ringfenced and money from one project was not used on another, but when I saw how many such ventures he launched, I was worried at a certain point that he might have been heading in a direction of having several crowdfunding projects taking payments to get one of them completed and then launching dozens more to pay for the several. That fortunately never happened. 

It would also run counter to the claim of ringfencing, at least for the later projects, if they were used to bolster the previous ones. Now, that is a Ponzi scheme. And it's pure speculation, no evidence that DJ had that intent.

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