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We have been in administration over the past few days and have been unable to ship your order. We are now trading as normal, and expect this to be collected by our couriers ASAP.

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Evesham Technology

They were definitely bailiffs at my store, the bailiff said, "I'm a bailiff". He showed us his bailiff credentials, and when we asked him what was going on he said, "I dunno, I'm just the bailiff." He was either completely wrong about his profession or somebody is lying! We didn't like to question him, he was over 7ft tall.

Yes ... everyone was in fact wrong .. they were not bailifs. They were Umpalumpa's Employed by Mr Richard "Wonka" Austin to run his Chocolate erhhh Computer factory.

In many years time, there will be a promotion, where Austin puts a gold ticket in a PC box. If you get the goldern ticket, you win a trick to AustinVille.

Did they remove anything from the premises? Speaking from someone who has worked in the insolvency industry (ahhh, happiest days of my life), baliffs are either employed by local courts to carry about CCJs (County Court Judgements) and by private firms, which normally are used to collect fines.

Either way, unlike Eastenders where Ian Beale was declared bankrupt, baliffs aren't used to seize assets when a company is declared insolvent... or at least, they shouldn't be.

GMB Union will be present at Strawberry Fields tomorrow, 1pm where we hope to have a big turn out from the 150 or so made redundant.

The need 50% of people to sign up to force immediate action.

and to protect their future rights, for the ones already gone, there is no minimum amount of people needed to take action.

I have known RA for a number of years and have admired the way he has built up ET into the respected company it was. The why's and wherefores of its demise can be debated ad infinitum, blame can be allocated in any direction the author feels fit. All I know is I have seen the man struggle in his efforts to keep it going and the stress it put him under. I don't know, or understand, the details of this rescue bid or what the motives of the "rescuers" are, only time will tell (sorry about that!). It would be a decision he made with regret(if he actually had a choice) - imagine losing 24yrs of achievement in such a short period!?

Funny how his Ferrari (now ruined along with his house in the floods!) causes so much comment and excitement, I don't suppose it was worth much more than a couple of days overheads for the business!!

How sad to hear of the demise of Evesham Technology. There was nothing better on a rainy Sunday afternoon to drive down to the factory shop and treat myself to a spanking new monitor or a flat panel telly. Or to sit at home and marvel at the bargains at Lowestonweb.com

Am I now expected to deal with a load of faceless multi-nationals or amateurish cottage industry companies? I enjoyed the banter with the Evesham staff as we filled in the finance applications. (They did ask ridiculous questions but it was all part of the fun!) Then to come home with my whatever it was, safe in the knowledge that it had a free 3 year warranty. Last night I had a dream I was shopping at PC World. No, not a dream, a bloody nightmare! Would I get out without being sold an extended warranty? Thankfully I woke up in time! (No pun intended!) But having felt relief that I was only dreaming, the harsh reality hit me that Evesham, at least as I knew it, was no more. I feel like crying.

... for Richard Austin.

Whilst it may be tempting for many to put the boot in right now, if it wasn't for folk like Richard being prepared to take risks and build their own businesses, there would be fewer new jobs and a lot less tax being paid. It's very easy to criticise when things turn bad, but at least he had a go.

So what if he had a nice house and a Ferrari ? With the daily grind of having to cope with stresses and strains that most of his critics couldn't even comprehend, I say good luck to him.

It is with some regret that I see yet another (inevitable?) demise of a long-standing and well respected UK system builder.

I know that over the years Richard and his senior management did pretty well for themselves, their business and their employees.

He has employed a lot of people, and contributed a lot to his local economy. However, this event is more than "just" about the demise of HCI (although it was a significant event and had a huge impact), there are a dozen other contributing factors, most of them 'global' i.e. competition from global Goliaths (and not always 'fair' competition, and often the source of this inequity was a structural failing of the marketplace where many believed and still believe that the Tier1 giants enjoyed huge advantages that were not always 'fair' and that the authorities have been slow to confront), who had and still have the economic muscle to compete on a scale still woefully misunderstood by the whole local industry, these factors where there for all to see. If there is any criticism it is a failure to adapt, evolve and move the business model on should have been accelerated years ago, so there are many contributory factors, many of which I believe were entirely outside of his control. I wish them well under their new guise, but if it more of the same, I expect this phoenix like-rise to be fairly short. It was a little surprising to see the new tie-up, but one can only hope that they have a clear vision of what they will do in the future, at the very least there can be no illusions of what they have to do to be successful again.

In the meantime, let's give Richard the credit he is due, he has risked everything over time to build a business that was successful for a very long time, and will still be attempting to employ a lot of local people. So many of the criticisms I have seen here and elsewhere are in my opinion entirely unwarranted, if you think that you could have done better or he should have done better, perhaps you should try and achieve what he did over the years, perhaps then you would understand the other side of the coin.

I haven't spoken to Richard in a very long time, so if by any chance he or any employees, ex-employees read this post, I wish you all the very best of luck in the future.

Years ago, in the 1990s, I bought machines from Evesham. But then in about 2002 they started spamming on a huge scale, and many people in the ISP business swore never to buy equipment from them again.

"Years ago, in the 1990s, I bought machines from Evesham. But then in about 2002 they started spamming on a huge scale, and many people in the ISP business swore never to buy equipment from them again."

Quite a few regular punters, this one included, made this decision too - a pity really, as I used Evesham Micros (as was) quite a bit back in the 16-bit days when I needed stuff for my venerable Atari ST.

It's weird here at Evesham now. Much like working on a Saturday, I only see the same 4 or 5 people float past occassionally and most of my mates are gone.

Don't really know what the future holds now, RA is going to try and turn it around and make it work. I think in the end it came down to "Evesham crashes and burns and everyone gets made redundant" or "Evesham goes into pre-pack and half the people get made redundant" so it was really lose/lose. Still not sure exactly what the role of Tahir Mohsan and Time will be...argh!

One thing for absolutely sure. Anyone saying that RA doesn't care is very well wide of the mark. The debacle on Friday was handled abysmally, and I truly feel for everyone that lost their jobs, but it hit him very hard - maybe had he been less caring and closed all the showrooms and business sales ages ago when he should (as neither were performing) it wouldn't have come to this.

Having been a loyal and very regular customer of Evesham for many years, both at home and buying IT products for work, I also recently acquired a 32" flat panel TV on interest free credit and with Evesham's excellent 3 year 'Swap Out' warranty. I felt really smug when my friends asked how much it cost and they were amazed when I said £450 including a free 3 year warranty. But now, 10 months from when I am due to pay for the thing, I am just wondering what I would do if it went wrong before I even paid for it! I hope that Evesham will remain in business in some form or other so that they are able to honour customer's warranties and give product support etc. I can fix computers myself but I don't fancy delving into the murky depths of an LCD TV!

Having seen the state of this man, earlier this year, as he struggled to come to terms with his ailing business and the consequence that its failure would have on his staff, I can only imagine the agonies he went through being only able to retain 50% of them.

Well done Richard for running a hugely succesful business in a hard market for 23 years. Well done Richard for employing so many people for so many years. Well done Richard for your contribution to, not only your local economy but the national economy. Well done Richard for bringing affordable computers into many homes over many years. Well done Richard for the excellent service your company provided to those users. Well done Richard for having the strength to source a rescue package before it was too late for everyone. Well done Richard for hanging on to so many of your staff for as long as possible (ignoring the advice of your friends!).

I could go on.

Good luck to you and all your staff, past and present, in whatever the future holds. I hope you're soon sitting in another Ferrari mate!

My business is struggling, I need to get rid of all the stock which is worth money before the administrators come in. Anyone want to set up a business, I'll sell you the stock for a pittance, then when it's all done we'll buy my business back trading under a new name. This way there won't be any assets for the administrators to sell so my loyal workforce of many years won't get their greedy hands on any redundancy money.... sound familiar Mr Austin?

I am pleased I wrote the "dont be to harsh on RA" part of this thread. At least it has garnered support for the old boy, battered and bruised but still fighting. If any man can sort this s**t out, he will, if only out for the stubborn pride that created the monster that eventually screwed him. I apreciate the feelings of those left without jobs,but, who knows, he may go again even at 55 and just had 12 rounds with Mike Tyson!!. I urge the doubters to go with the flow, sit back, and see what happens. I'm old enough to remember Rolls Royce going skint in 1971, still around today. After 9/11 many high profile airlines went skint becaue the market changed dramatically.It shows the fragility of business. In the Evesham Journal today there are many tales of woe, not just ET. Support him please, I may be wrong, I hope I'm not!

Around 2002 I splashed out on an Evesham top end model. It was rubbish - cynically assembled with incompatible non-certified hardware. The support was very, very arrogant and incompetent. I think they thought they were the bees knees. After three months of blue screens I put their PC in the loft where it still sits gathering dust, though I still use the monitor. So I take some considerable satisfaction in seeing their demise.

"After three months of blue screens I put their PC in the loft where it still sits gathering dust"

I'm half asleep, reasonably stoned and drunk yet i can still manage one word that might help you in this terrible quandary...

wait for it....

'warranty'

..."warranty"

Perhaps if you were in your default sober state you would be charitable enough to credit folks with a bit more savvy. No doubt too you would twig that it may not be appropriate here to document all the sad twists and turns of my Evesham woes. But, no, "warranty" didn't cut it.

"But, no, "warranty" didn't cut it."

0870 160 9534

swallow your pride, dial the number above, quote your serial number let them diagnose it and if there's a hardware fault and providing it's still in warranty you'll be able to get it booked in for a repair.

This help?

Other options: If you don't want to get it repaired under your warranty you could pay for someone else to do it, or fix it yourself, or find a forum where you can complain endlessly about the rubbish service (naturally, omitting the fact that you don't want to take them up on the warranty you still have, in order to make it sound like it's ALL Evesham's fault your PC is confined to your loft for the rest of eternity)

Heavens! What a simple world you live in. One where you think it your place to remind people of the patently obvious; One where you think people have never heard of warranties; One where they won't know what number to dial unless you patronisingly point it out to them. You aren't an Evesham ex-support employee by any chance?

Your basic mistake is to assume I did NOT push Evesham on the warranty issue (I had on-site warranty and, when pushed very, very hard they met their obligation on this. It's just they did not have the competence to fix it). Or to assume I did not fix anything myself (not that I should have to of course).

I guess you know the old adage about ASSUME?

Do you know anything about Quality Management? It is not about shoving rubbish out on the market and waiting for the punters to shout to get the problem fixed. Nor is it about falling back on your small print. Quality is built in up front, for example by sourcing XP certified components if you're shipping an XP certified machine. That's one thing Evesham didn't do for example. When I gave them the specific hardware error messages they performed the knee-jerk "re-install Windows" routine. They just weren't interested. So in this case I researched the error messages for myself, discovered the hardware and driver compatibilty, fixed it and carried on. But you see that was just one element in one long, sad story.

You don't know the half of it, so have the decency to spare me your glib platitudes.

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

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

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.