Kleenmaid collapses: $27m in deposits gone

I have been chasing Kleenmaid since May 2008, for a $900 account being for warranty repairs that I performed for their company.
I found them to be extremely elusive; they came up with a different excuse every week as to why the account wasn’t paid.
They had a 5 stage handball setup that took around 3 months to complete, as the person responsible at each stage was never in the office, and never returned your call. After the 5th stage they would send you back to stage one. When I informed them that I had sent the invoice in 3 months ago, they would reply that the process had to be restarted as information had been misplaced.
They would ask for the invoice to be re sent, and the process would begin again.
I have never met any company as good at dodging their creditors.
They would say that court action was not going to do anyone any good; we would prefer to resolve this. To resolve it meant going back to stage 1.
We put the debt in the hands of a mercantile agent, and Kleenmade just put them through the same loop.
Never at any stage did I get the feeling that the company would make good the debt. They never gave the slightest hint of concern with threats of legal action. They were probably thinking "Stand in line Buddy".

I find the claims by staff etc of their trading whilst insolvent to be quite probable. On Today tonight 23/4/09 they showed evidence of one of the Directors spending big time on private prime beachfront Goldcoast real estate under the wife's name at the same time as receiving large amounts selling a franchise.
This is typical behaviour of directors preparing to pull the pin and leave massive debts.
I hope that if all of this proves to be correct, that these guys do some jail time.

May 08? they must have known this was happening for a long time, I hope you get your wish.

On another forum I know they chased up people the week prior to being put into administration, asking them to pay up to extend their warranty.

They were pushing extended warranties a while ago, they got me but thats nothing compared to what some have lost, surely our laws should allow them to be pursued and seize assets in their wives names obviously bought with company funds.

In May 2007, i got a job managing one of their stores in Melb. I was told that the store TO was $4mil a year and i'd get bonuses on sales over $1mil. I was on a $75k wage before that. So, 1st day in the store, i'm looking at figures and was upset to see the store was struggling to do $1.5mil. I went to HO on the Sunshine Coast to do my weeks induction thingy and met Andrew and Brad and they seemed like nice guys, but i left after 12 weeks when it was obvious that everything was just a plain lie.

* our products are better than everyones, no-one else gets this, its exclusive
* your store does $4mil a year
* the warehouse sales. eg, an oven would retail at $1500, say. But at the sale you could get it for $900, but if that customer has been speaking to you and you call them about the sale, they cant buy it from you or thru the store, it goes thru the warehouse sale (and onto someone elses figures) and they crack the sihts when you dont pull figures, but expect you to call all your potentials and send them to the sale........i hated that the most. Work your butt off all week to get a $1500 sale from someone only to lose it to someone else for near half the price and then have management question why you missed sales.
And there is too much else to write.

I have not worked since. I dont trust anyone in business anymore. I was never like that as a boss, maybe i'm too nice and thats why i had blokes working long term (10/8 and 7 yrs) for me.

I hope the boys go down with the company and end up in a cell with 'Little' Ted and get a dinner plate inserted.

Rant over.

If the directors knew that they were trading while insolvent they may be held personally liable for debts owed to creditors.

Cheers
Brad