‘I spent £680 and can’t get a refund’

News that more than 200 Carpetright stores will close after the chain went bust has come as a huge shock to worried customers and staff across the UK.

While rival retailer Tapi has rescued 54 stores, it says it won’t fulfil outstanding customer orders at shops that have shut, nor will it rehire the around 1,500 staff who lost their jobs.

Sian Bowers, 40, from Dagenham spent £681 on new carpet for her home earlier in July and fears she has lost her money. The mother-of-two told the BBC she has already called the company and been told her order won’t be sent.

“My bank have said that they cannot do anything because I paid [with] chip and pin,” Ms Bowers said. “I am not in a position to repurchase until I receive a refund.”

Ms Bowers waited a whole two years to save up enough money to buy the carpet and used part of the inheritance she got when her mother passed away from Leukaemia recently.

Now she regrets paying the whole cost upfront: “I knew it was a lot of money but I said ‘just get it done’.”

Colin Dakers from Glasgow has been trying to contact Carpetright about his carpets, which he paid for in full at the beginning of July, spending £1,630.

He’s even been to his branch in Uddingston this morning where he found the doors locked and no-one there.

He had asked the branch to store his carpet while he completed renovation work and arranged to have them fitted in early September. But yesterday the store closed for good.

“I’m stuck between a rock and a hard place,” he told the BBC. “I have goods that have been fully paid for that belong to me as far as I’m concerned.

“I’d be happy to go and collect the carpet but I don’t know where it is.”

Colin said he felt “let down and disappointed” that no-one from Carpetright contacted customers like him after the firm announced its intention to appoint administrators earlier this month – something he wasn’t aware of at the time.

“This could have been avoided with a simple phone call. They could have called me – and other people who had stuff in storage – to say what the situation was.

“That would have been fine. I could have collected the carpet and put it into storage somewhere else.”

Like Sian, Colin paid for his carpets with a debit card so has no automatic right to a refund. He plans to contact the administrators, PwC, to find out his options but doesn’t feel optimistic.

When a company ceases trading, consumers unfortunately tend to end up at the back of a long line of creditors, making it nearly impossible to get a refund.

However, there is hope for customers who pay for goods on credit card, as under the law the credit card company is jointly liable for any breach of contract by the retailer and should cover the cost of unfulfilled orders worth over £100.

Similar rights apply to those who paid using consumer finance.

Lisa Webb, consumer law expert at Which?, said: “Unfortunately for those who paid by cash, cheque or debit card, Carpetright is not offering much in the way of reassurance that they’ll see any refunds at all.”

Carpetright, which was founded in 1988, ran into trouble in April when sales slumped following a cyber-attack that put it’s online ordering system out of action. But it had been struggling with slowing consumer demand for some time.

On Tuesday the boss of Tapi, which is taking over part of Carpetright’s operations, said he was “desperately sad” not to have been able to save more customer orders and jobs.

Some workers have reacted with dismay at the short notice they’ve been given. Hundreds of workers at Carpetright’s head office in Purfleet, Essex, and across some shops will only be kept on for a short time to wind down operations.

On Twitter, one person claiming to have worked for the company said: “I have so many questions and no answers, I’m heartbroken. I’m a single mum with bills to pay and they treat me like I was nothing.”

John, who did not want to share his real name as he still works at Carpetright, told the BBC that he and his colleagues found out about the redundancies on the news.

Carpetright had told them very little, he said, and blamed the job cuts on the malware attack in April.

“[They were] 10 minutes from being shut down that day,” John said.

According to Citizens Advice, if your employer is insolvent you can claim some of the money your employer owes you from the Redundancy Payments Service, a government-run scheme.

The maximum amount you can claim for a week’s unpaid wages or annual leave is £700 if your employment ended on or after 6 April 2024.

However, it’s not just staff directly employed by the company who face uncertainty, with the independent fitters used by Carpetright also hit hard.

Wayne Wadsworth, who runs Finest Floors in Waterlooville, says he’s been working with Carpetright for 20 years and the company gave his business five days of work each week.

Yesterday, his local branch in Fareham was among the more than 200 that closed.

“It was a shock when it happened,” he said, adding that he and other local carpet fitters had no idea the firm was in trouble.

Mr Wadsworth did his last job for Carpetright on Tuesday and has taken to social media to promote his business – saying he was reassured by enquiries after he posted about his situation yesterday.

“Lots of people contacted me but if these jobs don’t come in I won’t have an income,” he said.