Sports kit firm goes to the wall owing £73,000

10:00pm Wednesday 3rd December 2008

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A Poole-based sports kit company has gone to the wall owing more than £73,000 to over 700 angry customers.

JA Sports, which also traded as Sports Centre Direct, folded last week – leaving a string of frustrated internet shoppers without their orders, and unlikely to get a refund.

Alfred Fajardo, from Essex, who runs a football club for disadvantaged children, said: “We’ve only lost £73, but it’s a lot of money for a small club like us. One club lost £300 – that could be their entire year’s budget.”

Online consumer forums were also littered with complaints.

One post said: “I feel as though Sports Centre Direct has let me down big time. I now have an U10s football team without a kit.”

Another, who was awaiting a £260 refund, commented: “I purchased these kits on behalf of an under-15s youth team. All the boys had paid money.”

Company director James Augusti, 26, of Bournemouth, said his business, based at the Chalwyn Industrial Estate in Parkstone, had struggled over the last year and was hit by the credit crunch.

He added: “It is a company I started after I finished university and I had ambitions it would be successful. I feel terrible customers have lost out. If there was anything I could do I would. I have cut my wages and been working all hours, but the financial situation became impossible.”

He said he laid off his brother and his father had lost a £20,000 investment.

Paul Finn of insolvency practitioners Businesscare, said JA Sports was set to go into liquidation next month.

He added: “The maximum we would anticipate to recover from all sources is between £8,000 and £10,000, which will leave no surplus available to pay dividend to creditors.”

He said the vast majority of customers had spent less than £100. Those who had used credit cards could pursue a refund through their credit card provider, but others were unlikely to get their money.