I paid online seller Utopia by cheque but never got my product

At the beginning of December, I bought a Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner from an online seller called Utopia Consortium. I paid £94.99 by credit card but was emailed back by the company to say its terminal was down.

I was asked to send a cheque, which I did, but have never received the Dyson.
Peter Brice

When we began looking into this issue we found a number of similar complaints to Mr Brice’s that had been made by users of the Moneysavingexpert forum, some of which go back as far as September last year.

All apparently had been asked to pay by cheque or bank transfer because the company’s payment system was being upgraded or had problems.

The problem is that paying this way leaves the consumer vulnerable and not covered by consumer law or bank guarantees.

We checked the company’s details at Companies House and found Utopia Consortium was registered in 2008. Mr Anthony John Ensinger is listed as both director and company secretary.

The website does have a geographical address as required by the Ecommerce Directive. The company’s registered address was changed in January. Mr Brice told us that he actually went to the address now given on the website and at Companies House: Utopia House, Knox Lane, Bardwell, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.

But from here things start to unravel. “A man who told me he had lived there 30 years said there was no such place as Utopia House. The postmistress in Bardwell said all mail sent to that address goes to a PO Box 664 but she could not divulge the recipient’s address. She said that many people had been asking,” Mr Brice told us.

We followed this up with our own phone call to the Post Office. We were given the same information although the registered address on a linked site now gives the address as 6 Utopia House.

We were told that while this wasn’t an actual address in the village, a Post Office employee said: “we know where it is and are quite happy to give people directions there”.

We contacted Suffolk Trading Standards and were told the company was being monitored and that as far as was currently known, the company was legitimate. We were told that the matter of the confusing addresses would be raised at an imminent meeting.

Mr Brice has recently received a cheque for the full amount from Utopia.

We tried contacting Utopia, using the webform on the website and left voicemail messages on the phone number given. We also left a message on a mobile number we believe is that of the managing director John Ensinger, but have had no reply from him or the company as yet.

Cases such as this one show why it is so important to have an address for a company. The Ecommerce Directive says that a company website must have a geographical address; it is very unlikely that giving details of a PO Box number would suffice. This is so people can write or visit the company if they have a problem.

It may be irritating, but if you are dealing with a company you have never heard of check that its address is valid.