Farepak families fund is launched

[AnguaVonUberwald]

I was totally shocked at the complete disregard of the Farpak company for any notion of decency but hopefully this is a bit of good news!

"A new fund is being set up to help the thousands of families affected by the collapse of the Farepak hamper firm.
The Minister for Consumer Affairs, Ian McCartney, said the Farepak Response Fund was being established with help from York-based charity Family Fund.

He said Tesco had pledged £250,000 and called on other firms to help.

Swindon-based Farepak ran a savings scheme for 150,000 people for vouchers and Christmas hampers, but collapsed in October without offering compensation.

In another development, Sainsbury's has agreed that Farepak customers can get 25% of the value of their savings in Sainsbury's vouchers."

full story here

agree, wouldn't physically be able to eat all that food!

I've got the high street vouchers from Park, will help us no end.

Does cod know if Park are financially regulated or are they like Farepak?

yes, cod, whats the low down on park? i want to do the vouchers agin for next year (and if you cant think of ehat to get someone, give them a voucher lol )

no idea
id certainly check htough

how do we check cod?

Mr. Field may be a sound bloke, but I don't see any evidence of this, and you wouldn't expect to see anything that makes sense in a Guardian finance articel anyway.
He says HBOS should have pulled the plug earlier, which assumes that they knew precisely what was going on, and that's not exactly what you expect with a troubled company.
Also, people like Mr. Field are the first to whinge when the banks pull the plug on sick compaines. They will talk of the job losses, and the need for banks to look at firms in the "longer term", (ie until after the next election).

It would not shock me if HBOS had behaved badly, but what should they have done differently ?

have hjad an intital scout around an looked at teh FSA website
they haev a conimer phone line
id ring htem
must og and make ds3s lunch

why not just put it in a bank, save you the bother of finding all that info out

post office

give someone the savings book to keep so you dont touch it

nailey youa re so right

post office dont do the savings book anymore.

when i do save now, i set up a SO to my ING account (currently has 15p in it), and as it takes days to transfer back to my main account, its just hassle. i opened it in jan.

ok its not a book, but the concept is still the same

Donate some tins of spam then Domini

i hand over the bank details to my dad so i cant log in pmsl!

I read that the man that runs Park wanted to buy Farepak out this year but farepak refused. At least if they had the customers wouldn;t have lost out

how is that funny misdee

because i am a grown woman and shoudnt need to do it

am off now, need to buy brown packing tape. its an xmas pressie

supermarket Christmas savings schemes from Moneysaving Martin.

Misdee, when the time comes I would definitely recommend a Credit Union. They are much more widespread in ireland - almost in every town and used much as people would a bank but generally lower interest rates for loans. Lots of people who wouldn't normally go near a bank, don't have credit cards or cheque books, etc use them. Don't know if there is one nearer to you but there is one in St Albans

THANK YOU kteepee

i think credit unions are great too

my mum has successfully started one with fellow volunteers and its helped hundreds of people already

how do credit unions work then?

people who find it hard or impossible to get credit are encouraged to save with credit unions, they in turn can borrow money for washing machines, cars, school uniform, etc

same interest as banks
run by volunteers

there's one near ne, maybe I should save with them for next Xmas instead of park. This Farepak mess has put me off. I just liked getting my vouchers it's so handy for Xmas. My debit card was declined today in asda it's good to know at least I've got a few vouchers away for the kids Xmas!

I must admit that I find all this hand-wringing by the government a bit distasteful. These people could have saved their money somewhere secure such as a building society etc. The government did absolutely b&gger all when Equitable Life went under taking thousands of people's pensions with them. I didn't see any other companies rallying round to help out the victims there and Equitable Life was a solid and secure financial institution (apparently), not some flaky hamper company.

At the end of the day, people are always being affected by companies going bust. You only need one large company to go under (such as Rovers) for hundreds of other businesses to fold as a result. Nothing is done for those businesses and their employees. Why are Farepak's customers any different?

np, i will definatly look into it, even if i have to venture into hatfield

I think it's the timing, Freckle - the company went on taking their money up to the last possible minute despite knowing what was on the cards - that and the fact that the money appears to have been used to bail out the parent company.

(Oh, and the Christmas bah humbug factor, poor little kiddies not getting vast amounts of money sent on them this year )