The liquidators of a Dublin window company – closed suddenly last month leaving more than 100 customers awaiting deliveries – have been unable to access its premises to establish if any stock can be retrieved.
Negotiations between the provisional liquidators from Grant Thornton and the landlord of the Dublin 12 offices formerly occupied by DK Windows and Doors are ongoing, but sources have played down the prospects of customers being able to recover many of the windows they have already paid for.
The company, set up by Darragh Kane in 2005, appeared to be trading without difficulty until the middle of this year when it first came on the radar of the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission (CCPC), with customers making contact to complain about missed deliveries.
However, the scale of the difficulties only emerged in recent weeks, and while DK Windows was advertising Black Friday deals until mid-November it closed days later with provisional liquidators brought in almost immediately.
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The company said in a petition to the High Court that it had built up €1.5 million of customer deposits but had run out of cash.
If the company cannot honour its commitment to its customers they become what is known as unsecured creditors and will be last in queue for repayment from any realised assets.
While the liquidators are in the early stages of establishing if any existing orders can be fulfilled, sources suggested that most of those who have paid deposits will be left with nothing.
In a statement on Wednesday night the CCPC confirmed that it had made contact with the provisional liquidators “seeking clarity for customers who paid deposits”.
The company’s accounts show a heavy reliance on customers’ deposits, with the auditors warning of the risks from the practice in the 2022 accounts.
In an annual filing to Companies Registration Office, the accounts – approved by the company’s directors in late November 2023 and lodged just over a year ago – noted that DK Windows was “dependent on external sources of funding, primarily through bank facilities and customer deposits”.
However, the filing said there was a “reasonable expectation that the company has adequate resources to continue in operational existence for the foreseeable future”.
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