They want to save the furniture.
But it is clear that this perspective is increasingly remote for several hundred customers of Made.com fire.
Having placed an order just before the liquidation of the British brand in November, they were never delivered and have since been waiting to be reimbursed.
And they had the unpleasant surprise to learn, on the weekend of February 4 and 5, that the NOZ destocking chain was going to sell in its stores, after an agreement with the judicial administrator, the stock that was in the warehouse from a service provider in Antwerp (Belgium).
“A fan of designer furniture and trendy decoration?
141,000 pieces of furniture and decorative objects from the design giant MADE will be on sale in our stores very soon, at 70% off!
“, Welcomes the company in a Facebook post published Friday evening.
"An exceptional lot, made up of 113,000 trendy decorative items (candles, plates, etc.) and 28,000 pieces of designer furniture", specifies in a press release the destocker, who had sold most of Camaïeu's stock at the end of November.
The stores of Saint-Berthevin (Mayenne) and Angers (Maine-et-Loire) have already put the first pieces on sale on Saturday and the others must be delivered from this Tuesday.
"This stock belonged to the customers"
If the announcement delighted aficionados of the number 1 destocking brand in France, the aggrieved customers of Made.com enjoyed this operation much less.
On a Facebook group which brings together nearly 1,900 people, some were unleashed this weekend in comments: "Our furniture sold at NOZ, I'm hallucinating" or even "When we think that our furniture paid for will be sold at NOZ, it disgusts me”…
“This stock belonged to customers”, plague with our newspaper Alaine, who had ordered two armchairs and a coffee table at the end of October for 2,200 euros.
"NOZ is in its role but it seems quite surprising to us that PWC, the judicial administrator, has the right to sell our furniture a second time", adds one of the initiators of the Facebook group.
She denounces a French law that is not protective enough and specifies that, according to her census, less than 20% of customers have been reimbursed by their bank.
"I almost want to go and get the piece of furniture from NOZ that I never received"
Mathieu who, with his wife, had ordered a chest bench in August at 395 euros, laughs yellow in front of this new twist: “I almost want to go and get the piece of furniture from NOZ that I never received”.
The delivery, then scheduled for December, was then postponed to April before Made.com went bankrupt.
And he explains to us that he no longer has much hope of recovering his money: “Rather than sit on my bench, I will sit on 395 euros”.
All had placed an order with the e-commerce brand just before the company's bankruptcy, at the beginning of November 2022. An express descent into hell a year and a half after its IPO.
In June 2021, the market capitalization approached 800 million pounds.
But victim of a drop in demand, due to inflation and the global disruption of supply chains, the distributor specializing in designer furniture was short of cash and had been placed in compulsory liquidation on November 1.
Owners only on delivery
Me Emma Leoty, who defends around thirty people from the Facebook group, says she understands the anger of French consumers.
“Why do customers only become owners of their property upon delivery when they have paid 100% of the order price?
asks Me Leoty.
Basically, it's protection for the consumer, but there they are harmed.
»
The lawyer, for her part, is putting the finishing touches to a complaint for misleading advertising that she will file at the beginning of the week.
And the council to denounce: “Consumers paid for furniture to order when the leaders knew very well that they were going to shut down.
»
Asked, the NOZ brand says “understand the disappointment of Made.com customers”.
But insists that the procedures are the same as usual.
"As in any compulsory liquidation, our objective is to buy back stocks in order to give money to the liquidator, who can then reimburse some of the creditors", underlines Nicolas Teulier, the decoration and furniture product manager of NOZ, who expects some of these angry customers to arrive in its stores.
Will aggrieved customers come out on top of repaid creditors?
"We don't have control over it", tempers Nicolas Teulier.
They only come last in the order of priority of creditors and will only be reimbursed once all the others (former employees, banks, service providers, etc.) have been reimbursed.
Which is to say never.
