People who have paid thousands of euros in deposits to DK Windows and Doors fear they will never see their money again after the company was placed in provisional liquidation.
The Dublin-based windows and doors company closed suddenly last month leaving more than 100 customers awaiting deliveries. Liquidators have been unable to access its premises to establish if any stock can be retrieved.
The company, which was established by Darragh Kane in 2005, appeared to be trading normally until earlier this year when several customers contacted the Competition and Consumer Protection Commission.
However, the scale of the difficulties emerged only 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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Several people have now contacted The Irish Times to highlight how much they have lost and how badly they feel they have been let down.
“My mother-in-law paid €1,300 deposit in August to DK Windows and was told it would take 12 to 14 weeks for fitting,” said Niamh Keoghan. “They came back a few weeks after that to finalise the measurements and took another €7,800 which she will never see again. She’s a broken woman.”
Richard McCaulfield bought a house that needed extensive refurbishments and placed an order worth almost €15,000 with the company at the end of June.
He was promised a seven-week turnaround and was happy to pay a deposit. Weeks later he was given an installation date of between August 12th and 19th and asked to pay the balance to secure the dates, which he did.
“That date came and went and we were promised five subsequent installation dates none of which were met,” he said.
Eventually, he cancelled the order and asked for a refund.
“They eventually agreed to the refund on October 18th. Although we followed up multiple times we have still not received our full refund,” said McCaulfield. “This has obviously had financial repercussions for us; we had to take out a loan in order to get the windows from a new supplier [and] request a payment holiday from our mortgage provider.”
Another woman who asked to remain anonymous paid a 10 per cent deposit on July 31st to secure the “limited offer” triple glazing.
She then paid 40 per cent on August 22nd with the total outlay coming in at €6,200 and was given a 12-14 week lead-in time.
The woman called the company in early November and was told the windows would be delivered to the company on December 19th.
“This was so disappointing to hear as we thought we would have the windows in by Christmas,” she said.
She was given worse news by email and was told there was no delivery date.
“I was fobbed off for several more weeks [with] vague mentions of January,” she said.
At that point, she asked for a refund “until such a time they could give me even a date for delivery”.
No refund was forthcoming.
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