Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday’s ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below.
M.E. writes: In November 2022, my daughter bought as a Christmas present a Virgin Experience Days four-course dining experience with wines at Craft Dining in Birmingham, costing £72.
In February 2023, I contacted the restaurant to make a booking. They were closed for refurbishment, but offered to exchange the Virgin voucher for their own, with an increased value and extended expiry date. However, when I tried to book, I found the restaurant is now closed.
Sour taste: Pods at the Craft restaurant in Birmingham
Tony Hetherington replies: This was a recipe for disaster. When you handed over your Virgin voucher, Virgin paid Craft. Legally and contractually, Virgin was off the hook.
The company running the restaurant, named Craft, inherited that responsibility, but when I started looking into this, it was hard to pin down which company this was.
I tracked down the 2022 advert, tempting you to ‘Dine in style in a Michelin star-listed private pod’ at Craft. The offer included a ‘four-course meal with wine for two at Birmingham’s Craft’. But who or what was Craft?
I found Midlands restaurant company We Are Craft Limited. It had failed to file accounts that were legally due and Companies House officials had begun proceedings to strike it off.
Was this the company behind the offer? It seemed likely. Until 2020, it was actually called Craft Dining Group.
But hang on! One of the reasons We Are Craft was in trouble was that it was owed almost £1million by a separate company called The Craft Experience Limited.
That company went into liquidation in 2022 with debts put at over £1.5million. When I found that it used to be called Craft Dining Limited, I thought this must be the company behind the restaurant.
Perhaps not, though. Because when I looked again at We Are Craft, I found it had operated an offshoot called Craft Investment Partners Limited. A
nd the offshoot was also in trouble with Companies House for failing to file details showing who owns it, due as long ago as 2022.
A check of court records found two unsatisfied county court judgments against Craft Investment Partners and one against
The Craft Experience. So many businesses with similar names, all connected to one couple, Sam and Emma Morgan. ]
But when I tried to contact them, up popped yet another of their companies – About Dining Limited – and it turned out that this one ran the Birmingham restaurant.
I was assured that you knew all along who you were dealing with, and that you were pleased to accept a new voucher that could be used in a different restaurant in a different part of the country such as their smart new restaurant in Liverpool, called 8.
You explained this was wrong. You had planned a weekend trip to Birmingham, with the restaurant outing as part of it. And neither the advertising nor the gift voucher mentioned About Dining.
Worse still, when you swapped your Virgin voucher for the restaurant’s own voucher, it came from The Craft Experience Limited – Sam and Emma Morgan’s company which had already collapsed into liquidation in 2022. This must have been an innocent mistake, I think.
Another innocent mistake was About Dining’s claim on its Craft website: ‘We have taken the decision to not reopen Craft following a refusal of planning in respect of our refurbishment.’
Birmingham City Council told me it had not received a planning application from About Dining. When pressed, About Dining admitted it never actually applied because ‘we were advised it wouldn’t be acceptable’. So, there was no refusal.
About Dining suggested you were unreliable and asked whether I believed what you had ‘sold’ me and offered unsolicited advice about there being bigger stories I should pursue.
But Virgin came to the rescue by agreeing to reverse the deal to swap its voucher for the Craft restaurant’s own voucher. And the icing on the cake is that Virgin has given you a new voucher worth £110, rather than the original £72. Well done, Virgin.
If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 9 Derry Street, London W8 5HY or email [email protected]. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.
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