Thanks for the update.

Anyone else get a letter from MB Insolvency today?

I got one as well. No real news, but at least I got my first official communication regarding this mess in months. So I got that going for me.

I did. Looks like 58 customer preorders unrefunded. Around 200 Alien Machines produced

make sure to goto the website and look at that doc therin

I think everyone on that list got the mail. Actually I would have thought there would be more consumer creditors.

I was paid in full to HP and my name was not on that list. I did get an email from MB insolvency so they know I exist. interesting.....

Does that mean only ~180 people even preordered?

I pre-paid and was not on the list either, and I did get the email. So, looks like more than 58 of us. Not sure why the list in the notice is inaccurate.

Where do I get this list and how do I get on it?

Contact Mark Hunt:

[email protected]

Good thing his name's not Mike!

Looks like Wayne has some Alien machines for sale..

0F29A436-B789-4FED-9BFC-ECBFA3F322EC (resized).jpeg

Looks like we know where the supposed Cointaker container went after all. Interesting. If true.

$10k US for an "as is" item. yikes. This was why Cointaker passed.

"Not profiting from these"... why is that anyone's concern? Is anyone more inclined to buy if the seller is taking a loss?

As-is, where-is. Sounds like a Super Auctions farce.
And now 125, 200.
And now 200, 1000.
And now 1000, 10,000.
And now 10,000, 15,000.
..........
Who'll give me a buck?

I knew another distributor would buy those games. It's infuriating that rather being shipped to the US for the paid in full original adopters, they instead are being sold for inflated prices overseas.

This is great news...thanks for setting me straight on that!

...maybe they'll throw us a bone and make some ramps for FT? LOL

Hey guys anyone care to share the letter please? I am in the UK, I was not someone who pre-ordered, BUT - I am very interested in assisting anyone, especially overseas customers as I am a) based in UK, b) relatively new to the pinball scene, so have no real deep opinions either way - I don't personally know any of the people involved - just assessing the most recent news that is being posted concerning Heighway Pinball; c) I ran a successful business for 25 years here in the UK, so I have a better than most understanding of company law, employment law, commercial law & practices, etc.; d) I've got time to help folks, and, e) I feel that this whole fiasco is giving UK pinball a bad taint and I want to do things to help rectify that.

He knows he would have got flamed if he was profiting. See IMDN LE for sale by LSOG thread. Archived in 3 hours.

Makes me wonder why Wayne bought the Alien pins though.

Evil profits what's the world coming to.

Wayne was the Australian distributor for Alien. He probably lost money like everyone else involved.

heh heh taint (resized).jpg

perhaps he was given a cash/quantity discount.

Could be. He may have paid in full early and was just glad to get them so he could recoup his money.

We'll said

Maybe be a little carefull with the spreading of this data. All of the creditors addresses are in the document and in the light of privacy it might be not wise to make it too public.

Point taken.
My post now edited,would appreciate if you could edit my quote out of your post,don't want to share a cell with Andrew

Seller is also the local distro for CGC and he got raked over the coals a few months back for jacking up the RRP on AFMR compared to the rest of world pricing.

Covering the bases this time around.

If this were a loss making exercise selling Alien units to the Australian pinball playing public in October 2017 you wouldn't turn around in Nov 2017 as the authorised distributor and then order more shipments of Alien units from the new manufacturer across all models in subsequent months all the way up to April 2018.

The supply basically ran out after the licence to produce did. Now that the manufacturer has gone into liquidation and considering the requirements under the ACL for repairs and spare parts guarantees with domestic sales to instead target an overseas buyer where domestic Australian law obviously doesn't apply for the remainder inventory.

No wear near the prices you charge for funerals taking advantage of families , go charge another $200 for some fake flowers
Seriously calling kettle black

Easier just to repaste in toto from the other Alien thread.

No one has any way of disproving the whole "not profiting from these" point anyway, so it seems like a strange thing to say. It's not going to change opinions that people might already have.

Well you should change your address, same as funeral home
Looks like a duck, sounds like a duck, even a street in your surname
Quack quack

All sounds a bit daffy when a domestic pinball retailer has the equivalent of a mental breakdown on an international pinball forum with a global readership.

Probably the main reason why I only order my pinball parts from US suppliers (with some European for specialty/hard to find parts) and have done so for many years now.

Better pricing, far superior customer service and most importantly more stable than anything locally.

https://www.pinballnews.com/site/2018/05/10/heighway-pinball-by-the-numbers/

A net loss of nearly 2 million pounds?!

Some assets were purchased by Pinball Brothers

yup - TL:DR - there is nothing really recoverable from the business... it's basically 2million in the hole with tons of preferred creditors... pre-sales people ain't getting dick

Some interesting numbers there... and of course more data supporting the idea that it was Andrew's business making decisions that ultimately made the company unsustainable no matter what.

Andrew is a horrible business man and his track record coming into pinball was a colorful past.
He's just a complete idiot that no one should of ever trusted. This whole venture was pretty much a ponzi scam.

If only you had mentioned this five years ago.

the node boards alone would make me not want to own one. with a company you can't buy replacement parts from. See how well a Stern with spike system is to fix if you can't order a replacement node board anymore. Might as well throw it in the garbage by that point. The company that makes machines with boards I can service myself is the company that gets my money.

I thought many did. At least I read that way.

Most critical analysis and comments were not on Pinside until the past 18 months. So Andrew had a good 3+ years headstart where he went unchallenged.

Repost from other thread, for visibility.

Not $80k.

£80k. As of today, $108,000.

RS Pinball were owed $148,500.

Nitro only $6400.

Assuming what the investors say is true, and they honoured all orders made (paid) since the takeover, that's a figure of at least ~$262,900 owed to the 3 main distributors at the time Andrew left the company.

Assuming also that what they say is true (about honouring paid games post takeover), then more than ~$367,750 was owed to direct (pre-)order clients at the time Andrew sold the company.

Some of the latter were refunded, or got machines, though obviously a minority. Some restitution was made in part (though obviously nowhere near whole) to distributors, too, I think.

So at the time of takeover, more than $630,650 was owing in games / potential refunds. Guessing well over $750,000.

We can pretty safely assume that cash was gone. Then there are all the other creditors. Then all the overheads, Andrew's hire or hire-purchase equipment on long term contracts (he presented all the plant machinery to me as stuff he'd bought, and most of which he'd sell when I visited). Then the unreliability and mass of work needed on the machine.

Hardly difficult to see why it became impossible to justify.

Since the Welsh government are apparently owed a round figure of £75,000, I would assume this is a grant that was given but which the company has since been deemed ineligible for (false pretences in application?). If there were any direct taxes owing (not even sure if WG levies any directly?) it probably wouldn't be such an aesthetic number. I also remember hearing figures of grant money around £75k on the grapevine. If correct, I assume this will form part of any investigations or legal action.

Oof. Will be interesting to see if anyone tries/is able to unwind any of the transfers to the Pinball Bros. I know zero about it so may all have been legal, presumably was if they had competent legal advice. Of course if Heighway has a mountain of secured debt, getting assets back from the Pinball Bros. might not help the pre-order customers anyway.

Is it possible to order anything from the company that Heighway bought from?

They may have some spares, but it's unlikely they'd be able to order new batches large enough to make it affordable for consumers.

Would 100 be considered a decent order? (did Heighway order much more than that)?