TENS of thousands of people are potentially out of pocket after a Scottish gift company has gone into administration.
Gift Experience Scotland sent an email to its suppliers on Wednesday saying that it had gone out of business that day.
The Edinburgh-based company sold more that 1,000 experience ideas available across Scotland including supercar and tank driving, helicopter tours and spa days and afternoon teas.
Prices ranged from tens to up to hundreds of pounds, with £300 for some of the bigger experiences like hotel and golf stays.
The website and Facebook account of the company have been taken down, saying the company had "gone offline".
Both customers and suppliers have been plunged into uncertainty about what will happen to experiences which they had paid for, but suppliers had not.
Many customers asked on Twitter if their vouchers would be honoured.
One, who had bought one for a supercar experience, said: "Would be nice to know as its a long drive for me and overnight stay. Nightmare."
Similar to providers such as Virgin Experience or Groupon, customers buy vouchers which they can then give on as gifts.
Suppliers are only the paid once a code for the experience is activated by the receiver, who can then book a slot.
It is thought that thousands of these would have been given as Christmas gifts, with many holding off booking to wait for better weather.
In an email sent to suppliers, a company statement read: "It is with a heavy heart that we write to advise that Gift Experience Scotland Ltd has gone out of business today, Wednesday 9th May 2018.
"We have set up a holding page on the website to advise customers if they can use their voucher or not.
In the statement, the company asked for vouchers that had already been paid for to be honoured by suppliers.
It said that administrators had been appointed and "more information will be posted on the website in due course".
Established in 2004, the company also had subsidiaries in Ireland and South Africa, with the Irish website also appearing to be closed.
The Twitter account of company owner, Sandy Bloomer, also appeared to have been deactivated at the time of writing.
He is also the owner of companies Ingliston Revival and Experee which also appear to have been taken offline.
Speaking in the Herald last year, Mr Bloomer said the group turnover is in excess of £3.5 million.
He said at the time the group employed 19 full-time staff as well as a group of contractors.
Many suppliers said that they couldn't afford to offer services that they themselves hadn't yet been paid for.
Kim Webb, owner of KW Originals, offered classes in silversmithing, glass bead making or pendant making through Gift Experience Scotland
She said: "People have contacted me to ask if they can book into to classes which we haven't been paid for.
"It puts us as suppliers in a very difficult predicament because we can't do the experience if we haven't been paid for it.
"I just feel very sorry for the people because they were given vouchers as Christmas presents, so I feel bad for them"
The Royal Highland Centre in Edinburgh, which offers supercar and helicopter days, said that it had cancelled all its gift experience days, aside from supercar days this weekend.
It said: "Customers that purchased tickets from Gift Experience Scotland, should contact the ticketing vendor directly.
"The Royal Highland Centre has no involvement with ticketing or voucher sales for Gift Experience Scotland events, and cannot assist any further."
Toby Wheeler, managing director of Rolling Haggis which provides zorbing activities at Hillend in Edinburgh, was surprised to hear the company had ceased trading.
He said: “We have worked with the firm for a number of years and all seemed good as we were getting bookings earlier this week.
"We are in the dark too as we cannot get hold of anyone to explain what is happening.
"We are owed hundreds of pounds and we know there will be many disappointed customers who are looking forward to going zorbing or one of the other activities they provide.
"We will still honour those who have already booked and hope we can work out something with people who have yet to activate their vouchers."
Gift Experience Scotland were approached for a comment.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel