Rees a director of AVR Mobiles said he ordered car kits from the old Unique Distribution. When the delivery came he claimed Unique had sent five faulty car kits and nine too many of one type.

A credit note was raised and Rees was about to return the stock when the firm went into administration.

My account manager said all credit notes would be cancelled. He told me not to worry because Unique would soon be trading again and theyd be re-applied. But when I contacted the new Unique on the first day of trading I was told that the car kits were from the old company and I cant be credited for them.

Uniques accounts department is now threatening Rees with legal action unless he pays the full balance.

They wont credit me for the faulty stock because it came from the old company but they are still demanding the money I owed to it he said.

I read in Mobile News that (former managing director) Angus Dawe says he wants to keep the old partnerships going but the way Unique is doing things I am reluctant to ever use it again.

Dawe said: I will investigate the matter. The new company has started with a clean balance sheet.

It can collect money owed to the old firm but cannot issue any credits relating to the old business.

I appreciate that it seems awkward. But there is nothing we can do. We might be able to get the faulty stock repaired under our warranty agreements with the manufacturer.

Although the dealer would still have to pay for the stock he wouldnt be out of pocket.

Founded in 1990 by Paul Townley Townley Communications became a leading service provider for both Vodafone and O2.

It has a subscriber base of around 23000 customers mainly connected to Vodafone and primarily business accounts.

Townley claims to have the highest customer retention rate in the industry.

Vodafone is believed to have made an attempt to buy Townley Communications before but the deal was never concluded.

Industry sources say this time the contract is practically ready for signing.

A Vodafone spokesperson said the network would never comment on any industry rumour or speculation.

Managing director Dominic Bryant put the company into voluntary liquidation last Friday after realising there was not enough cash to cover overheads.

We are owed around 40000. Around 22000 of that was lost when Unique Distribution went into administration he said.

When we realised we could not get what we were owed we werent able to carry on trading as normal. As soon as we knew we didnt have enough cash to cover our overheads we decided to go into voluntary liquidation to pay off as many people as possible.

Bryant is confident creditors will get any money owed to them.

All our creditors will be looked after. They should get most of their debt because we acted so quickly. We will also be honouring any outstanding orders that were put through to Phoenix.

This week the company started trading again under a new name Cellpak Solutions.

We have streamlined the business and changed our focus. Previously we were only semi-focused on the mobile market Now we have dropped the general packaging side to just concentrate on the mobile market said Bryant.

Unfortunately Ive had to lose four members of staff but going forward I had to cut our overheads. I feel very positive about Cellpak Solutions. We have got new funding and I have invested some of my own money into the new company.

Up until this point Phoenix had been going well. But you cannot predict or prepare for unreturned debts of that amount.

We have been open and honest with our existing customers and many have said that they will continue to work with us through the new company.

Shafique Islam (24) of Godwin Court Crowndale Road Camden Town was remanded on bail for pre-sentence reports until next Wednesday (May 12) at Horseferry Road Magistrates Court.

He pleaded guilty to stealing a SIM card at the shop on October 10 last year another SIM card on October 25 a third SIM card on November 16 and a fourth SIM card on November 26.

Islam told the court he is now unemployed.

Existing customers on all Perfect Fit Pay As You Talk and 3G price plans will be able to talk for an hour at evenings and weekends but only pay for the first three minutes.

The tariffs themselves have also been re-jigged. The Perfect Fit offering now comprises nine Anytime pay monthly price plans instead of the current five while on Pay As You Talk the existing four bundle packs will be replaced by six allocated on a 30-day rather than daily basis.

Vodafone claims Stop The Clock is the first offering of its kind in the UK. A customers first three minutes can come from their price plans bundle.

Stop the Clock liberates customers from the constraints of time when making calls and offers value for money said Vodafone marketing manager Tim Yates. (continued on page 2)

Dealers have reacted positively to a range of new tariffs in the Vodafone business portfolio.

Vodafone has extended its range of popular Sharetime price plans to include Sharetime 500 14000 and 24000 giving more choice on packages with inclusive calls between company mobiles.

Weve always had the luxury on Orange of having larger bundles without restricting the number of sharers but this has always been a problem with Vodafone. Now it seems to be following suit itll enable us to place more business with Vodafone said Phonebox Communications managing director Nigel Harrison.

Businesstime tariffs are aimed specifically at the self-employed. The price plans offer generous inclusive minutes and competitive flat-rate call charges at anytime to any UK fixed or mobile network.

Subscribers receive an Own Boss Mobility Tool Kit – a mobility package containing a Bluetooth headset and in-car cradle and charger.

Other benefits include text message bundles and a direct line to Vodafone UKs dedicated business support advisers.

Sprint Communications managing director Paul Leonard said:

Vodafone is building on the success it has had with its Sharetime tariffs by improving on the portfolio and plugging the gaps.

There are a lot of one-man bands out there who spend an awful lot on their mobiles bills and that kind of customer often gets forgotten he added.

These tariffs will be perfect for people working in trades such as electricians and plumbers.

In this way a contract customer could take advantage of a June promotion which offers double texts and double minutes for six months.

If the customer is willing to sign up to a new 18-month contract they will get both which is the same promotion offered to a new client.

The initiative builds on the current pre-pay promotion which gives customers who spend 10 in a week an extra 5 credit free.

An Orange spokesman said: We cant talk to you about it yet as we arent ready to announce it.

Meanwhile Orange has angered dealers by changing the commission structure halfway though the month. One disgruntled dealer said it was a very unusual move.

Changing tariffs halfway through the month smacks of concern he said. It must be a real problem for Orange to do this otherwise they would just put the changes in to start on June 1.

Orange has been a victim of its own success and its fine-tuning so it doesnt get the wrong sort of business on its high-value tariffs because that affects its revenue.

But it has brought down the commissions on low-end tariffs and not really explained itself. There are an awful lot of displeased dealers.

Commenting on the changes an Orange spokesman said: We are altering our commission and bonus structure to focus on achieving high value and small business connections and we shall continue to communicate new incentives to our partners as they are announced.

See Sharp End P16

.

Intek managing director Manny Hussain alleges Caudwells recruitment agency Cornerstone Resourcing is leveraging Inteks dealings with other Caudwell Group companies to attempt to recruit Intek staff.

The 20-chain dealership decided last Tuesday to sever ties with 4U Ltd Dextra 20:20 Logistics and MPRC. Hussain has also vowed to encourage other independent dealerships to do the same.

Intek connects Vodafone and

T-Mobile through 4U Ltd. This month 4U Ltd began training Intek staff. Hussain then found that three of his sales team had been approached by Cornerstone which offered them 60k salaries to leave Intek. Staff have so far declined the offer. (Cont P2)

If the Caudwell Group maintains that all the elements within it have the right to do business how they choose then it must accept our right to take the decision to protect our business. I would encourage any similar company to protect its position he said.

Its unfair to expect a small company such as Intek to help build up elements of the Caudwell Group and then be directly damaged by that Group because of its actions.

Hussain agreed that it was unrealistic not to expect his staff to be approached by recruitment agencies but said he asked 4U Ltd to confirm it was not involved in the recruitment of his staff pointing out that 4U finance director Craig

Gibson is also a director of Cornerstone.

This could be seen as a conflict of interest. Elements of the Caudwell Group have access to our staff for training and account management.

4U did not dispute the fact that

Cornerstone had approached my people. A director of 4U and Cornerstone said he could not stop Cornerstone or any other Caudwell companies from doing their jobs.

Hussain requested written assurances from 4U Ltd that it would not be party to Cornerstones recruitment strategy.

He said: Were not asking for rock-solid guarantees. We want confirmation of its ethical and moral stance on this kind of practice.

Craig Gibson told us that if we let Cornerstone carry on negotiations with my three members of staff they would try not to pursue other Intek staff in the future. But taking my three top people would cause damage.

Gibson said he would not put anything in writing nor give us a commitment that our staff would not be approached in the future.

Its no good saying that hes stopped chasing them without saying that he wont try to do so again in the future. We cant stomach that.

Our staff have been approached a number of times. After complaining to (4U managing director) Paul Smith I was told it would stop.

We have an issue of giving

Caudwell companies access to our company and staff because they refuse to state their moral and ethical stance on approaching our staff for recruitment purposes however they come to possess the data.

But Smith told Mobile News that even though 4U Ltd was independent of Cornerstone it could not put in writing the assurances that

Hussain was demanding.

Manny asked us to give him a written assurance that this would never happen again. Thats impossible to do said Smith.

Theres no way of guaranteeing that a member of Cornerstones staff wont pick an Intek name out of the phone book by chance.

He would not be flexible in what he was demanding. There is no way of predicting a member of Cornerstone wont approach one of his team. He asked us to stop Cornerstone poaching his staff.

We phoned Cornerstone and asked them to stop because it was jeopardising our relationship with a good business contact. They agreed.

Cornerstone poaching the staff of 4U Ltd customers is detrimental to 4U. There never will be a conflict of interests between Caudwell Group companies.

But Hussain said: When I suggested to Craig Gibson he should go to the board of the Caudwell Group to get a response he laughed and said Intek was just a 20-chain store and that his company was the Caudwell Group.

Smith responded: You cant legislate for personalities clashing. Perhaps thats what has happened here.

We are right in the middle of negotiations to get the company re-financed Dawe told Mobile News. We have recognised for some time that Unique Distribution is under-capitalised.

He added: Given the size and scope of the company without more capital we cant do what we need to do to ensure maximum growth. We need some exterior help in getting finance.

Industry sources cited Carphone Warehouse as making a bid. Others reckoned a consortium of Spanish businessmen headed by ex-European Telecom managing director John McFarnon was in the frame.

However Carphone Warehouse boss Charles Dunstone said his company was not involved. McFarnon also categorically denied he had anything to do with any Unique bid.

But Dawe did not rule out any potential buyers. The finance could be in the form of a venture capitalist trade buyer finance houses banks or a consortium coming in and joining the board he said.

We recognise we have to so something quickly because of the current market conditions. Rumours are flying around and we would like to quash them but all I can say right now is that we are very close to announcing something.

Some dealers saw an injection of capital into Unique as a logical step.

One said: If Unique wants to catch up with 20:20 Logistics it will need a financial leg-up. 20:20 is so far ahead of all the handset distributors because it has got the financial muscle of the Caudwell Group behind it.

A company like Unique with some extra financial weight behind it could be serious competition for 20:20. Dawe has the relationships in place he just needs more capital and I think what he is doing makes logical sense.

But one trader who dealt with Unique saw other reasons behind the move.

Unique Distribution was set up primarily as a trading company. But when the joint and several liability problem arose it had to remodel itself he said.

It did a few fulfilment programmes. But the company was giving too much of its profit away to its investors. It has some good contracts but there is no margin in them so it is hard to see what anyone will pay for them.

It works on less than a one per cent profit margin and theres no way you can run any business on a margin that small. Customs and Excise owes Unique 2.7 million but its unlikely to hand it back.

The subject line was O2 Gateway Contingency and was sent from zaheer.afzal@o2.com. It replicates until the recipients mailbox fills to capacity.

An O2 spokesman agreed the e-mail did not originate from an O2 e-mail address but had been spoofed by a third party. Spoofing is the act of forging the header information on an e-mail so that it appears to have originated from somewhere other than its true source.

This is not the first time the independent channel has been hit by the spam e-mails. In June 250 dealers and distributors received between 200 and 20000 junk e-mails that appeared to be from O2.

O2s fraud and security department advised victims that it was working to identify the originating ISP.

The network stressed it would not be offering any compensation to those affected. It sent an e-mail to dealers stating: Although we sympathise having suffered similar inconvenience we cannot admit liability as this is a malicious action that has been taken by a third party whose identify we are still investigating.

An O2 spokesman insisted the network was doing all it could to make sure this wouldnt happen again.

The move is a book-balancing response to the Competition Commissions edict that call termination charges must substantially reduce from July.

Orange is mounting its own campaign for a judicial review to challenge the legality of the order as are the other three networks.

Oranges revised subsidy policy comes a fortnight after Vodafone also said it would be cutting subsidies and dropping dealers unable to write profitable business (Mobile News February 10).

The reduction in call termination charges will create a significant revenue hole for this year and the future said Orange sales director Stuart Henry.

We have a number of alternatives for increasing revenue and decreasing costs. We need to remove the handset subsidy entirely. We have minimum costs to serve and we now believe there ought to be a minimum cost of ownership to he consumer. added Henry.

We realise there will be some nervousness about the significance of such a move. So our initial (Cont P2) move will be to remove a minimum of 40. But we need to remove more not later than the end of Q3. We would be looking to do something in August. Retailers and manufacturers may absorb some of the hit by reviewing some pricing but it will probably mean an increase in handset costs of 50 to 60 if not more. Distributors may pass on subsidies to the dealer but volumes will decline. Ultimately the whole business is going to shrink.

Henry echoed the remarks of Vodafone distribution boss Stephen Brewer by also describing the Competition Commission ruling as a major landmark in the UK mobile communications industry. (See Comment).