Unfortunatley, I can find no trace of Exclusive Lounge Sofas anywhere, perhaps you could point me to some references.

Hi Bromsgrove, Apologies for my guarded and somewhat abrasive responses. My reasons for posting to this site are that I "ordered" a sofa from people potentially involved with this company some time ago, never received it and the company subsequently went into liquidation. Some tracing has led me to the possibility that certain people involved with this company may have done this many times for really quite a substantial sum of money. Throughout discussions on this board various "characters" have materialised to defend these companies or in some cases employees of these companies. In contrast to these glowing tributes a simple trawl of the message boards and indeed the wider internet will show you an army of "customers" that have lost considerable amounts of money (myself included) and are understandably upset and anxious. I personally only wish to make people aware of my experiences and of the experiences of others so that they may make an informed choice as to whether or not to do business and that should they start to run into similar problems Google will direct them with good speed to this site so that they may know their rights and the responsibilities of the company involved to minimise the harm done. I have my reasons for wishing to remain anonymous that hopefully, a trusted public servant and someone apparently spending a considerable amount of time dealing with the victims of domestic abuse would understand. However, as a satisfied customer of Yes the Sofa Specialists and an independent and serving police officer, there is a simple way for you to prove to me that you are who you say you are and so vindicate your claims of outstanding service from this company such that would reassure future customers. If you could simply forward me your service ID number and division I will happily find a phone number for your division, ring and speak to you in person, in doing so revealing both your identity to me and mine to you. You can either forward me the number via PM or post it here for all to see. Thanks for your time, I look forward to your response Wotnosofa

Link sent via PM If you follow the link above you see an active complaint from the current store. THere is a scan of an order form and PDQ counterfoil. The company on the PDQ counterfoil is ELS. They are also opening up at the same locations that ELS used to operate out of and Leather Lords before that.

It never ceases to amaze me just how many people sign up to this website with the sole intention of defending this company. Frankly this company must be the very definition of Jekyl & Hyde. Anyone reading these threads who is about to do business with these people I would suggest that you take great care. It would appear that you will either get exemplary top notch service that even the Savoy would be proud of or you will get robbed. As a former "customer" (although I feel more like a victim) of this companies officers I would advise avoiding any contact with them. And if by any chance the previous post is not genuine and indeed is submitted by the company itself, every time you post one of those, I will post one of these. Please do keep posting though, the more you post the more relevant these pages become for search engines to attach these posts with your business and it's practices. Already your name on Google is synonymous with consumer forums, bad service and consumer dissatisfaction. If it is genuine I would play the lottery if I were you for you truly are one of the most fortunate people certainly to grace this particular forum.

Hi Johno, I have done some checking and looking, all the information is available from Companies house for free so there should be no harm in posting this information. Below are a sample of some of the companies I have found via companies house and Equifax. The oldest is Lords Departmental Stores LTD that was dissolved in 1994. It can be really confusing trying to trace histories, for these companies as they switch names and directors very often. They even overlap names so if you are trying to trace a company be sure to use the Company number as the referral point. Otherwise you might find that you have switched and are following a completely separate legal entity albeit with the same name and probably same director and same address. It's fun, I have given up now, these people will probably go on for as long as they want to, they seem to have a perfect business plan for what they do. Company name: ELS (HULL) LIMITED Company Number: 07315607 Company name: ELS (LUTON) LIMITED Company Number: 07286409 Company name: INSPIRATIONS QUALITY FURNISHERS LIMITED Company Number: 02672296 Company name: LORDS DEPARTMENTAL STORES LTD Company Number: 02039026

It is amazing how there isn't an opposite for Slander. Like when someone makes some stuff up to promote something and you get to sue them for making completely false statements about a person or company. To call these people salespeople is disingenuous at best. Sales People have customers who receive the goods that they ordered, more often than not shortly after ordering them. These people have victims who hand over cash and if they are lucky enough to receive goods get faulty or very poor imitation goods. To correct you, you cannot have done business with this firm for over 20 years, it was only incorporated recently or are you referring to the many other firms that these people have setup and closed down under the guise of going bankrupt? The earliest example I can find is for Lords Department Store company number 02039026 that was dissolved in 1994, but there have been dozens of ELS, Leather Lords, and many many others since then. I think the technical term for it is Phoenix fraud.

Others here have received sofas from this company. Frankly if I had one I would burn it or hand it over to trading standards. If the sofas are indicative of the way they run their business I doubt that they are even fireproof.

People, before you buy from these crooks, read other posts on this site very carefully. They are renowned for posting to this forum posing as disgruntled employees and satisfied customers. The post above may be honest, but to be honest it is unlikely.

Hi There, As yet it is unconfirmed, however, there have been reports of people using debit cards and the foil having the Exclusive Leather Sofas company name on it.

Sorry to say but these people have been doing this for about 30 years. They literally have dozens of companies that they rename move jumble about mix up liquidate and restart. I would say that the chance of you getting the cash element back are very small. They will delay and delay and delay until someone gets a winding up order on their business and then they will remove the display sofas and let the official receiver pick over the contents of the bins to try and pay off customers.

Looks like they are starting up again, reopened at Camp Hill.

OK, interesting development for me, got a refund this week, completely unexpected from my Visa Debit provider. I am still down by the deposit but at least I have the bulk of the cash back now. I am still smarting that Lord's live in near mansions near [edit], they make a mockery of what honest tax paying people consider to be a decent society. They get away with it because they have found a way through the red tape that allows them to waltz through life [edit] people of their hard earned money and calling it a business failure. The victims get directed to the official receiver or their credit card provider and the perpetrators run off to the next company that they have already got setup. The police aren't interested because it is basically another failed company in a recession and trading standards aren't interested because the company has folded. This incident has seriously knocked my confidence as a hardworking law abiding sort, I find myself in daily situations asking myself "What would Gary Lord do?" and why the hell should I do any different? It works for him clearly. Anyhow, I am glad to have had the cash returned, but really I only have it temporarily, part of the costs of bank charges go towards paying people back in these situations so I guess I am just going to end up paying it out again, just over a longer term. Have fun all, as others have said, go to the receiver, send everything recorded and then go to your bank. Your bank will try to fob you off, but don't let them, insist that you get the forms to fill out and give them as much information as you can. Over and out.