A group of Nectere partners has spoken out about being left in the dark regarding the recent problems at the dealer services organisation.
As previously reported, Nectere suddenly stopped making deliveries to its dealers’ customers just before Christmas and did not pay dealers for the month of December. As a reminder, under the Nectere model, the group invoices clients and then forwards the money onto its partners after deducting its fee. Therefore, dealers’ income was essentially switched off overnight.
Minority shareholder OT Group (OTG) is clearly pulling the strings at Nectere after injecting capital into the company last summer. Several Nectere partners sent a joint message to Workplace360 this week stating that no one from the company, OTG or OTG’s owner Paragon (officially now called Grenadier Holdings, but still widely referred to as Paragon) had reached out to provide an explanation or offer an apology. Furthermore, an email sent by partners to Nectere to question the whereabouts of their monies went unanswered.
A contentious issue is what happens to outstanding invoices due by Nectere’s end-user customers. Partners say the company has been “aggressively chasing” clients for payment since the start of the new year.
Another development has been the appointment of debt recovery firm JP Associates (JPA) as the collection agent for RBS, which is Nectere’s invoice discounter. In a document seen by W360, dealers’ customers have been advised that all communications, as well as payments, must now go through JPA. Customers are also warned that if payments are made to any account other than the one specified, they risk paying the amount again.
Dealers are clearly worried that funds collected by Nectere, and now JPA, since 1 January will be used to pay off company debts, leaving them even further out of pocket.
OTG is certainly not covering itself in glory in its approach to communicating the Nectere issues to the dealer group’s partners, stakeholders and the wider trade. According to numerous people W360 has spoken to in the past couple of weeks, it is not just the reseller partners that have been kept out of the loop.
Apart from an acknowledgement in the first week of January that Nectere was “facing substantial challenges”, OTG has declined to provide any further comment. W360 appreciates this is a difficult situation and the trade press isn’t necessarily the first port of call, but totally shutting out the dealers – many of whom have mortgages to pay – is just not good enough.
Look out for a more in-depth assessment of the problems at Nectere when we publish the January/February issue of W360 next week.
