Customers owed thousands of dollars from collapsed furniture retailer Brosa speak out

They paid the money in full but now thousands of customers will be left out of pocket and they are livid.

Customers of a collapsed furniture retailer are livid after being left thousands of dollars out of pocket having paid for products they may never receive.

Popular Australian furniture and home decor retailer Brosa put itself into voluntary administration and administrators have now advised the best option is to liquidate.

A whopping $10 million worth of orders have been left unfulfilled because of the company’s demise.

Jay Williams forked out more than $4000 for two sofas, including a sofa-bed, right before the company went under in November.

The Sydney man, in his late 30s, is furious because he doesn’t expect to see his cash again or receive the sofas that he paid for.

“I’ve just paid a small fortune to move house, then paid a small fortune for furniture, I can’t afford new furniture,” Mr Williams told news.com.au.

The social worker said one of his bedrooms is completely empty as he can’t stump up the funds to buy another sofa-bed.

He believes his furniture is sitting in one of Brosa’s warehouses or has been sold on to someone else.

Jay Williams is furious at the way customers are being treated.

The couch he purchased which he will not be receiving.

“What’s upsetting people is they were still selling the items online, that we’ve already paid for,” Mr Williams said.

Brosa held a clearance sale where he saw the very couch he had ordered — an ocean blue Notting Hill Velvet Chesterfield three-seater sofa — up for grabs.

“They were still selling it, the same one, the same colour, after the administrators had taken over, on items they hadn’t fulfilled their customer orders,” he said.

Administrators Richard Tucker and Michael Korda from insolvency firm KordaMentha have struck a deal to deliver products to customers who had already paid, provided they have the stock.

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The empty room where the sofa bed is meant to go.

Within eight days of their appointment, Brosa’s administrators sold the business assets to e-commerce retail giant Kogan.com for $1.5 million.

Kogan.com has not absorbed any of Brosa’s reported $24 million of debts, but they did agree to deliver goods to customers if they were already in the storehouse.

A spokesperson told news.com.au that Mr Williams would receive his sofa-bed as one in the warehouse had been “allocated” to him prior to the company’s collapse.

However, Mr Williams later found out via email that his Chesterfield sofa was now “unallocated”.

“The Administrators were not selling stock which belonged to customers,” the spokesperson insisted.

“These goods in the warehouse were unallocated stock and therefore were not owned by customers.”

Mr Williams says he has been frustrated by the communication from administrators.

“It’s just messy,” he said.

Three out of five of Mr Williams’ purchases have arrived, but the two main ones which cost over $4000 between them still haven’t.

Another customer, Jenny* has also missed out on the sofa she paid $2118 for, even though she too can see it advertised online.

“I can buy my couch again, but I can’t get the one that (was supposed to be) delivered. It’s a slap in the face,” the Perth resident, 26, told news.com.au.

Jenny and her partner had recently moved into an unfurnished home.

“As you can imagine we’ve spent a huge amount of money to get the basics, a fridge, a bed frame, a sofa.”

They purchased everything on Gumtree and Facebook Marketplace to save money but decided to “shell out” for a nice sofa through Brosa.

“I followed up on it everyday because I was really excited to get this couch,” Jenny said. “Then it all fell to sh*t”.

The couch was meant to be delivered on December 19, just days after Brosa went into administration, leaving her with a “pit of dread” feeling in her stomach.

On the day of delivery, the courier company told her it had been delayed.

The third-party couriers appear to have pocketed Jenny’s couch to recoup their own losses.

The couch Jenny purchased with her partner after moving into a new place.

“We are never going to see our furniture and now are not entitled to refunds from the administrators,” Jenny lamented.

“I’m a TAFE student, my partner works in hospitality, it’s a huge chunk of money for us. We have sacrificed doing other things, so we could shell out on this couch that we really loved, that would last us years and years.”

She added that “Nobody cares,” because all her emails and calls have so far gone unanswered.

A spokesperson for the administrators said: “Unfortunately, it is not possible nor practical from a cost perspective for the Administrators to speak to each customer and they have received thousands of emails and many calls.”

One of Brosa’s administrators confirmed customers with ‘unallocated’ goods — like Jenny and Mr Williams — would receive nothing back.

Jenny’s order slip, which she has fully paid.

“The offer of $1.5 million from Kogan.com was materially better for stakeholders overall than the next best offer, particularly given it included a solution for about 2,500 customers who had paid for goods which were identified in the Brosa warehouses who would otherwise not have received their items …,” Mr Tucker, the administrator, said.

“Whilst employees should receive their full entitlements, unfortunately there is no return for unsecured creditors including customers whose orders have not been located in the warehouses.”

Administrators are looking to put the company into liquidation to put the matter to rest.

Brosa enjoyed unprecedented sales as e-commerce boomed at the height of the Covid-19 crisis, but had been struggling in 2022 as customers returned to physical stores.