Design A Gift

I wish to complain about a company based both Internationally and in New Zealand who sued my associate who was staff member of a company who owed them money.

The staff member had signed a quote on behalf of the Company ordering goods for the company we worked for. The goods were labeled with the company logo and all invoices and quotes were made out to the company also. I would have myself as we all chose the goods for the Company but my associate was the events manager for the company and so she was the one designated to sign the one page quote form.

The owner of the company my associate had worked for had been paying for these goods as per the invoices but went bankrupt some months later and could not pay the balance of the bill for the goods.

So the owner of Design A Gift or Promotionalworld decided to try to pursue my associate – suing her (she was only a staff member who was employed for wages) because she signed the quote. The owner of Design A Gift and Promotional World knew full well she did not owe him the money but stated that he didn’t care and needed to recover the funds somehow. This was because of a very misleading statement referring to terms and conditions which led the person signing the document into the understanding the terms and conditions referred to the “transaction” between the buyer and seller (and not herself). This was deliberately misleading so that Design A Gift can chase several parties.

Many phone intimidating phone calls were made and much harassment of family members of my associate before she told him to stop harassing her and contact her lawyer as he knew the bill was not hers and she would not be intimidated into paying it either.

In the end the staff member had to pay legal fees and go through court to show that his “terms and conditions” were not clearly disclosed and he was/is not able to claim this from her of any of the staff members. She also has costs of clearing her name because of this spiteful action taken against her when they KNEW she was not liable.

I wish to warn people that the owners of Design A gift and Promotionalworld have such low ethics as to aggressively pursue and intimidate a staff member who they knew had no liability whatsoever. Be warned that this company does not disclose its terms and conditions and only refers to them in a very vague way in order to be able to pursue many people for a debt.

Has anyone else had problems resulting for the lack of ethics and integrity shown by this Company.

S Dayton