AndyMac1707817969

Ebay will pass your details to HMRC is you sell more than £1,500 or 30 items annually. HMRC have their own internal criteria as to whether they will investigate someone. They may ask you to provide additional information such as how much you paid for items. It does rely on honesty from the seller and if the amount of money HMRC thinks you are evading tax on whether it makes it worth their while opening a case. If they are not satisfied by your answers then that can result in an investigation. This normally means them going back 5 years, if they are not happy with that they can go back 20 years. Income is income whether it is earned though a business or as a private individual. If you do owe them money they you can either make a payment or they can deduct that amount from your income tax allowance and you get issues a new PAYE tax code (there is actually an option on a self-assessment tax return to do it this way). Of course you can get another member of your family on a lower income to sell it on your behalf if you don’t want to end up paying 40 / 45% on it.

With the huge labour issues in the UK if production was being moved back I would think Britain would be the last country anyone with half a wit would choose to locate a manufacturing business. Considering the latest figures show the percentage of the population of working age that is not working is now 21.9%. It even higher than this in the under 25s. Can’t see how this situation is going to be easily rectified with the ingrained ‘something for nothing’ culture that is endemic in this country.

Time for a few emails to abuse@cloudflare.com who seem to be hosting it. They have to respond to abuse reports so the more that report this the faster it will disappear (only to reappear elsewhere I am sure)

Anyone know anything about this rather generically named website? https://www.toytrainuk.com/contact-us/ Everything appears to be on sale at too reasonable a price, I can't find them listed as a stockist for Hornby, Bachmann, Accurascale etc and every picture is a stock image. The address 'Albion Way' appears to be a shopping centre in Norwich not where you would expect a model shop to be these days. The postcode NR6E 3UF on their site does not match the address given?

Gaugemaster were doing them for £194.95 with free postage

The 'section 75' protection provided by using a credit card is by far superior to anything any third party company offers. Section 75 protection is 'ridiculously good' and is backed by the law and lasts for a period of 18 months after purchase. The protection offered by companies such as PayPal lasts usually between 30 to 90 days, is not enforceable by law and is based purely on 'company policy', you should read this policy as often where there is ambiguity for things such as ‘not as described’. When you use a company such as PayPal then you are using an intermediary. If Hornby were to go bust then your credit card payment is to PayPal not to Hornby so you may well just have nullified any protection you might have had by using it to fund the transaction. Retailers prefer not to use PayPal as the fees are high and if buyer payment is sourced from a credit card then the retailer ends up with even higher fees. Generally nowadays unless it’s a doggy site, the days of supplying card details for the retailer to put trough as a 'customer not present' transaction are long gone. Whenever you make a payment on a site, the details are automatically passed through to the card processing portal and the retailer sees none of them. They either take payment or get an authorisation. If the payment is not rejected outright then the retailer is given a risk score as to how safe the payment is, basically the likelihood of a chargeback. This will depend on things like Multi Factor Authentication having been used in the payment process. It’s up to them then to proceed or not to proceed with the sale, they risk losing the money and the goods. Most transactions are done now by obtaining an authorisation so payment is not taken until goods are ready to be dispatched. Retailers storing card information is a really bad idea for them is they don’t have the security to protect it which their liability insurance would have to cover if security is breached. Provided they have the necessary security retailers can store the card details but never the CV3 number. If a data breach occurs and you were found to have stored then CV3 then you will end up with a substantial fine from people like VISA.

Never bought anything from them as I never knew they even existed

At the moment there is just more supply than demand, unfortunately for those with the highest fixed overheads such as premises and wages they will be the least resilient. Hattons may well have seen no way to trade out of the position they are in and instead of running up huge debts often having to secured by personal guarantees from the directors as banks will often not lend or extend overdrafts to limited companies due to their limited liability, they have to be sure they can get their money back. Smaller business can generally weather it longer but it all comes down to how long the downturn lasts. On a positive it means the cake will be sliced between less retailers, this also means less competition or smaller retailers who have had to compete with those such as Hattons may well now be able to work with a higher margin. This means however that with less competition you may not get as many bargains. As with most things in life what is good for one party is bad for the other and vice versa. Sales are not always a good thing, short term gain for the customer, long term problem for the hobby. Supporting your local model shop does not mean buying items at a price from which the retailer can hardly make a living. Few people nowadays however seem to care.

Ok so Hornby should produce a 2024 catalogue and only have items in it that are available on the shelves when it goes to print in 2023. What would the point of the catalogue be? Why don’t you just not buy a catalogue and just look at what is ‘in stock’ in any of the online retailers. You can then remain oblivious to the planned relaeses and let other buy the catalogue who are interested in what Hornby have planned. Hornby don't manufacture anything themselves so they are at the mercy of third part suppliers and as in any business things don't always go to plan. Sometimes circumstances change, dates change or something has to be cancelled, that is life. Hornby have to adapt to this, it's a necessary part of business. Not everything can be set in stone Afraid we have been here about 50 times before with people thinking Hornby should pander to ever one of their whims.

I sell a lot of model railway online (just as a hobby and to fund my new purchases as I have discovered a liking for Gauge 1) and sales have only been about half their usual amount since about July 2023. In the month of December I sold twice as much as I usually did in the same month in previous years and they are mainly from regular customers. During the pandemic sales went through the roof. It has now gone a bit quite again but still sales are coming in. I don’t think over the space of 6 months half the model railway enthusiasts have suddenly kicked the bucket, most people I sell too and the chats I have with them are of a working age, mainly in their 50s but there are younger ones. They are the ones with money and those in their 70s etc are the least likely to be spending significant amounts of money, most retailers are not going to miss those who think spending £5 here and there is too much. Just gone quite as so called public services such as the BBC have convinced many people there is a cost of living crisis. Don't want to sell too much anyway nowadays as along with this and my day job I refuse to pay the top rate of tax when you can't even get a GP appointment. It was fine 20 years ago for model railway shows such as Warley to be the showroom for suppliers to advertise and launch new items. With the Internet they no longer need this type of event or the costs involved, a YouTube video is a lot more cost effective and reaches a much bigger audience. Model railways have been my hobby for over 50 years but I have never joined a club and have attended few exhibitions. Warley has taken quite a log of abuse over the years, expensive and not worth going to was quite often banded about. At the end of the day I can view layouts on YouTube and the only think I really miss out on is the Warley wagon which I can buy on eBay if I really wanted for twice the price but still cheaper than the petrol money.

Last month many places had the TfW coaches heavily discounted. Maybe it’s not a popular livery and Hornby now assume the Class 67 will not be either.

I don't think the solution to anything is cheap plastic stations. With fixed costs being the same for low and high value items, cheap anything just means you have to sell a lot more to make the same amount of money. Hattons most likely choose to move to Widness as like other large retailers like Rails of Sheffield they have a separate warehouse for online stuff it’s not stored at their shop. Running 2 premises when 90% or more of your business goes though one especially when running costs of a warehouse are a lot less expensive than a high street shop. This will have come down to a simple lack of sales and not warning to run up huge debts trying to trade through something that has no end in sight. Sales took a drastic downturn in the summer of 2023 and apart from Christmas there is little sign of them recovering. Businesses often fold in the New Year having hoped that Christmas may have seen a change in their fortunes. As with trains, buses and shops, people don't use them when they are there and then lament them when they disappear. I would see Accurascale take on the Genesis Coaches and produce another run of them as they can sell the Irish ones under their Irish railway Models brand.

Doubt it was Hornby's fault for killing them off. With just about every model shop struggling with big discounted sales much more likely to be the customers of lack of them. Seen many places with sales with discounts where items would have been snapped up even this time last year and nothing is shifting. Several shops selling MK4 and MK3 coaches for less than £25 and they still have plenty in stock. Doubt Hattons will be the last, just depends on how long this goes on for.

Don't ever remember any class 60 ever coming with the snowploughs / obstacle deflectors you are describing. Can't find a single image with any fitted. Does not look like R30027 does either.

Repairing might be cheaper than buying a brand new loco but it’s not hard to pick up a second-hand Mallard for less than £100, for Margate made ones, less than £50. I just buy either the part of a spares / repairs model from eBay, remove the bit I need and then sell the remainder on, quite often for more than I paid for it originally.