Crystal Umbrella Gone Bust

[northernladuk]

looking at the crystal website it seems they are now the trading name for another umbrella company..

Very good spot.. and no surprises who the director of the new company is. Take a bow Mr Alan Stuart Little. Director of Unitum, Aquabubble, Crystal Umbrella and Pendragon Client Accounts.

How on earth can a company go in to administration owing clients money, clients transferred to Christ knows what and then one the old directors of the company in administration ends up owning it again?

Surely that can't be legal.

Anyone spoke to Crystal to ask them what's going on. Must be mayhem for the poor bastards that signed up with the new crystal as they'd have had to re-sign with Pendragon and now again with this Design setup. I wonder if they will get the money paid to Pendragon or did they 'liquidate' again. And another GDPR ****up if Design Group now has all the data from the original Crystal/Atlantic. Wrong SIC code as well.

Stinks to high heaven this one.

[Boz]

Very good spot.. and no surprises who the director of the new company is. Take a bow Mr Alan Stuart Little. Director of Unitum, Aquabubble, Crystal Umbrella and Pendragon Client Accounts.

How on earth can a company go in to administration owing clients money, clients transferred to Christ knows what and then one the old directors of the company in administration ends up owning it again? This seems to be speculation on your part, as Crystal Choice/ Design and Direction has no connection with the companies being wound up

Surely that can't be legal.

Anyone spoke to Crystal to ask them what's going on. Must be mayhem for the poor bastards that signed up with the new crystal as they'd have had to re-sign with Pendragon and now again with this Design setup. I wonder if they will get the money paid to Pendragon or did they 'liquidate' again. And another GDPR ****up if Design Group now has all the data from the original Crystal/Atlantic. Wrong SIC code as well.

Stinks to high heaven this one.

As one of the "poor bastards" you refer to, perhaps you need to obtain further information about the new Crystal. Crystal Choice is using the web address of Crystal Umbrella and I've informed Kate Thornley of the liquidators about this, but the web site is not the one Crystal Umbrella used.

I have also been in contact with Pendragon Consultany, who tell me they have no connection with either Alan Little or Crystal Choice and are operating independently.

I have been paid twice by Pendragon since Novemeber, and expect to be paid for January at the end of this month.

There is no money being paid by my client's agency (LA International) to other than Pendragon

Whatever Alan Little is up to does not seem to be connected in anyway with Pendragon, and I have in writing, that Alan Little has no involvement with Pendragon Consultancy.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and make decisions accordingly, but at this time I have no complaints about Pendragon and their acting as my umbrella company. This of course may change, but I'm not owed any money by Crystal Umbrella, Unitum Operations and am in regular contact with them. There are also no pension issues.

The liquidators have told me they are dealing with HMRC about the pay and tax issues, but they are slow in responding, but assure the liquidators they are progressing with resolving in correcting the errors that have occurred.

I'm not happy with the time this is taking, but until P45s are issued, there is not much to be done except keep prodding HMRC.

[northernladuk]

As one of the "poor bastards" you refer to, perhaps you need to obtain further information about the new Crystal. Crystal Choice is using the web address of Crystal Umbrella and I've informed Kate Thornley of the liquidators about this, but the web site is not the one Crystal Umbrella used.

Well it's actually pretty hard to obtain further information with the complexity and changes here. I can't be bothered to go in to it in massive detail anymore but some of the things you are saying just aren't right. You say it's not the website crystal umbrella used but it still has the same partners (which I suspect are rubbish as they aren't on the professional passport site at all for a start). The popular posts are from the old Umbrella days. In the about us it states two things.

Today, Crystal are the UK’s No 1 PAYE umbrella company, as voted for by contractors themselves at freelancesupermarket.com

Really? They aren't even on the list of the first 100 companies

Crystal Umbrella was incorporated in 2008 to take over the pioneering and industry leading work initiated by our predecessor

And many other Crystal Umbrella references.

I have also been in contact with Pendragon Consultany, who tell me they have no connection with either Alan Little or Crystal Choice and are operating independently.

Really. Historically the site stayed the same and Pendragon took it over as documented before. Now it's swapped back to a company run by Alan with nothing more than a title change.
They contacted agencies and diverted payments to them instead of Crystal without informing the contractor.

Alan and Janet are both directors of Pendragon Consulting which Janet joined exactly the same time she took over Pendragon.

I think someone is pulling the wool over your eyes.

I have been paid twice by Pendragon since Novemeber, and expect to be paid for January at the end of this month.

There is no money being paid by my client's agency (LA International) to other than Pendragon

So Pendragon have no website anymore then? They are not a Crystal Brand at all? You've been paid twice by a company that has only just set up and is mired in controversy. GDPR being flouted all over the place and you've no chance of getting a mortgage with them due to them being new. The only positive you can come up with is you've been paid twice? All very good when you do get paid. Question is how long will that last for. You are opening yourself up to enormous risk here.

Whatever Alan Little is up to does not seem to be connected in anyway with Pendragon, and I have in writing, that Alan Little has no involvement with Pendragon Consultancy.

Maybe not from a Companies House perspective but with the info above, all the data sharing and taking over websites etc there is clearly a relationship between Stuart and Janet.

Everyone is entitled to their opinion and make decisions accordingly, but at this time I have no complaints about Pendragon and their acting as my umbrella company. This of course may change, but I'm not owed any money by Crystal Umbrella, Unitum Operations and am in regular contact with them. There are also no pension issues.

As I say much of the above is fact with a little opinion thrown in where it's just too complex but it's undeniably a proper smoke and mirrors job and nothing about it is above board. It we are talking opinions here then I think you are being very naive staying with Pendragon bearing in mind all that has gone, the endless unknowns and Christ knows what in the future. You are hardly working with a company that has a strong stable history. You've just been made redundant with one that was supposed to be reputable and now you are with one that's come from know where in a very questionable manner.

The liquidators have told me they are dealing with HMRC about the pay and tax issues, but they are slow in responding, but assure the liquidators they are progressing with resolving in correcting the errors that have occurred.

I'm not happy with the time this is taking, but until P45s are issued, there is not much to be done except keep prodding HMRC.

Fair enough I guess.

The whole think stinks. The fact the old director is back under a different company (with the wrong SIC code) using the same website with just a re-branded logo, pendragon popping in, popping out, data flying all over the place just looks awful.. and there are people that have lost money from all this as well.

You'd be daft not to wash you hands of the whole sorry affair and start someone where reputable and just get on with contracting. My opinion again yes but based on some very tangible points.

[Lily858]

Payslip

Hello,


Is anyone having issues getting their payslips from Crystal Umbrella? Can no longer access the login page and am missing a couple of payslips

[Lily858]

Has anyone had any updates on P45s and HMRC issues ?

[northernladuk]

Those people that went with Pendragon. How are you contacting them now that Crystal Choice is now back under Alan Little?

Have you had any information or are you still contracted to Pendragon?

[bobof]

For what it is worth I managed to speak to someone useful at HMRC the other day and after a bit of to-ing and fro-in with their supervisor they managed to delete the total earnings from the Aquabubble employment for the purpose of generating the Tax Code (it is all still shown online). This has allowed them to issue me a correct tax code. As I've not been given a correct P45 to give to my employer they've put an X on the code which puts it back to Week 1 Month 1 status. As I'm now contracting via my own limited I'll probably be due a small tax refund come the end of the year.

On the subject of getting monies for work done but as yet not paid; I went through the redundancy claim process (which I didn't really want to do, but it looks like the only way to re-coup unpaid wages in the situation). There is only a week of monies due, but it is still a significant sum. I did get sent a couple of weeks ago form RP19 from the Redundancy Service where they were obviously looking to work out if a transfer of the undertakings has taken place. On receiving this as I wanted to not only be answering the questions precisely but in the spirit of their intent (I've no interest in claiming anything I'm not entitled to, I just want the wages really) I gave the redundancy service a call, they suggested to write down any useful information so I provided them with what I had on the email from Unitum regarding Pendragon, and the lack of useful response to questions by Pendragon.

I sincerely hope if there have been accounting irregularities going on that those responsible feel the full force of the law as the whole point of me going umbrella in the first place was to have a nice simple setup that was completely above board without any hint of mischief. As it is I'm out of pocket and wasting time, effort and money chasing stuff up in the aftermath of this clusterfutz.

Given the lack of clarity on the various relationships between all the companies involved in this sorry affair, and the seemingly laissez-faire attitude to sorting out important things for employees like correct P45s I'd suggest giving anyone even remotely associated a wide berth until the whole thing unravels.

[Mintaka]

HMRC Lottery

For what it is worth I managed to speak to someone useful at HMRC the other day and after a bit of to-ing and fro-in with their supervisor they managed to delete the total earnings from the Aquabubble employment for the purpose of generating the Tax Code (it is all still shown online). This has allowed them to issue me a correct tax code.

I envy your good fortune/luck. When I contacted HMRC a couple of weeks ago, although the person I spoke to eventually understood the issue (we all just need our AquaBubble income striking from the record), all I got was "sucks to be you" and told to print my payslips onto dead trees and post them in to HMRC. They'll apparently get back to me in March.

Yay.

I sure feel bad for those of us who were not able to rescue their payslips from the sinking ship before it went down.

[bobof]

I envy your good fortune/luck. When I contacted HMRC a couple of weeks ago, although the person I spoke to eventually understood the issue (we all just need our AquaBubble income striking from the record), all I got was "sucks to be you" and told to print my payslips onto dead trees and post them in to HMRC. They'll apparently get back to me in March.

Yay.

I sure feel bad for those of us who were not able to rescue their payslips from the sinking ship before it went down.

Ouch, lack of payslips could be a real sticking point down the line.

I had calls with 3 polite yet ineffective people at HMRC. The last person I managed to talk to seemed to work it out a bit better, had initially suggested sending in payslips but then gave me a call back (!) saying this wasn't necessary and that they'd managed to sort it all. So far so good, fingers crossed.

What a pain though.

[CoolCat]

Apparently they were not up to date with payments to the NEST pension scheme either