A Suffolk furniture company and two of its managers were fined thousands of pounds last year for allowing aggressive and misleading commercial practices under a different company name, a court has heard.
Father and son David and Oliver Waters and Mobility UK Ltd, trading under the name Westminster Recliners, were fined £7,000 and ordered to pay £30,000 costs when they appeared at South East Suffolk Magistrates’ Court in March 2013, Ipswich Crown Court heard.
On that occasion David Waters and his son, both of Manwick Road, Felixstowe, admitted allowing aggressive and misleading commercial practices under the Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations after complaints to Suffolk Trading Standards by customers.
The offences related to a period between July 2010 and November 2011.
David Waters, 66, and Oliver Waters, 26, are on trial at Ipswich Crown Court after denying eight joint charges of engaging in unfair commercial practices between May 2012 and January 2013 while they were managers of Westminster Recliners Ltd.
Westminster Recliners Ltd has denied eight similar charges. Defence counsel Jonathan Ashley Norman said the district judge who sentenced David and Oliver Waters and Mobility UK Ltd last year said the offences were not fraudulent trading and were more a failure of internal procedures.
The trial continues today.
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