Brewuk website "down for maintenance"

[aolcot]

Crikey, somewhat explains my refund experience then. I feel like I did alright getting my £170 refund back after just 4 months

 

[welly3]

I've used Brew UK a fair bit in the past, mainly for tri clamp parts which they used to do quite a selection of and a 7gal unitank. They were always pretty good and prompt when I've placed orders. For me, I had a good experience with them but seems when it goes wrong, it really goes wrong which is a shame.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

"so I went back to companies house to check my suspicions. AND GUESS WHAT! Both Brew UK and Dark Revolution Brewery have the SAME DIRECTORS"



SteveC-1598
09 Mar 2023

Has this company gone bust!​

I was trying to place a brew order as people had given me gift vouchers.
Website DOWN, Shop CLOSED and Phone no says "you have dialled an incorrect number".
Companies house says that they are still active, so I googled reviews and found a couple of interesting ones.
Next stop I thought I would contact local businesses near the Sarum business park. The obvious one was Dark Revolution Brewery which is in the same industry. I rang and was told by the man answering that Brew UK was nothing to do with them and he knew nothing. This seemed a bit odd to me, so I went back to companies house to check my suspicions. AND GUESS WHAT! Both Brew UK and Dark Revolution Brewery have the SAME DIRECTORS!
Draw your own conclusions, but I've already told the people who gifted me to talk to their credit card companies and start Section 75 claims to get their money back.
Not impressed at al!!!

 

[RichardM]

"so I went back to companies house to check my suspicions. AND GUESS WHAT! Both Brew UK and Dark Revolution Brewery have the SAME DIRECTORS"



SteveC-1598
09 Mar 2023

Has this company gone bust!​

I was trying to place a brew order as people had given me gift vouchers.
Website DOWN, Shop CLOSED and Phone no says "you have dialled an incorrect number".
Companies house says that they are still active, so I googled reviews and found a couple of interesting ones.
Next stop I thought I would contact local businesses near the Sarum business park. The obvious one was Dark Revolution Brewery which is in the same industry. I rang and was told by the man answering that Brew UK was nothing to do with them and he knew nothing. This seemed a bit odd to me, so I went back to companies house to check my suspicions. AND GUESS WHAT! Both Brew UK and Dark Revolution Brewery have the SAME DIRECTORS!
Draw your own conclusions, but I've already told the people who gifted me to talk to their credit card companies and start Section 75 claims to get their money back.
Not impressed at al!!!

They don't have the same directors. BrewUK has one director, Tanya Hughes. Dark Revolution has two, Greg and Sarah Hughes.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

One indication of the damage done to their business was the level of activity in the BUK forums, which, whilst not as busy as say here, was plenty busy enough in 2019 and early 2020, but dropped off a cliff post covid and didnt even bounce. The forum literally died overnight in the summer of 2020.

Nah - it had been dying long before lockdown. They broke the forum software ??a year before lockdown?? so that date sorting didn't work, which made it much harder to use and that really hit usage, I know I pretty much gave up on it after that and it was down to the odd post a week before lockdown.

I hope they continue and I still used them as they had some things that others didn't, although it felt like they had stagnated in the last five years ?as Greg spent more time with the brewery?, it felt like that love and enthusiasm for the hobby was fading.

Not clear whether the charge is a divorce or merely a way of protecting assets if the bailiffs come knocking, effectively it seems to give Greg first charge over everything. Although we only see a balance sheet and not the full accounts on Companies House, it looks like a big slug of money was taken out of the business in recent years, either through losses or dividends - the fixed assets went down a lot and weren't matched by an increase in cash, so maybe they eg did a sale and leaseback of the warehouse to try and cover losses.

 

[Chippy_Tea]

They don't have the same directors. BrewUK has one director, Tanya Hughes. Dark Revolution has two, Greg and Sarah Hughes.

What would Steve gain from posting that if its not true?

 

[RichardM]

What would Steve gain from posting that if its not true?

No idea, you'd have to ask him. But it isn't true, it only takes two minutes to check on the Companies House website.

 

[Northern_Brewer]

Not clear whether the charge is a divorce

Now it is. Google cache of BrewUK About Us :

"BrewUK was founded in 2008 by husband and wife team, Greg and Tanya Hughes."

Article in the Salisbury Journal on 11 April last year :

Greg, 48, is from London and has lived in Salisbury for the last two decades. He runs Dark Revolution Brewery with wife Sarah.

Tanya was terminated as director on Valentine's Day 2022 (!!!) and appears to have been bought out of her share of the brewery and Sarah replaced her as a shareholder on 28 April 2022 and became a director the following week.

The brewery has recently moved its registered address to multiple units in the same business park where it used to occupy just one unit, and has been advertising for a junior brewer "to assist the lead brewer with all aspects beer production" and a sales person, so they're expanding it at a time when BrewUK seems to be withering.

 

[Agentgonzo]

I'm loving the forensic analysis of the company accounts going on for a homebrew supplier.

 

[YeastFace]

I'm loving the forensic analysis of the company accounts going on for a homebrew supplier.

It's what we do best

 

[d146895x]

I ordered a part for my Braumeister back in January. No confirmation email but could see my order when I logged into their website, they also took the money from my card. A week or two went by so I emailed them, no reply (apart from the automated crap). So phoned a few times (answerphone), but eventually got to speak to a human. He couldn’t tell me why I didn’t receive an order confirmation or why no one replied to my support request email. He couldn’t give me a definite delivery date as the part was coming from Germany, fair enough. End of February, emailed for an order update, no reply. This week, I thought I would ring, website down for maintenance and just voicemail on the phone. Hope they haven’t gone belly up but if I was a betting man..............

 

[James]

What would Steve gain from posting that if its not true?

I ordered a part for my Braumeister back in January. No confirmation email but could see my order when I logged into their website, they also took the money from my card. A week or two went by so I emailed them, no reply (apart from the automated crap). So phoned a few times (answerphone), but eventually got to speak to a human. He couldn’t tell me why I didn’t receive an order confirmation or why no one replied to my support request email. He couldn’t give me a definite delivery date as the part was coming from Germany, fair enough. End of February, emailed for an order update, no reply. This week, I thought I would ring, website down for maintenance and just voicemail on the phone. Hope they haven’t gone belly up but if I was a betting man..............

The advice to claim a refund from your credit card is good, that's what I did.

 

[Braumeister]

I ordered a part for my Braumeister back in January. No confirmation email but could see my order when I logged into their website, they also took the money from my card. A week or two went by so I emailed them, no reply (apart from the automated crap). So phoned a few times (answerphone), but eventually got to speak to a human. He couldn’t tell me why I didn’t receive an order confirmation or why no one replied to my support request email. He couldn’t give me a definite delivery date as the part was coming from Germany, fair enough. End of February, emailed for an order update, no reply. This week, I thought I would ring, website down for maintenance and just voicemail on the phone. Hope they haven’t gone belly up but if I was a betting man..............

They were the best source for Braumeister spare parts that I know of, so it’s very disappointing they’re not trading. I lost the malt pipe wing nut before Xmas and it was easy to go on the website and get a new one for about £2.50. Vigo do a few things but not many.

 

[Siscokid85]

That’s my £150 worth of gift vouchers down the pan.

And they were the best for braumeister spares, so it is a big loss for the BM users.

 

[mrhardware]

Website is now 404 not found and google says Temporarily closed.
Not a good sign

 

[Sandimas]

Website is now 404 not found and google says Temporarily closed.

I'm still seeing the website: The website is currently down for maintenance. Please check back soon.

I'll be disappointed if they go, for me they were the best place for price vs quality of AG ingredients. MM is great but costs 25% more for some of the things I regularly order, I used to shop with MM but the prices have just got too high.

 

[Little Rock Brewing]

Me too Sandimas.
Luckily I got an order delivered in January and looking at the invoice I got AG kits with ridiculous amounts of hops for well under £20.
Outstanding value for money.

 

[An Ankoù]

Just tried it and I got:

404 Not Found​

 

[user 47457]

They were the best source for Braumeister spare parts that I know of, so it’s very disappointing they’re not trading. I lost the malt pipe wing nut before Xmas and it was easy to go on the website and get a new one for about £2.50. Vigo do a few things but not many.

Try Get Er Brewed in NI – they are also resellers for Speidel and have a much better customer-centric ethos than BrewUK ever did.

I used to get occasional Braumeister add-ons and upgrades from BrewUK until mid-February this year when they took 14 days to quote me £2500, all-in, for a bundle of Braumeister bits (most of which were unlisted on the BrewUK website). I had calculated these to be around £1900. I simultaneously asked Get Er Brewed for an all-in price for the same items and they came back to me after only two days with a price of... around £1900.

 

[Sadfield]

The url https://www.brewuk.co.uk/ returns "The website is currently down for maintenance. Please check back soon.", anything else after the .co.uk linked from a search engine returns 404 not found.