Möbel-Fiasco: Customer fights against Kika/Leiner and high costs!

Möbel-Fiasco: Customer fights against Kika/Leiner and high costs!

A shocking case from Lower Austria raises questions about the rights of consumers during insolvency proceedings. The authorized representative and family man Josef Gruber from the Bruck a. d. Beitha had ordered furniture worth 32,000 euros from Kika/Leiner together with his partner between 2016 and 2018, with a delivery date for 2020. But the delivery, which stagnated in a warehouse due to corona and health problems, was simply not implemented. Even two days before bankruptcy, Gruber received the promise that the goods were delivered and assembled. What followed afterwards was a nightmare for him and around 14,000 other customers who got into the same situation.

As the website nön.at reports, Gruber saw himself in the dilemger after the furniture chain registered bankruptcy. Despite the already payments, he had to pay an additional 6,400 euros in order to receive his already paid furniture from the bankruptcy mass. "It was a friezing or die offering offer," said Gruber indignantly about the situation. Above all, the oral contract, which excluded a storage fee, turned out to be worthless. In this precarious situation, the consumers of their rights were robbed, so that they could only recover a fraction of their investments, as reported by Nön.at.

The case illuminates serious problems in bankruptcy law, especially in consumer protection. Many customers who had trusted that their payments were secured by the goods were disappointed and left unsettled consumers who are in a legal gray area. With his bankruptcy, Kika/Leiner brought countless families into a hopeless dependency and harvests violent criticism.