Reference: Stephen Hands, Barrett & Coe Romford
It is with sadness that we are writing to inform you that Stephen Hands, the owner of the Barrett & Coe studio in Romford suddenly, and unexpectedly, passed away at the end of August 2023. Stephen was one of the most talented photographers in our group and he will be sadly missed.
We are faced with a complicated and challenging situation, which will take us time to understand.
Stephen Hands was a franchisee of Barrett and Coe Ltd (Franchisor), but in a Franchise, all liabilities of franchisees lie with the franchisee individually, not the franchisor. A franchisor cannot and does not take on the liabilities of franchisees. If a franchisee is deceased, all assets and liabilities rest with the estate. In Stephen’s case there does not appear to be an executor, or a will. It therefore appears that there is no one to administer his estate.
Despite the difficulty of the above situation, Barrett & Coe wish to do all that we reasonably can to provide you with the products that you have ordered from Stephen’s studio. For us to proceed we will require the following, via this email address.
To comply with GDPR data regulations, and to proceed with your enquiry, we require written authorisation:
- To try to access your images
- To access any records of payments made, any payment schedules agreed, products ordered and any other documents that relate to your order, particularly any proof/image of the product ordered (please scan and attach to your email).
We are currently working to access the studio computers on which we believe the relevant files and information is stored. As you will appreciate modern security measures are quite robust, so please bear with us while we try to resolve this situation.
We will endeavor to update his clients as necessary.
Thank you for your understanding in this difficult situation.
UPDATES
Tuesday 17th October
We have processed over 25 outstanding orders and have dispatched 15 orders to our Coggeshall studio for client collection. Clients will be advised by the studio to arrange a suitable time/date for collection.
Thursday 14th September 2023
We have managed to locate some of the outstanding orders but it is proving to be a time-consuming and lengthy process retrieving information from availble data files.
It appears that there are in excess of 100 outstanding orders so we will be greatful for your patience.
We have set up a separate email address for any queries at customerservice@barrettandcoe.co.uk
If you have not already sent us written authorisation for us:
- To try to access your images
- To access any records of payments made, any payment schedules agreed, products ordered and any other documents that relate to your order, particularly any proof/image of the product ordered (please scan and attach to your email).
Please provide the above as soon as possible via email.
Unfortunately, we hope you understand that we are unable to reply to all emails received as this would simply delay us in progressing and completing outstanding orders.
Today, we were able to send out 4 orders.
We will post a further update next week.
FRIDAY 15TH SEPTEMBER
We have been able to send 4 orders to our processing lab
MONDAY 18TH SEPTEMBER
We have received 20 emails over the weekend. If we stop and reply to each one individually this takes away time from progressing orders. It is clearly going to take some considerable time to find the details of each order and then progress it. We have over 100 orders to deal with and some are quite complicated, please refrain from emailing and calling if possible.
So please bear with us, we are doing our best!
TUESDAY 19TH SEPTEMBER 2023
A video update from Barrett & Coe founder Andrew Coe.
