FAMILIES from Oxfordshire face a grim Christmas this year after losing thousands of pounds of savings in the collapse of festive hamper firm Farepak.

Twenty families from Blackbird Leys, Oxford, and two from Bicester and Kennington, who jointly paid into a Farepak account, lost a total of £7,600.

They include a mother-of-six and her daughter, who had paid in £1,350.

The British Retail Consortium and administrators announced they were not prepared to offer families any form of compensation package.

Farepak called in administrators last month because of crippling debts.

For 37 years, Farepak, based in Swindon, has run a savings scheme in which customers can put money aside for Christmas vouchers and food hampers.

Mother-of-six Helen Boore, of Ladenham Road, Blackbird Leys, had put in £900. She said: "We were hoping the retail consortium might have come through with help. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I'll have to deal with it.

"It's going to be quite difficult. My six-year-old grand-daughter has just sent off her letter to Father Christmas.

"It's upsetting and I'm angry. They knew months before and if they had done something about it then, I would have still had money left."

Her daughter, Sarah Meziu, 24, a mother-of-one, of Pegasus Road, Blackbird Leys, has lost £450.

The group's Farepak agent, Debra Sims, also of Pegasus Road, paid the final instalment of £1,600 in cash into a bank on Friday, October 13, shortly before administrators were called into Farepak at 2.15pm.

She said: "They have been awful, taking money from working-class people knowing they were in trouble, but they don't care.

"I was more annoyed I had been to the bank the day it all happened and they accepted the payment.

"I'm trying to get this last instalment back from NatWest to get the money back before Christmas, so I can give something back to the families."

Oxford East MP Andrew Smith has been in talks with the bank to try to retrieve the final instalment and is now campaigning for regulation of similar saving schemes. He has called on major supermarkets to use their profits to help the victims of the Farepak collapse.

Yesterday, a joint spokesman for the administrators and the consortium, said: "The money that needs to be raised in order to fund a reasonable goodwill gesture to every Farepak customer, when all of them can be identified, has turned out to be substantially greater than appeared likely at the outset."

Some of the families affected have approached the Blackbird Leys Credit Union about low-interest loans to help save their Christmas.

Jim Hewitt, of the credit union, said: "Knowing there are these problems, we will be particularly sympathetic to loan applications by people in this position."

  • Anyone affected by Farepak's problems can make a claim with the administrators at www.farepak.co.uk or call 0870 066 9826.