A family that sold everything to travel around Australia have ended up being 'ghosted' and left virtually homeless.
Alison Pope, her husband and three sons had a home on the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, but back in 2022, they decided to pack up and go travelling around the continent-sized country.
They'd been on the road for almost two years when in February 2024 they decided to change their caravan and got a quote from a company called Tango Caravans.
Getting what they thought was a good deal, the Pope family put down a 10 percent deposit in April 2024 and were told the thing would take between eight and 10 weeks to build.
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Reckoning that they didn't really need two caravans, the family sold the old one and packed up all of their remaining belongings into a shipping container while they stayed with family for a bit until their new caravan was completed.
Sadly, things went quickly downhill from there.
At the end of May last year the family were told construction on their caravan was going well and they'd need to book their handover date, which meant they had to pay up the rest of the price of the caravan.
"Naively and emotionally we paid our full payment to Tango Caravans, thinking we would be in our new little home in two weeks time," Alison told the Daily Mail.
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Once they'd paid the full AUS$80,000 (£40,000) price the family said they were suddenly 'completely ghosted and mostly ignored', with calls and emails unanswered while on the scant few occasions they could get through to someone they were told they'd be called back later with further information about their situation. Nobody ever did call back.
This went on for several weeks, with the family living in short term accommodation that was costing them a lot, until in August 2024 they found other Tango Caravans customers who were also having problems and then heard that the company had gone into liquidation along with all the money the Popes had paid out.
After investigating the matter further the family said they learned that no manufacturers had ever been contracted to build their caravan, writing in a GoFundMe that it 'was never intended to be built'.
According to news.com.au, when it collapsed, Tango owed about AUS$3.2 million (£1.6 million) to 85 different creditors, with the brunt of those being 60 customers out of pocket to the tune of AUS$2 million (£1 million).
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In a tough blow, Tango customers were told that in the liquidation process they wouldn't be getting any money, leaving families like the Popes out of pocket, and a report submitted to Australia's corporate regulator indicated that the company had been trading while insolvent since at least March 2023.
It turned out that customer payments and deposits were being used to keep the business going and pay for operating expenses rather than going to manufacturers to actually make caravans they'd been paid to supply.
The Pope family said they'd been 'left completely heartbroken' at having no chance of getting their money back, and now plan to buy another caravan, which they need some financial help with after having lost so much money in the Tango Caravans debacle.
Alison said: "We are slowly coming to terms with what has happened but it has been an incredibly emotionally and mentally draining couple of months.
"Our plans and dreams were completely stolen from us and we've had to make some difficult decisions working out what is best for our family."
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They've set up a GoFundMe, which you can donate to here.
Joe Harker