Im going to guess that any purchases made now, with CC or PayPal, would be protected anyway?
Assuming you tick the relevant boxes in terms of item costs etc yes.
Seems like another victim of a false and hyped market during the pandemic, and now reality bites.
IMHO (and it really is opinion only) whilst the pandemic won’t have helped it’s likely what tipped everything not the main cause. The main problem is people won’t pay for stuff*.
There’s a constant race to be cheapest, margins are squeezed to razor thin because if Google says you’re 2p more expensive than the next shop you don’t get the order. That needs huge turnover to keep it viable.
The pandemic meant supplies were very difficult to maintain which meant maintaining that turnover was very difficult. Post pandemic the supplies have started to recover, in some instances meaning huge glutts of stock but, if your business relies on having tens of thousands of items to sell at cost +1% that’s not terrible so long as there’s a market…
…But, everyone is suddenly tightening their belts, discretionary spend has tanked and the market for moderately expensive toys with it.
Now they’re left with huge overstock and no market to sell it to with and a history of tiny margins on huge turnover meaning they have no buffer, need external liquidity which was fine when you could stick £150m in to pay suppliers knowing its coming back over the next x months. Now there’s no visible prospect of repayment so that external liquidity is pulled and no buffer means the company can’t service it’s day to day bills without huge borrowing. Interest rates from the open market are higher than their margins will allow them to swallow and sales are tanking so even if they could afford to borrow, few people want to lend.
*that’s a longer conversation and not really relevant to this thread.