Education company Auckland Academy of Learning goes into liquidation, fails to pay $351,000 court-imposed fine

Auckland Academy of Learning was slapped with a $351,000 fine in November. Photo / Getty Images

A maths education company slapped with a $351,000 fine by the Commerce Commission for multiple breaches of the Fair Trading Act has gone under.

Auckland Academy of Learning (AAL) was put into liquidation at the beginning of the month and has not paid the court fine it received in November.

John Whittfield of Whittfield Associates has been appointed liquidator and is yet to determine how much the company owes creditors.

According to the liquidator's first report, the director of the company said the reason for liquidation was the "result of a court fine imposed on the company".

The report lists ASB Bank, Ecostyle Limited and Jewellery of New Zealand Limited as creditors with security interests.

Whittfield told the Herald that AAL had not paid the fine.

He could not confirm whether or not the company went into liquidation because it did not have the money to pay the fine.

The liquidator's first report will be published in six months.

The Commerce Commission charged AAL with 11 charges under the Fair Trading Act in relation to the way it sold software education packages.

The court heard the company preyed on parents' "hopes and fears" about their children's future to sell the expensive tuition products and that staff misrepresented the product and breached consumer credit and direct selling laws.

AAL pleaded guilty to the charges in the Auckland District Court and received a $351,000 fine.

Prior to the prosecution, the commission received more than 180 complaints, largely after a series of stories aired on the now-defunct TV3 programme Campbell Live, between 2014 and 2015 over the way AAL sold computer-aided mathematic instruction software.

The price of the software, which ranged from $6000 to $11,000, was found to have been misrepresented in some instances.

In November, the court heard that the Newmarket-based company would make a cold call to potential customers before being invited into people's homes.

Once there, sales representatives would offer school-aged children a complimentary tutoring session, but it was a disguise for a sales pitch to sell them the software.

Its sales pitches would "prey on parents' hopes for their child's education for their futures" as well as play on the fear that the public school system was failing their children, counsel for the Commerce Commission Alysha McClintock said last year.

The company would attempt sell its "expensive product" to parents with "shock and scare tactics" and commit them to a long-standing contract, she said.

Sales scripts were also worded so that the assessment would demonstrate what the child was learning at school and part of the sales script was to categorise a child as being either average, struggling or advanced, the court heard.

The offending occurred between March 2011 until September 2015. During that time 3359 contracts were entered into.

AAL began in December 2010.