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When Craig Turner and his fiancée were deciding where to register their wedding list last year they settled on website Wrapit.co.uk because it had a wider range of gifts than that available from UK department stores.
But three months after their May wedding, New Zealander Craig and his
English wife Sally are still without their presents after Wrapit admitted it was suffering financial difficulties following a decision by its bank, HSBC, to withhold £1m of funding.
"It's turned into an absolute nightmare," Craig said.
"We are owed about £4000 ($10,800) worth of gifts and what's come into their warehouse is about £300 worth.
"We've got no idea whether we'll ever get anything now."
In an email to affected customers on July 25, Wrapit's founder Pepita Diamand confirmed the company was in financial difficulty but said it was not in administration, as had been claimed.
"After six years of successful trading and rapid growth we ran into a problem in May when our bankers, HSBC, announced without warning that they were concerned about the potential chargeback risk if Wrapit was unable to fulfil its obligations to guests to deliver the gifts purchased," Diamand wrote.
"Their solution was to sequester all our credit and Visa debit card revenue into a separate account to provide them with added security. This meant that we were unable to pay suppliers and sometimes resulted in late delivery of gifts.
Craig said Wrapit had told them from the outset that delivery of their wedding gifts would take place 8-12 weeks after they closed their list on the company's website.
The reason given for the timeframe was that Wrapit sources products from a variety of places, only delivering an order once all gifts have been received at its warehouse.
Craig and Sally closed their list in early June and were expecting their gifts in the next few weeks, when the ominous email arrived.
"It's not the best situation to be in when you've just got back from your honeymoon," said Craig.
"We'd started throwing out some of our old stuff in anticipation of receiving our wedding gifts but that's not looking too likely now."
Worst of all, says Craig, is the fact that he and Sally are now faced with the prospect of having to write to all those who bought them presents via the website, urging them to try and get their money back.
"I had family in New Zealand buying presents on it, who couldn't make it to the wedding," said Craig.
"It's a bit rough having to write to all your guests to say 'Hey, this is the deal... Please try and get your money back from the site if you can because we haven't received the presents you bought for us'."
"Oh yeah, and if you still want to give us a gift after all this trouble..."
Wrapit has advised couples who closed their lists before the beginning of June that their gifts should have arrived at the warehouse. But Craig says as far as he is aware only a handful of the presents he and Sally are owed have arrived there.
The company says it guarantees refunds for customers as long as they have paid by credit card but Craig said he was concerned that cover - under the Consumer Credit Act - would not apply to people from outside the UK who had used the site.
However the Wrapit website states that credit card companies will cover all purchases as long as the purchaser can demonstrate the gift they bought was not delivered within the timeframe promised by the retailer.
In a message on its website last Friday, Wrapit said there was a "realistic chance that we will be able to complete our wedding list orders, as normal. However we won't know for certain until the end of this week".
However an article in Britain's Sunday Times indicated the company was to be put into administration today (UK time).
Craig and Sally Turner are just one of hundreds of newlywed couples waiting to find out whether they will ever see their gifts.
