Hello d8veh & shemozzle999,
This is a follow-up to my posting of last Wednesday when I said that I had planned to visit MFC the following day, Thursday 1st October.
On one aspect, the visit went well, insofar as my wife and I were made welcome, and the Directeur Géneral (no less) & a Commercial Assistant came to talk to us. After listening to our tale of woe, the DG said that the current state of "administration" of Véloscoot had caused huge difficulties for his company, (presumably including unpaid invoices for the assembly work). He would not elaborate except to say that around 1500 bicycles were affected. He also said that MFC did not possess any of the rights to any of the parts of the Véloscoot bikes - these rights remained with Véloscoot and MFC had been purely contracted to assemble the bikes. Therefore MFC itself could offer no direct assistance to us.
He asked how we knew of MFC's involvement, & we produced copies of the bike label showing the MFC name & the Machecoul address, as well as a copy of the label attached to the controller, which gave its reference numbers. We mentioned that someone had told us that the controller had been manufactured in China, and the Commercial Assistant went off to check the Controller reference numbers. She returned & said that some Controllers had indeed been made in China, but ours had been made by a French company situated in the south of France. She gave us detailed contact names & email addresses at that company & suggested that we contact it with all the details. The DG said that he did not know the situation as regards the ownership rights of the Controller, but it would be worth following up.
The DG finally said that the French court is now expected to report on the future legal status of Véloscoot sometime this month (October 2015).
Incidentally the MFC set-up is very impressive (it claims to be the largest bike manufacturer in France), and has a factory, a large administration/R &D building, with a showroom on the second floor, and a factory shop outlet all on the same site.
I have e-mailed the French company & will let you know the outcome.