Buxton company speaks out after being confused with firm selling covid tests

A Buxton company which makes parts for the plumbing industry has spoken out after being consistently mistaken for a firm with the same name which is offering covid tests.
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Flowflex Components Ltd on Dew Pond Lane makes brass fittings for the plumbing industry but in recent months the company has been taking up to ten calls and emails a day from people trying to contact the covid testing company Flow Flex.

Now Richard Wilcock, the finance director at Flowflex in Fairfield, wants to address the mix-up.

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He said: “At first we thought it was funny but now we are getting more and more calls from people and we can’t help them.

Flowflex Group managers Richard Wilcock and Craig Chesney with a Covid test kit produced by another company of the same name. Flowflex Group managers Richard Wilcock and Craig Chesney with a Covid test kit produced by another company of the same name.
Flowflex Group managers Richard Wilcock and Craig Chesney with a Covid test kit produced by another company of the same name.

"People will be going away thinking Flowflex gave terrible customer service and we really don’t but we aren’t the right people to help with testing issues.

“We want to claim our name back and the good reputation we have worked so hard to achieve over the last 65 years.”

Flowflex Components has been in business since 1954 and employs 95 people.

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However despite being well known in plumbing circles and in the High Peak in recent months it now shares a name with a company selling lateral flow Covid tests people are buying to allow them to go on holiday.

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Richard said: “People who are stranded abroad or waiting on results before they go on holiday are putting Flowflex in to search engines and we are coming out on top so they are ringing us up or emailing and getting frustrated with us but we are two completely different businesses.”

He says they have contacted the other Flow Flex and Public Health England to let them know this keeps happening but as they are both offering different products there is no legal problem with both companies having the same name.

He added: "We are well established and the testing is a very new company working both nationally and internationally so we are just concerned if there should be some sort of scandal or backlash against the testing we don’t want to be caught up in it.

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"We want to set the record straight and say we are two different companies offering very different services.”

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