First: There's no chance they have a real lawyer. If they did, they'd redirect every single person to them.
The law firm they have used in the past is Gately LLP (tel 0161 836 7700), contact name is Leigh Whittaker
http://uk.linkedin.com/pub/leigh-whittaker/28/417/108 at
Ship Canal House
98 King Street
Manchester
M2 4WU
You also cannot just `appoint private bailiffs' and expect to get results in this kind of case. They aren't above the law and without going through court they have no more rights to get money back than anyone else does - they can't expect to gain entry to any private premises and certainly cannot steal things. The cases they tend to get results for are those where there is an indisputable debt and neither party would argue about the validity of the claim. This isn't the case with AT and they would more-than-likely just tell the bailiffs to leave.
I don't quite understand the mentality of this thread, which seems to be clogged up almost-daily with arguments demonstrating something which has already been done-to-death. If you paid by credit card, then you have a good chance to get money back - in the UK the credit card company shares some of the risk of the transaction, so even in the case of the company going into administration the credit card company should still cover some of the loss themselves (in fact in this case there would be no need to argue that there has been any DSR-breach or otherwise-untoward behaviour).
The problem with the route of court-action is that once AT don't show up to court, and the customer is favoured in the verdict, then what? The court-appointed bailiffs are pretty useless and actually getting the money that the court says you are owed can be much harder than winning in court. The reason this is likely is that it is my understanding that AT has very little in the way of corporate debt - so any CCJ won't matter to the company as it doesn't have a financial reputation to worry about. It has no need for credit in the future and presumably already has manufacturing contracts set-up - so who cares about CCJs? They clearly aren't in it for the long term and the company looks set to wind-up after this debacle is over anyway. My guess is that if AT resists any court judgement against them, they will be able to hold out until September anyway and if everything else goes to plan, might be able to shake off the legal troubles long enough to post out some orders.