Fiona Dicker, managing director of Dicker Data told ZDNet Australia she had had difficulty extracting payment from the company since they first entered into business dealings with them in January this year.
-It was always difficult to get paid, they were always late with payment," Dicker said. -It wasn't a recent thing, they had always been slow."
Dicker is now faced with the onerous task of securing payment for E-Store's bad debt.
-Thankfully most of it was insured, but we will still be out by about ten percent," she said.
Others, such as Rohan Levy director of former E-Store supplier MPZoo managed to escape the creditors' list, managing to extract payment from the troubled company at the eleventh hour.
-I began to suspect things were going wrong when it became totally impossible to get through to them," he said. -They had made significant changes to their terms of payment and their staff numbers were dwindling."
Levy confirmed he had made multiple attempts to contact E-Store in recent weeks, but found that the means of communication were being closed down one by one.
-We tried phoning the office, the direct lines of the sales staff, Steven Spilly the MD but no one was answering and the voice mail boxed were full so we couldn't leave a message. They weren't responding to e-mail, and they even ended up turning the fax off," Levy said.
However, others such as Ingram Micro's Steve Rust were caught totally off guard by the news.
-No I hadn't heard they were in trouble, and at this stage I can't make any comment until I have spoken with my financial staff," said Rust.
Disclaimer: ZDNet Australia has a content relationship with E-Store.
I once purchased a couple of items from E-store in 2000, 2 notebooksurge protectors, and a notebook carry bag. I was promised that I would get everything at most within a week from the day of order. It took me 3 weeks until I could get the 2 surge protectors, and anothe 3 weeks to get the carry bag, even though they were shown as "IN STOCK" at the time I was making the purchase on the phone with one of their sale reps. I waited for 2 weeks until I began to call them as it had been too long for the promised mating time and I was told that the purchase order was still being processed, not to mention that the money had already been debitted from my credit card the day after I made the purchase. They told me that the goods might have been out of stock and they had no responsibility for the delay as it would have been the suppliers' fault. So I asked them if I could cancel they said yes but I would not get the money back until they could verify that I had not received the goods from the suppliers, which might take a month, or even as long as they were informed from the suppliers. And they could not guarantee for how long. So, with no choice, I just had to keep waiting and keep calling them tens of time. Since then I promised to myself that even there was only one place in the whole world having the item really needed, being E-Store I would rather choose to die without that thing. So, to me, if this company goes to bankruptcy It is no surprise to me. And farewell to them then....