“Apple Computer faces a $57 million lawsuit from the liquidator of the collapsed retail chain Buzzle, who claims Apple was effectively in control of the company and instrumental in its rapid demise,” Michael West reports for The Australian.
“Buzzle, the subject of the ABC ‘fly on the boardroom wall’ documentary Going Public, went into receivership in March 2001 owing $30 million to 866 creditors. Apple, its major supplier, was owed $20 million,” West reports. “A spokesman for Apple Computer declined to comment on the action, which Apple is expected to defend vigorously.”
Full article here.
Apple will muzzle Buzzle
I’m Australian, albiet Tasmania, and I’ve never heard of Buzzle. Sure nobody’s try to tweak stock figures ? we Aussies are good at that.
As small as they are 57mill is nothing to Apple. Pay the ticket.
“As small as they are 57mill is nothing to Apple. Pay the ticket’
Sure, pay every idiot that comes out of the woodwork and files a lawsuit. Smart idea.
MW ‘high’ as in you must be high.
Meet trevor, former CEO and majority shareholder, Buzzle Inc.
Ah, just another gold digger asswhole wanting to steal some of SJ and Apple’s hard earner money.
Buzzle, what kind of dumb name is that!!!
I don’t blame Apple for running them out of buisness.
(see how quickly a lie can become truth?)
Am I really tired, or does that make no f’ing sense? I see what appears to be english words, sentences, paragraphs, punctuation. But it doesn’t compute.
Do Australians just speak some fucked up version of english that is totally incomprehensible?
I remember this company, and the documentary on the startup and failure. It’s a classic. It kind of reminds me of that joke “You can tell it’s gonna be a bad day when you see a 60 Minutes team waiting at the office”, although in this case, the camera crew were making the documentary.
My theory is that it failed due to bad timing for some of it (post dot com), but perhaps also management incompetence and infighting amongst the resellers (the documentary reveals some of this). Is Apple responsible? Perhaps, but the company wasn’t around long enough to recoup some of the startup costs.
The biggest problem in Australia is the pricing of Apple computer products… whilst recently it’s much better, it’s still much too high, as it is almost everywhere outside of the USA. (however, most electronics is expensive in Australia so it’s not just Apple.)
rhinoceros must level crossings!
all will succeed!
“As small as they are 57mill is nothing to Apple. Pay the ticket.”
Yeah…that’s right stick it to the rich! They can can make up for $57 Mill…just lay off a few thousand employees or close a plant! Great idea! Freaking great…
Dear wtf,
Actually you’re just really tired.
Look this was a dumb idea from the start.
1. The name stank. It was meant to be a cross between buzz and Apple and kind of ended sounding like frazzle.
2. Apple pushed the idea at the wrong time and with the wrong players.
3. What really put the nail in the coffin is that Australia’s most successful chain of resellers Next Byte looked at the whole deal and at the last moment pulled out. No criticism to the company they made the right commercial decision.
To be honest the whole episode took place sooooo long ago, that the whole episode is locked away in the back of my brain submerged by much more useful events (like breathing).
And to Fred Nerk (and you’d have to be an oz with a name like that) Buzzle was mainland disaster. I know we make jokes about Taswegians (actually too many jokes) but for once you guys made the right decision by doing nothing.
A lot of companies got burned by this misadventure and the blame is not totally Apple’s. Similarly, the industry took some time to get over this debacle. And notatotalsucker is not a sucker at all. One of the major gripes that loyal Australian Apple users have been shouting about for years is that we’ve been totally ripped off by Apple over pricing. Thankfully this situation has recently (c.2004) been corrected. And yes some other electronic manufacturers have gouged the eyes out A’stralian consumers and many of us are none the wiser.
Finally wtf there’s a world out there and if you took the time to understand it your life would be that much richer. But as my ex editor used to say “Never let the truth get in the way of a good story”.
A bunch of resellers get together and dump $15 mil of debt into a new company that they hope to sell on the market for $120 mil. Enter the dot com bust and no one wants this pile of debt – and Apple is to blame? Attorneys for Apple will have a ball with this one.
Interesting strategy… If you can’t pay your creditors, sue ’em!
Buzzle went fizzle wants some Apple sizzle. Can Apple muzzle Buzzle? Will Buzzle try to guzzle from the nozzle or ask for a nuzzle? What a puzzle!
MW = full
as in, they are fuzzle of it.
I could go for a little guzzle off the ol’ nozzle myself….
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This is why Apple is opening their own retail stores. These scumbags don’t want to sell good product, they just want to get easy money with some stock market tricks they learned with business correspondence courses.
I guess in the PC world, if you want to do something right, you gotta do it yourself.
Buzzle is showing amazing chutzpah in suing Apple. Apple was OWED $20 million when those idiots went over, and had to bring in a collection agency to collect pennies on the dollar. So Buzzle failing is APPLE’S fault???
MW: running, as in “Whoever was running Buzzle should be countersued by Apple for wasting their VC money.”
Apple shouldnt pay them one bean!
They owed Apple 20 million before they went under.
Reading the article, this just looks like a bunch of people who overstretched themselves in the dot-com boom, and only realised when the crash came.
Every computer retailer has to cope with channel stuffing. Even the Apple Stores carry some old models.
What is AUS$57M anyway <hits F12 key, types into Currency Converter widget, hits F12 again>. £24M. Dashboard is getting to be quite useful.
I have delt with Buzzle in Brisbane and they were worthless – didn’t know thier arse from the Grand Canyon – Over staffed and NO STOCK – I had a 1 Gig chip installed in a Powerbook and it failed the next day – they tried to blame me – that I must have had a static discharge and ruined the chip –
Enter Solicitor and they replaced the chip – hmmm… lousy people – lousy service – lousy business model
Next Byte is still in business and has stock and service and GOOD staff – who know what they are doing…
Buzzle always did have a lousy ability to do business and crying a blame game – that it was Apple who made all of their bad business decisions for them is a crock. I know from a former employee that Buzzle would go to Apple and PROMISE payment over and over again and they woudl also commit their revenues to Apple and then renege – default.
Now it is Apple’s fault – gimme a break.
“Do Australians just speak some fucked up version of english that is totally incomprehensible?”
No, but Americans do.
fo shizzle my buzzle
I would like to congratulate The Australian for what was the worldwide media’s 100,000,000th use of the “bite Apple” pun in an article title. ‘Cuz, you know, that never gets old.
Dr Scuzz
“Ah, just another gold digger asswhole wanting to steal some of SJ and Apple’s hard earner money.”
Gee Moron, that sounds familiar (Microsoft) Hmm bet you never said that about them before…
Schmuck