(这条文章已经被阅读了 419 次) 时间：2001-11-02 14:31:30 来源：罗枫 (千色独书狼) 原创-IT
my8848.net disappears leaving behind a trail of debt
Well-known mainland e-commerce firm, my8848.net, appears to have vanished leaving behind many unhappy customers and suppliers, local media reported.
The site was launched earlier this year by spinning off the business-to-customer (B2C) part of 8848.net. Wang Juntao, one of the founders of 8848 who believed that B2C was the future of China’s e-commerce business, set up the new company with capital from a Shenzhen company.
But, he left the new company in August, complaining of the inability to reconcile serious investor differences. Shortly after his departure, my8848 got deeper in debt and laid off many employees, some of them at the management level. Staff numbers dropped from 200 to about 40 leaving some departments like logistics and content with no employees at all.
Industry insiders say that Shenzhen Wanquanhe, the investment company that bought the B2C unit from 8848, had not provided all the funds it promised at a time when the web site was crying out for finance.
Suddenly last Friday, the online store, my8848.net, which used to carry a wide range of goods, from items for the home to medical apparatuses, was no longer available on the Internet.
Customers from a wide number of places, from Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces to the city of Chongqing, complained to wanghai.com, the site of a well-known anti-fraud crusader, Wang Hai, that they could not contact the site any more. They said they had paid the site for goods but had not received anything and could not get a refund. The wanghai site issued a warning and asked for the company to provide contact information.
In the meantime, industry and commerce departments in Beijing were receiving complaints from the company’s suppliers, saying that it had left behind tens of thousands of yuan in unpaid debts.
Li Guihe, a representative of a Beijing company that supplied batteries and chargers for my8848 for about two years, said that the B2C company owed more than 6 million yuan to various suppliers. Mr Li told Beijing Evening News that a person from my8848’s finance department told him that the company had no money and gave him a paper acknowledging the debt before the National Day holiday. After that, the trail went cold.
The company’s landlord is also trying to find the owners. Some people working at the office building that last housed my8848 said that the company moved out in April and vacated the premises a month ago, owing two months’ rent. They now receive a steady line of visitors who are there to settle accounts.
The disappeared company’s founder, Wang Juntao, issued a statement saying he no longer had any relationship with the company, although he had tried for a while to help the company with its financial problems after he left.
He is now busy with a new e-commerce company and says that my8848 also owes him a month’s salary. Because it has not declared bankruptcy, he says, the company should take care of its financial mess.
Beijing’s Haidian District Court says it had ordered the company premises sealed off and its property seized and sold after several companies sued it to recoup their losses. But, the company had little in the way of property apart from odd pieces of office furniture and computers.
Meanwhile, the complaints continue to come in with people requesting that the government investigate the matter.
(Source: South China Morning Post, 02-Nov-2001)