“The components used to build the products are largely unique to the products, resulting in long lead times for ordering such component parts from suppliers,” and Twitter must give “written approval for Wiwynn to purchase the necessary components to manufacture the customer products…and expressly assumed liabilities for the procurement costs.”
So basically they were bespoke servers that are great for Twitter, custom designed, and definitely aren’t easy to just resell elsewhere, so because Twitter isn’t paying, the IT company is eating the loss right now
It sounds like in this transaction they are purely a hardware provider, they shipped the bespoke hardware to Twitter based on twitters order, musk took over, and is now refusing to pay them because he doesn’t want whatever the hardware is after having gutted Twitter, and they haven’t been paid
If it was done in knowingly and in bad faith, no I would not. With this particular case, all I know is what’s in that article which doesn’t describe the situation in detail. The court case would provide the full picture.
Who would be the bad faith actor here? Wiwynn? If they don't have an order, that's going to fall flat pretty fast. Seems like a pretty risky bet at $60 million. Twitter? Then it isn't Wiwynn's problem, Twitter can take care of their bill, and deal with their internal issues.
I don’t know. Perhaps as part of the acquisition there were some terms regarding situations like this that are in dispute. Even more nuanced, perhaps Wiwynn knowingly took advantage of the acquisition communication issues to assert a level of standing orders that should have been reconsidered.
Cash on delivery is extremely rare in the business world, especially when dealing with enterprise customers. While I have no doubt many of Twitter's vendors have recently switched to COD, that is not the norm.
These types of relationships typically work on anywhere from 30 to 90 day terms, depending on the vendor, client, and their history.
That wasn't their point. They assumed that billing terms aren't already predicated upon an "airtight" contract. I'm not sure how they're defining airtight, but a contract is a legal agreement, and when there's a dispute, those get addressed in court, such as this, right now.
This misunderstanding isn't entirely unreasonable. If someone hasn't dealt with these types of transactions in a business setting, it's not reasonable to expect them to understand how they work, or why they function like that.
I don’t think it’s hard to understand regardless what their experience with billing terms may be.
“Don’t give them credit” still makes sense to me as someone who has that experience. It also makes sense to me as just a normal human that maybe we shouldn’t just let unreliable parties pay later given their wild (basically public at this point) history with paying people.