Bankruptcy filing against Tesla Motors Norway

[That Norwegian Guy]

Today in cute news: In an amusing case, an advertising agency has filed a bankruptcy claim against Tesla Motors Norway for failing to pay a bill of, wait for it, $200.

The company had been contracted to vinyl wrap a Tesla car. Upon learning from other companies that Tesla were suspected by them of "speculating in not paying" - aka. taking their chances on the contractors not following up invoices, they made it a matter of principle to go all in with their efforts to claim payment.

 

A so called "desire of declaration of bankruptcy" in Norway is a fairly low threshold and low cost action (that is, unless you're deemed the losing side in court and have to pay the expenses) that can be undertaken at any point where a company has had a month to pay an invoice, failed, and then defaulted upon a reminder.

 

At this point, if Tesla still doesn't pay, it would go to court and they may be declared bankrupt. Chances of Tesla refusing to pay are slim at this point, but it's an interesting insight into company practice at Tesla, as this seems to be how they operate on a regular basis. Try not to pay until you're forced to? Strange company culture, and reminiscent of other US tech giants in European countries dodging those silly taxes.

 

Should this go to court, the costs would multiply to $6200 in the first instance of the legal system, which would be an expensive vinyl wrap indeed.

 

Even Roland, Director of Communications at Tesla Norway, categorically denied that Tesla speculate in the non-payment of bills. 

—We have had issues with our payment systems, and they are close to all being solved. The invoice will be paid monday at the latest.

 

Source: E24.no (Norwegian)

[Demonking]

$200 The fuck .

[m0k]

as a bookkeeper i can almost guarantee it went something like this
"yo did you pay that invoice"
"what invoice?"
"this invoice"
"oh shit no this is my first time seeing this, ill process it right away"

and boom the fucking ad agency decided to blow it out of proportion

[Bensemus]

9 minutes ago, That Norwegian Guy said:

but it's an interesting insight into company practice at Tesla, as this seems to be how they operate on a regular basis. Try not to pay until you're forced to

How is one tiny missed payment indicative of a desire to not pay until pressured?

[knightslugger]

I'm in collections.

 

what @mok says is accurate. and honestly, it's not just tech giants. everyone wants to pay their bills as late as possible. If there's no penalty, they will drag it out until you either make them feel bad, or you threaten to take them to collections.

 

it (doesn't) surprise me how quickly computers and invoicing systems that were supposedly down for weeks can be fixed these days when you tell them you file to the courts on Monday.

[That Norwegian Guy]

2 minutes ago, Bensemus said:

How is one tiny missed payment indicative of a desire to not pay until pressured?

Sorry if I didn't make it clear in the OP, but apparently the agency who'd been contracted had heard from other companies that Tesla were defaulting on bills, and that was their opinionated conclusion.

[Bensemus]

1 minute ago, That Norwegian Guy said:

Sorry if I didn't make it clear in the OP, but apparently the agency who'd been contracted had heard from other companies that Tesla were defaulting on bills, and that was their opinionated conclusion.

That makes more sense.

[MorganO]

29 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

I'm in collections.

 

what @mok says is accurate. and honestly, it's not just tech giants. everyone wants to pay their bills as late as possible. If there's no penalty, they will drag it out until you either make them feel bad, or you threaten to take them to collections.

 

it (doesn't) surprise me how quickly computers and invoicing systems that were supposedly down for weeks can be fixed these days when you tell them you file to the courts on Monday.

i prefer to pay them asap

[knightslugger]

36 minutes ago, KOMTechAndGaming said:

i prefer to pay them asap

we all do. in fact, most purchase agreements state that payment is required to be made within a certain amount of time. The problem though is when you have a purchase of $15,000 per billing cycle for a prolonged period of time (say a year) they hold that over your head and say, "well, if you don't allow us to pay withing 75 days, we're just going to cancel the deal and we'll find someone else."

 

money talks.

[imPixelTV]

I'd laugh if they got liquidated

[Curious Pineapple]

Sounds like the bullshit threat-o-grams of "collection actions", "doorstep officers" and "legal proceedings" for that £15 you "owe" for some obscure charge after terminating a phone contract and not signing it with the correct colour ink.

[knightslugger]

6 minutes ago, Curious Pineapple said:

Sounds like the bullshit threat-o-grams of "collection actions", "doorstep officers" and "legal proceedings" for that £15 you "owe" for some obscure charge after terminating a phone contract and not signing it with the correct colour ink.

or agreeing to purchase material and installation, and decide to go in another direction, and since you don't have a contractual OUT you just ... not pay the invoice and hope the issuing company gets tired of trying and writes it off.

[Mihle]

LOL, 200....

[AlTech]

This is the stupidest shit I've heard all day.

 

Not the story about a Taxi driver jerking it when seeing a girl and a boy make out. Not the story about how a guy who was supposed to go on a 10 hour fast gave up 5 hours through it.... But this. This is just stupid.......

 

<Joke>

Next week, if I don't get my roughly equivalent to $3 USD back from people who owe me money, I'm gonna go to court and call them bankrupt.

</Joke>

 

LMAO!!!!!

[Prysin]

1 hour ago, AluminiumTech said:

This is the stupidest shit I've heard all day.

 

Not the story about a Taxi driver jerking it when seeing a girl and a boy make out. Not the story about how a guy who was supposed to go on a 10 hour fast gave up 5 hours through it.... But this. This is just stupid.......

 

<Joke>

Next week, if I don't get my roughly equivalent to $3 USD back from people who owe me money, I'm gonna go to court and call them bankrupt.

</Joke>

 

LMAO!!!!!

No next week we'll get reports about ISIS allying with North Korea in order to stop Japanese Whaling in Antartica

[laminutederire]

Why don't you guys see its a question of principle?

You sign a contract for a service, you pay in due time, no matter the amount of money it is about. If Tesla can't even bother to pay 200€ they owe, that says a lot about them. Either they are a badly organized company which can't even pay it's bills, or they're just asssholes who will do anything for money, even if the amount of money is ridiculously small.

If you can't be trusted to pay those 200€, you basically can't be trusted for anything, so it's not that stupid.

[AnonymousGuy]

Tesla probably gets thousands of invoices a day and since they're an infant company they maybe don't have the best infrastructure to handle paying them out.  My company literally has floors of people just dedicated to supply chain management (which is basically buying parts and paying bills).

 

What the original company should have done is have a clause in the contract that there's penalties for not paying on time, then they can sue for something substatial if the bill isn't paid.