French retailer eBizcuss, of Apple’s biggest retail partners in France, has announced that they are suing Apple over unfair business practices. In an interview with Le Figaro, eBizcuss CEO François Prudent said that Apple’s failure to honor orders for MacBook Airs, iPads, and iPhones had significantly harmed eBizcuss’s business.
Prudent attributed the decline in his company’s ability to acquire Apple products to the opening of an Apple retail store in Paris in 2009. Once Apple had its own store in France, its willingness to send its products to other French retailers steadily waned. What’s more, Prudent complained, this occurred just two years after his company spend $6.5 million to bring itself into line with requirements Apple places on retailers. Prudent also accuses Apple of directly contacting eBizcuss’s business customers, in an effort to lure them away from
This most recent suit is just one in a string of lawsuits that Apple has faced from retail partners over the years. The story has remained fairly consistent: as Apple moves its own retail stores into an area, the resellers that were already there begin to complain of anti-competitive practices, with some even being driven out of business.
[Source: ifoAppleStore]