RCTA resolves backend issue

Jaipur: Rajasthan Computer Traders' Association (RCTA) recently stepped in to play mediator between a channel partner and its disti. The association played a pivotal role is solving an 18-month old payment dispute case between Compuage Infocom and Udaipur-based Rajshree Systems.

The matter which sparked off with the non-payment of incentives and schemes by HP to Rajshree Systems a year and half ago has been doing the rounds at the courtroom. Recently, Compuage, had sent a legal notice to Rajshree Systems for holding their payment of Rs 10 lakh. Seeking cooperation from the channel association Rajshree Systems approached RCTA to resolve the matter.

The issue had started when Rajshree Systems executed an order worth Rs 1 crore in the month of June 2007 to June 2008 through Compuage, a national distributor of HP. When the channel partner asked HP to pay the backends, the vendor refused to pay up and informed that from June 2007 to October 2007 no sales report was updated by Compuage. Henceforth, the backend of this period, worth approximately Rs 15 lakh of Rajshree Systems, was withheld.

When the issue was brought to the attention of Compuage, the senior executives informed Rajshree that the matter was between the channel partner and the vendor and the distributor had no role to play in it. Due to non-reporting of sales, the backend of Rs 15 lakh was untraceable, though Rajshree had shown the invoice copy to HP.

Since they were not  receiving the benefits of the scheme, Rajshree stopped the cheque payments to Compuage after which the distributor filed a legal notice against Rahshree under Section 138.

“Due to lack of clear communication with the distributor, our fund position got tight and having no other option, we had to withhold the payments to Compuage of the time period June 2008, which amounts to Rs 12.5 lakh. However, after holding a meeting with Compuage, when the official committed to sort the backend issue with HP, we released a cheque of Rs 2,88,900 in July 2008. Our intention was not to withhold the payment. Because we are facing financial crisis we wanted to put pressure on HP to release our backend claims. We were surprised to get the legal notice for holding payments since we had released a payment as had been committed to a senior manager of Compuage,” informed Aniruddh Singh Ranawat, MD, Rajshree Systems to RCTA via e-mail.

Ranawat further informed that when he agreed to clear the payment of the distributor, Compuage started spreading wrong information among HP distributors, including Ingram and Redington, and advised them not to bill HP printers to Rajshree on credit.

On getting no support from vendors or distributors, Ranawat approached RCTA and stated, “Under RCTA norms we want to clear this matter so that no further miscommunication among distributors or in the market is raised regarding our credibility as our intention is crystal clear, that we need to close this matter and settle our account and also get our pending credit note cleared along with DoA and short shipment with Compuage. We also request RCTA to take action against Compuage so that in future wrong presentation of a dealer in the market can be checked.”

After RCTA stepped in and called for a meeting in the presence of executive committee of RCTA-including Raj Kumar Poonia, President, Deepak Sharda, Secretary, Prashant Parakh, PRO, Sameer Prashant, Zonal Manager-North, Compuage, Ranawat of Rajshree Systems and regional executives of national distributors including Redington, Ingram Micro and Savex, the matter was resolved amicably.

Prashant of Compuage informed that after Rajshree clears all its payment Compuage would communicate clearance of all its dues to other distributors and would withdraw the case.

The issue was closed when Rajshree Systems delivered a full and final payment of Rs 10,27,686 to Compuage and the distributor agreed to settle the pending matter of two DoA cases, one short shipment of an HP printer and pending incentive of Rs 39,074 with Rajshree. Compuage also agreed to withdraw the legal notice against Rajshree once all the payments were cleared from the bank. The disti also agreed to send a mail to all distributors confirming the closure of non-payment issue with the dealer. The dealer was also informed that the Head of Claim Cell of HP in Compuage had accepted the claim related to Compuage billing and their case would be approved and sanctioned shortly.