Apple Australia in buzz over Buzzle

Two separate Australian publications — the Financial Review and The Age — have reported on a legal imbroglio involving Apple and an ill-fated retail concern called Buzzle. What’s on the line here is millions in revenue, on both sides of the table.

Buzzle Operations was a group of six computer resellers who joined forces in 2000 and fizzled out less than a year later. Apple is owed close to $25 million (Australian) — money it’s now suing the company’s individual directors for.

The reports indicate that Buzzle was created in the hopes of a public stock offering valued in hundreds of millions of dollars — a stock offering that never happened following the almost immediate collapse of Buzzle after it was formed.

Two of the resellers involved have filed a cross-complaint against Apple for “channel stuffing,” or forcing Buzzle to acquire obsolete or slow-moving stock. The complaint suggests that Buzzle was forced to take Power Mac G4 Cubes and snow-colored iMacs, neither of which sold well. Part of the complaint also alledges that Apple did not offer promised credit terms for the transaction, either.