The Notebook Company’s April Fool’s joke backfires

Pretoria: 4 April 2016-04-04

On Friday, 1 April 2016 The Notebook Company CEO, Christopher Riley, informed all its local suppliers that the company has been placed in voluntary liquidation since it is not able to pay its local suppliers. It was also mentioned that the company will do everything in his power to pay the suppliers what is owed.

Riley stated in the statement that, with immediate effect, at 13h00 on Friday 1 April, all the notebook company accounts were closed, and locked. Deliveries to their clients, and warehouses were stopped. Their own drivers were not able to have stock released to them. All came to a halt.

Today, Monday 4 April 2016 at 8:00am, all suppliers were informed that it was an April Fool day's Joke. At this point most clients replied with OMW, LOL, or Got US

But then, said Riley, there were a few nasty surprises:

“Unfortunately your terms were revoked due to the email sent to us. Information was already sent to our insuring company CGIC.”

Another: "We have undergone legal costs already, and we will be charging it to your account - This is funny, But was not funny on Friday.

But, at the end of the day, it looks like this April fool’s day Joke turned bad on The Notebook Company.

In response, Riley said: “We hope all will be restored to normal at 11:00am Monday morning.
One can say it might have been in bad taste, but it could also be a good proactive run for suppliers, as this year is going to be a tough one, and if companies are going to fail, it will be this year.
No deliveries and supplies to clients were affected.
Apologies to our Local South African suppliers.”