Sears skips payments to vendors amid bankruptcy concerns

[TexasTowelie]

(Reuters) - Sears Holdings Corp has started to miss payments to vendors, adding to concerns about its future after sources said on Wednesday that the U.S. department store operator was preparing to file for bankruptcy in the coming days.

Three vendors told Reuters that Sears had missed scheduled payments to them in the last couple of weeks.

It was not immediately clear how widespread the issue was and how it would affect Sears’ supply chain ahead of the holiday shopping season. Vendors could stop shipments if they are worried Sears cannot pay, potentially sending the retailer into freefall.

“We went into business with them with our eyes open and knew this day would come one day,” said Arnold Kamler, CEO of Parsippany, New Jersey bike maker Kent International Inc. Kamler said he has withheld a shipment to Sears after it missed a regular payment last week for the first time.

Read more: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sears-holdings-corp-bankruptcy-vendor/sears-skips-payments-to-vendors-amid-bankruptcy-concerns-idUSKCN1ML0ER

[democratisphere]

1. Scumbag wall street hedgefund private equity criminal mismanagement.

[Freddie]

2. I worked accounts payable for a company like that

They had big $$ problems and the folks upstairs decided the solution was to not pay the bills, or only pay the vendors that threatened to stop shipments or legal action. As one of the AP team we were in the front line of abuse. This was in the days before email and the phone would ring constantly. You could set your watch to noon when the west coast vendors would start calling (3 hr time difference). You know how ER docs and nurses develop a kind of black humor about what they see, we started getting the same way, joking around with the folks on the phone since a lot of them realized we were just the peons doing the masters’ bidding. One time one of the team broke her ankle (at home) and the joke was that a vendor got her in the parking lot.
When the folks upstairs fired our nice and understanding boss and replaced him with a martinet, most of us bailed including myself. The company got bought out and the new people settled with the vendors, mostly for pennies on the dollar. The entire management team (including martinet boss) was shown the door and those peons that were left kept their jobs. This was during the Reagan Recession, early 80s.

[Achilleaze]

3. Sears is using republican "values" to screw vendors

following the footsteps of Dirty Donny, ignoble republican Draft-Dodger-in-Chief and business values role model.

[duforsure]

4. I stopped doing business with Sears after someone close was

Discriminated against , and they took them to court and won. They will never get my business again , and they are across the street almost from me now. They've been poorly managed for years and it now is catching up to them as more people reject them , and have gone elsewhere to shop.