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Businesses IT

Fisker Lost Track of Millions of Dollars in Customer Payments For Months (techcrunch.com) 36

Posted by msmash from the oops dept.
An anonymous reader shares a report: Fisker temporarily lost track of millions of dollars in customer payments as it scaled up deliveries, leading to an internal audit that started in December and took months to complete, TechCrunch has learned.

The EV startup was ultimately able to track down a majority of those payments or request new ones from customers whose payment methods had expired. But the disarray, which was described to TechCrunch by three people familiar with the internal payment crisis, took employees and resources away from Fisker's sales team at a time when the company was attempting to save itself by restructuring its business model.

Fisker struggled to keep tabs on these transactions, which included down payments and in some cases, the full price of the vehicles, because of lax internal procedures for keeping track of them, according to the people. In a few cases, it delivered vehicles without collecting any form of payment at all, they said.
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Fisker Lost Track of Millions of Dollars in Customer Payments For Months More

Fisker Lost Track of Millions of Dollars in Customer Payments For Months

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  • Sounds like (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    things got totally Fisked up.

  • Such a strange thing to fail on. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Petersko ( 564140 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @09:10AM (#64351017)

    Irrespective of the industry in which they operate, they are failing at simply being a business. There is no value-add to any of this. There is no reason to take risks and be innovative. This is just tracking what comes in and what goes out - the fundamentals needed to simply "be" in business.

    If they can't do that, what are they doing? I don't extend this argument to whether or not they can build cars... whether or not they can do it is completely irrelevant. What is relevant is that they shouldn't be entrusted with investment capital. I don't care if they can build a drive train. I want to know whether or not they can use a calculator.

    • Irrespective of the industry in which they operate, they are failing at simply being a business. There is no value-add to any of this. There is no reason to take risks and be innovative. This is just tracking what comes in and what goes out - the fundamentals needed to simply "be" in business.

      If they can't do that, what are they doing?

      Good question. Either stupidity or malice. Given just how egregious the errors were, I’m leaning towards the latter sadly.

      • I vote simple incompetence. You ever worked closely with your finance team at a smaller company?

        Bad CFO hire = it's all fucked.

        • I vote simple incompetence. You ever worked closely with your finance team at a smaller company?

          Bad CFO hire = it's all fucked.

          A company that sought and gained approval to manufacture a DOT-approved product, isn’t some “small” entity. Let me know where we’ve found THAT level of incompetence that wasn’t attributed to malice.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Rinnon ( 1474161 )

        Irrespective of the industry in which they operate, they are failing at simply being a business. There is no value-add to any of this. There is no reason to take risks and be innovative. This is just tracking what comes in and what goes out - the fundamentals needed to simply "be" in business.

        If they can't do that, what are they doing?

        Good question. Either stupidity or malice. Given just how egregious the errors were, I’m leaning towards the latter sadly.

        I'm a firm believer of Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Add to this the simple statistical fact that half the population is at or below the 50th percentile of intelligence, and you realize how very easily something like this can happen. And please don't try to claim something like "no C level executive responsible for millions of dollars of investments could possibly be below the 50th percentile," that's just being naïve.

        • Irrespective of the industry in which they operate, they are failing at simply being a business. There is no value-add to any of this. There is no reason to take risks and be innovative. This is just tracking what comes in and what goes out - the fundamentals needed to simply "be" in business.

          If they can't do that, what are they doing?

          Good question. Either stupidity or malice. Given just how egregious the errors were, I’m leaning towards the latter sadly.

          I'm a firm believer of Hanlon's razor: "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity." Add to this the simple statistical fact that half the population is at or below the 50th percentile of intelligence, and you realize how very easily something like this can happen. And please don't try to claim something like "no C level executive responsible for millions of dollars of investments could possibly be below the 50th percentile," that's just being naïve.

          No, it’s actually not being that naive at all, considering that almost every CEO is college educated and is at least smart enough to fool the entire room of hiring staff, along with the Board. Bullshit excuses to dismiss malice, are bullshit. If you’re a “firm” believer of Hanlon’s razor, then you’re a firm believer of two outcomes, not one.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by r0nc0 ( 566295 )
            You make the assumption that the cognition and skills to gain a degree are the same or as useful as the skills to maintain basic accounting - this has been shown to be false and why we spend a lot of time at least in the engineering realm actually testing people's capabilities before hiring them regardless of what they claim for education. I get what you're saying though but believe it or not -- in my experience there are a lot of really stupid people out there that should know better but they don't and the

    • I was part of another fiasco, a very well known business had not received deposits for payments for 4 years plus, and on the order of tens of millions of dollars. Surprisingly, this account had never been paud, the deposit informaiton was inaccurate and no one answered the requests to correct it and get paid, for all those years. Ya gotta ask, wha?

      Eventually this bubbled up in an interal audit, and despite the policies beiung followed, etc., it became an issue, and contacts were expanded beyond the financia

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

      Fisker aleady died once. They were well known for making crappy EVs that had a habit of catching fire.

      After all, there is a famous photo of the New Jersey Port Authority parking lot showing a group of brand new cars after Hurricane Sandy - completely burned out, while other cars were parked nearby just fine. Oh, now, it wasn't the high voltage EV part that caused it - it was the 12V low voltage electrical system that shorted out and caused them to catch fire!

      Fisker cars were bad from the beginning. They di

    • What do you mean? They are "moving fast and breaking things", they should be the model for the future. Unfortunately in this case, it was their own cash flow, but hey, that's the price of being "disruptive". If their CEO and CFO wore a black turtleneck shirt, they would be the perfect company.

              Accounting is for boomers!

       

    • Oh come on... it happens to all of us.

      You go out, maybe make a few sales, put the cash in your pocket and forget about it... months later you pull your jacket out of the closet, and find there is $20 million in the pocket and you are like "Oh, that's where I put that.."

      • Yes, I recall the time I forgot I left my the Kooh-i-nor diamond and my Faberge Egg collection in my Gulfstream 5. Didn't find it until the G650 was was down for maintenance and the installation of a stripper pole.

  • This was all caused by “lax internal procedures”? How damn hard is it to open up MS Excel and track the most basic business functions. Writing shit down isn’t Receivables 101. It’s Business 101.

    I smell bullshit. Covered on more bullshit. Whether the hack happened internally or externally someone’s protecting a stock pric, er it’s trading at nine cents?

    Alrighty then. Accounting problems indeed.

    • The company is dead. This is just aftermath.

      Someone might buy the name and tech but it's over.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by dbialac ( 320955 )
        Someone in Hong Kong has been trying to (and possibly has) bring back the car. It's a very sexy car built on the same concept as a Chevy Volt: batteries and a motor drive the car, a small gasoline engine recharges the batteries if the batteries are running low.

        • I do dig the car but the company is toast. Hopefully someone does resurrect the car under some name.

        • Someone in Hong Kong has been trying to (and possibly has) bring back the car. It's a very sexy car built on the same concept as a Chevy Volt: batteries and a motor drive the car, a small gasoline engine recharges the batteries if the batteries are running low.

          You're right about sexy. Pisses me off this company is dying. The Fisker Karma is dead sexy. I’d fuck that if it were a gas-guzzling diesel.

    • This was all caused by âoelax internal proceduresâ? How damn hard is it to open up MS Excel and track the most basic business functions.

      You nailed it: they WERE using Excel, hence the foulups.

      • This was all caused by âoelax internal proceduresâ? How damn hard is it to open up MS Excel and track the most basic business functions.

        You nailed it: they WERE using Excel, hence the foulups.

        Apparently you’ve never worked for any American company before.

        MS Excel is practically a religion for accountants. Helps “fix” all those burdensome tax problems that integrity-enabled ERP systems help validate.

  • Sounds like a job for (Score:4, Funny)

    by necro81 ( 917438 ) on Thursday March 28, 2024 @09:44AM (#64351109) Journal
    This sounds like a job for Herbert Kornfeld [theonion.com], Accounts Receivable Gangsta.

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