Reseller forced to shut down Asus site

Notebook reseller PC Market has taken down its www.asusnotebook.com.au site because of a request by notebook vendor AsusTek to shut down the site after director Meng Wei Koh was instructed – or “face all stops on rebates and demo products”.

PC Market is now housing the site as a sub site within www.pcmarket.com.au.

Koh said he had one phone conversation with Jim Bustamante, notebook product manager at Asus.

“He said we had to take the site down or Asus would take action to cancel all rebate cheques,” he said.

“We find this to be unprofessional of management and a form of bullying. We are a legitimate Asus reseller,” he said.

When CRN contacted Bustamante he said he was not at liberty to discuss what was going on.

Ted Chen managing director at Asus, added he would pass the matter on to his solicitor to re-check the website and look into the case further.

According to Koh the site was based on a dedicated product line website concept modelled on other existing websites at www.asuslaptop.co.uk/ and www.asusnotebooks.co.uk.

The site went live in September 2006, at which point Koh sent a courtesy letter to ASUS outlining its plans, and no response was made towards the communication.

Koh claims at no time did PC Market deliberately confuse any of its customers and mislead them into believing that it was the official Asus.com.au Australia website.

“The only communication we have had with Asus has been verbal,” he said.
Koh sent Asus email requests (witnessed by CRN) for a written response to an alleged verbal correspondence between PC Market and Bustamante.

According to a spokesperson for au Domain Administration Ltd, the policy authority and industry self-regulatory body for the .au domain space, PC

Market appeared well within its rights to register the domain name asusnotebooks.com.au.