from Yahoo Finance--

AP

Court OKs Tower Records Web Site Sale

Tuesday March 20, 4:08 pm ET

Bankruptcy Court OKs Tower Records Web Business Sale to Caiman for $4.2M

WASHINGTON (AP) -- A bankruptcy judge approved the Tower Records sale of its Web site business to an affiliate of Miami-based music seller Caiman Inc. for about $4.2 million.

Judge Brendan Shannon of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., on Tuesday signed off on the deal with Caiman Holdings Inc., a British Virgin Islands holding company affiliated with Caiman. The chief executive of Caiman, Didier Pilon, also serves as a director of Caiman Holdings, according to court papers.
Caiman, which sells music, books and DVDs on its own site, is also a major reseller on Amazon.com. As part of the deal, Caiman agreed to assume some of Tower Records' existing liabilities.

This is the second sales agreement of Tower Records' site business since the retailer filed for bankruptcy. Norton LLC, an affiliate of Bill Sagan's Wolfgang's Vault site, agreed to buy Tower's Web business in October for about $3.8 million but couldn't close the deal.

Tower Records, with stores in 20 states, filed for Chapter 11 protection on Aug. 20, after trying for six months to sell itself as a whole. The retailer emerged from a prior bankruptcy in 2004 under the ownership of its bondholders and a trust created by founder Russell Solomon.

Liquidators took over most Tower Records stores in October after paying $134 million and beating out the chain's former rival Trans World Entertainment Corp. after a 30-hour auction.

The Sacramento, Calif., company blamed the rapid decline in its business on a shift in music buyers' purchasing preferences to online music sellers and away from bricks-and-mortar outlets.


http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/070320/tower_re ... .html?.v=1

Well, write off one more internet merchant! Shopping at caiman.com is an experience I'd recommend only to the most fervent masochist.

This link describes only a small sample of the almost universal disregard for service that characterizes caiman's operation: http://blog.tmcnet.com/telecom-crm/2005/04/29/terrible-service-costs-caimancom-another-customer.asp

It ought to be interesting to see what happens here. On one hand, Caiman can be really painful to deal with. On the other hand, they're often pretty cheap, particularly on imports.

I once ordered an out-of-print Elvis title ("Essential Elvis Vol. 4: A Hundred Years From Now") from Caiman through Amazon. While the price was right, when the CD arrived I was annoyed to find that the disc was from South America, and the booklet was entirely in Espanol. While in this case I didn't mind it all that much (like I said, the music was out of print and the price was right) I do wish that Caiman had disclosed this fact before I placed the order, and as a result I'd hesitate to buy anything else from them again.

Never had a problem with any of the many orders I've placed with them.