What would you do?

[WarrenG]

1.) Bob, who is probably the primary computer/internet user at ERA, is their engineer not their sales rep so would probably have little to add to the discussion here.
2.) Peter, who is the sales rep, does not use the internet at all.
3.) ERA has nothing to gain by posting here especially with the complaining party talking about seeking out an attorney.
4.) ERA GT40's probably run about $135+K making finding another buyer more difficult than finding another buyer for their 427 or FIA. Lead time for one of their GT40's I believe is close to 2 years so it is not like they are shoving them out the door on a regular basis.
5.) There are lots of good reasons, from a business perspective, to layoff an individual (if that was truly the case) prior to hiring a replacement.
6.) As a very small business with everybody pretty specialized in their tasks, it entirely conceivable that only the bookkeeper had a good handle on where all of the money "was" and the status of customer and vendor accounts.
7.) It does sound like the refund of the last $5K was not in keeping with their stated policy and may have been agreed to in spite of that policy which would, IMHO, makes a timetable for the refund kind of open ended.
8.) I'm sure it's a frustrating situation on both sides.
9.) I'll bet that everybody on this forum including business owners answers and/or returns every phone call they receive. Yeah right.