Overstock Fires Auditor Over Accounting Dispute; Files 10-Q Anyway

November 17, 2009 at 12:30 pm PT

Seriously, Overstock.com (OSTK) has to provide more entertainment value per dollar of market cap than any company in America.

Consider yesterday’s developments at the online retailer. The company disclosed in both a press release and an 8-K filing with the SEC that it has fired Grant Thornton as its auditor. Grant Thornton had become the company’s auditor in March, replacing Price Waterhouse.

Overstock lays out the situation in a classically loopy press release that leads with a quote from Friedrich Nietzsche: “all things are subject to interpretation; whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power and not truth.”

Overstock says that in February, it “was notified” that it had overpaid a fulfillment partner by about $700,000, but that the same partner asserted that OSTK might owe it more than $400,000.

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Tagged with: Barrons, digital, economy, Eric Savitz, Friedrich Nietzsche, frontpage, Grant Thornton, Internet, Overstock.com, Price Waterhouse, retail, Tech Trader Daily

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