Even I knew 12 months before Castel was dumped by Toshiba that the Melbourne-based distributor was set to be given the flick by the Japanese Company, who has admitted that while there were some problems with Toshiba products being sold by Castel, there were not "that many" to warrant such a massive claim.

Several former Castel specialist dealers who sold the Toshiba gear have said that they are surprised by the claim. "Yes we had some problems with the HD recorder but not enough that it was of great concern" said Len Wallis of Len Wallis Audio. Steve Neil at Eastwood Hi Fi in Sydney said he had no problems with the Toshiba products that he sold. However several forums in Australia have reported consumer problems with Toshiba's HD recorder and set top box.

What is interesting is the timing of this claim. Late in 2005 ChannelNews reported that Castel Electronics was set to be dumped by Toshiba. At the time the local subsidiary, Toshiba Australia, had lodged a submission with Toshiba Singapore who was responsible for Toshiba operations in Australia, to take over sales of the Company's consumer electronics products.

At the time local Toshiba management claimed that they believed that they could do a better job than Castel. This has since been borne out with the local subsidiary almost doubling sales of Toshiba TVs, DVD players and projectors in Australia.
Back in 2005 we also revealed that Castel management, under the leadership of CEO Michael Kwong, had decided to openly criticise mass market CE resellers by claiming that they delivered poor service and had little product knowledge.

In a document obtained by ChannelNews at the time, Castel openly solicited dollars from specialist resellers to take on mass market resellers like Harvey Norman, JB Hi Fi and others. These were the very customers who had the potential to deliver millions of dollars worth of revenue to Castel with the Toshiba brand.

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