He mentioned Eastern Europe, mate hence I asked if he thought the products were from Eastern Europe. You're more North/Central European. But being Lithuanian your company will get painted with the Russian brush because some people here still think it's 1989.
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IT Workup
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He mentioned Eastern Europe, mate hence I asked if he thought the products were from Eastern Europe. You're more North/Central European. But being Lithuanian your company will get painted with the Russian brush because some people here still think it's 1989.
With Trump and Musk in the White House it's now acceptable to love Russia publicly. And by the way now that you have mentioned 1989, USSR and Russian federation are not exactly the same thing.
Off topic.
In the future if you say Eastern Europe, usually people mean Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, etc by that. Not Lithuania which is a western country at least in terms of the sort of products they stock and the market they fall under. So it's more than just academic. If someone tells me they import Eastern European products I would assume they get Russian stock etc. And in SA some of our products actually have Russian Cyrillic on them, while such products are usually not sold in Lithuania et al. You know there is a difference between the European Union market and its segmentation and non European union markets.
When I ordered my item, you stated that it was at the Durban warehouse.
Does the item goes first to your office, or is shipped from Durban straight to my address?
I need to know because I don't want a fruitless drive to CSSi offices.
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I just saw the statement that you recently posted on your Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1F2UcYjoyj/
Would I be causing an unnecessary panic by assuming that since you lost your assets then we're also more likely to lose our pending orders?
Every online order placed through ITworkup has been shipped from Europe. Your order is either already on the way or has arrived at the CSSi office.
James Jakov Grcic promised everyone that he would either issue a refund or provide the ordered products. However, he took everything we had, including our domain, and even redirected it to his own website yesterday. While he has since stopped, we have video recordings from yesterday as proof (please take a look here):
Our new company will continue processing new orders and delivering them as before, now operating from a new location under a new company. Finally, we will be able to offer more efficient, transparent, and convenient shopping experience for everyone, without middle man.
We want nothing more to do with him—as you can see, many people who worked with him have wasted time and energy trying to expose his lies and nonsense. We refuse to be part of this negativity and simply want to move forward as quickly as possible.
James Jakov Grcic promised everyone that he would either issue a refund or provide the ordered products. However, he took everything we had, including our domain, and even redirected it to his own website yesterday. While he has since stopped, we have video recordings from yesterday as proof (please take a look here):
WhatsApp Video 2025-03-08 at 16.37.57_fee64a37
This is "WhatsApp Video 2025-03-08 at 16.37.57_fee64a37" by ITworkup South Africa on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.
vimeo.com
Our new company will continue processing new orders and delivering them as before, now operating from a new location under a new company. Finally, we will be able to offer more efficient, transparent, and convenient shopping experience for everyone, without middle man.
We want nothing more to do with him—as you can see, many people who worked with him have wasted time and energy trying to expose his lies and nonsense. We refuse to be part of this negativity and simply want to move forward as quickly as possible.
Please answer my question (2 posts above yours)Every online order placed through ITworkup has been shipped from Europe. Your order is either already on the way or has arrived at the CSSi office.
James Jakov Grcic promised everyone that he would either issue a refund or provide the ordered products. However, he took everything we had, including our domain, and even redirected it to his own website yesterday. While he has since stopped, we have video recordings from yesterday as proof (please take a look here):
WhatsApp Video 2025-03-08 at 16.37.57_fee64a37
This is "WhatsApp Video 2025-03-08 at 16.37.57_fee64a37" by ITworkup South Africa on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.vimeo.com
Our new company will continue processing new orders and delivering them as before, now operating from a new location under a new company. Finally, we will be able to offer more efficient, transparent, and convenient shopping experience for everyone, without middle man.
We want nothing more to do with him—as you can see, many people who worked with him have wasted time and energy trying to expose his lies and nonsense. We refuse to be part of this negativity and simply want to move forward as quickly as possible.
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So who is responsible for the pending orders please, James Jakob Gricic or you?Every online order placed through ITworkup has been shipped from Europe. Your order is either already on the way or has arrived at the CSSi office.
James Jakov Grcic promised everyone that he would either issue a refund or provide the ordered products. However, he took everything we had, including our domain, and even redirected it to his own website yesterday. While he has since stopped, we have video recordings from yesterday as proof (please take a look here):
WhatsApp Video 2025-03-08 at 16.37.57_fee64a37
This is "WhatsApp Video 2025-03-08 at 16.37.57_fee64a37" by ITworkup South Africa on Vimeo, the home for high quality videos and the people who love them.vimeo.com
Our new company will continue processing new orders and delivering them as before, now operating from a new location under a new company. Finally, we will be able to offer more efficient, transparent, and convenient shopping experience for everyone, without middle man.
We want nothing more to do with him—as you can see, many people who worked with him have wasted time and energy trying to expose his lies and nonsense. We refuse to be part of this negativity and simply want to move forward as quickly as possible.
airborne
Honorary Master
- Joined
- Jul 13, 2007
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- 28,468
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- 14,754
Two conflicting stories each claiming to "own" ITworkup
Former ITworkup Team
Dear Customers,
On March 5, 2025, the ITworkup domain was absurdly shut down by CSSi and its managing director, James Jakov Grcic, causing complete panic among ITworkup customers and paralyzing the company's operations via email and website. The European ITwork branch supplied all products to this company and was responsible for communication with clients. Unfortunately, any attempt to find a compromise became completely impossible, and disagreements only escalated.
Now, he and his company are redirecting all traffic from ITworkup.co.za to their CSSi website, which is an even greater absurdity, as their company does not even sell similar products. This is simply an attempt to exploit our two years of hard work. You can judge this situation for yourself, but a quick search online will reveal numerous court cases involving his former partners and employees—something we unfortunately did not know when we started working with him.
He will now do everything in his power to maintain the false image he has created, but the facts speak for themselves. You can find his company profile at the following link, where he is now taking advantage of our two years of effort, built day and night on ITworkup.co.za project.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/22U9fL7LRs2H4rz9A
At this moment, we have already purchased our own domain and established an independent company, allowing us to provide services directly to you. This will make our operations more efficient, faster, more transparent, and more convenient for everyone. All work on the opening of the new website will be completed in about a week.
We understand that this situation is frustrating, but we are still recovering from the damage caused by his actions. To give you a clearer picture, we have attached just one image from his former partner, which illustrates the cost in time and effort of working with him.
Best regards,
Former ITworkup Team
James Jakov Grcic calling himself CSSI Team who seems to claim he still controls ITworkup and he does still have control of the domain and has the statement below posted there.
The website for CSSI https://cssi.co.za seems to have a global footprint with branches all over the world but no affiliation with ITworkup.
To our valued customers, partners, and community:
I sincerely apologise for the recent disruption at ITWORKUP. Due to an internal shareholder operational dispute, we made the tough but necessary decision to temporarily pause operations to protect our customers, clients, suppliers, and stakeholders. This is a short-term measure, and we’re already working to resolve it.
Two key commitments:
No one will face financial loss. Our CSSI team is actively fulfilling orders and supporting customers and walk-in clients (even to this minutes as commented above by some clients, however, but a different company team). All orders will be delivered or fully refunded.
ITWORKUP remains a financially secure, active business. We’re exploring options to strengthen the team and operations for a brighter future in one of several ways.
Please bear with us for the next 48-72 hours. Visit www.itworkup.co.za for updates or to share pending order details (order number/payment status), once active again. With hundreds of transactions in progress, we’re committed to supporting everyone involved and please be at rest while we do so.
Thank you for your patience and trust. We’re confident ITWORKUP’s incredible start-up will lead to an even stronger future.
– James
Former ITworkup Team
Dear Customers,
On March 5, 2025, the ITworkup domain was absurdly shut down by CSSi and its managing director, James Jakov Grcic, causing complete panic among ITworkup customers and paralyzing the company's operations via email and website. The European ITwork branch supplied all products to this company and was responsible for communication with clients. Unfortunately, any attempt to find a compromise became completely impossible, and disagreements only escalated.
Now, he and his company are redirecting all traffic from ITworkup.co.za to their CSSi website, which is an even greater absurdity, as their company does not even sell similar products. This is simply an attempt to exploit our two years of hard work. You can judge this situation for yourself, but a quick search online will reveal numerous court cases involving his former partners and employees—something we unfortunately did not know when we started working with him.
He will now do everything in his power to maintain the false image he has created, but the facts speak for themselves. You can find his company profile at the following link, where he is now taking advantage of our two years of effort, built day and night on ITworkup.co.za project.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/22U9fL7LRs2H4rz9A
At this moment, we have already purchased our own domain and established an independent company, allowing us to provide services directly to you. This will make our operations more efficient, faster, more transparent, and more convenient for everyone. All work on the opening of the new website will be completed in about a week.
We understand that this situation is frustrating, but we are still recovering from the damage caused by his actions. To give you a clearer picture, we have attached just one image from his former partner, which illustrates the cost in time and effort of working with him.
Best regards,
Former ITworkup Team
James Jakov Grcic calling himself CSSI Team who seems to claim he still controls ITworkup and he does still have control of the domain and has the statement below posted there.
The website for CSSI https://cssi.co.za seems to have a global footprint with branches all over the world but no affiliation with ITworkup.
To our valued customers, partners, and community:
I sincerely apologise for the recent disruption at ITWORKUP. Due to an internal shareholder operational dispute, we made the tough but necessary decision to temporarily pause operations to protect our customers, clients, suppliers, and stakeholders. This is a short-term measure, and we’re already working to resolve it.
Two key commitments:
No one will face financial loss. Our CSSI team is actively fulfilling orders and supporting customers and walk-in clients (even to this minutes as commented above by some clients, however, but a different company team). All orders will be delivered or fully refunded.
ITWORKUP remains a financially secure, active business. We’re exploring options to strengthen the team and operations for a brighter future in one of several ways.
Please bear with us for the next 48-72 hours. Visit www.itworkup.co.za for updates or to share pending order details (order number/payment status), once active again. With hundreds of transactions in progress, we’re committed to supporting everyone involved and please be at rest while we do so.
Thank you for your patience and trust. We’re confident ITWORKUP’s incredible start-up will lead to an even stronger future.
– James
rh1
Honorary Master
If he is the sole shareholder, its his business!
European Union has members from West, Central and Eastern Europe. Market wise European Union is one Market. Culturally Lithuanians, Polish and Ukrainians are East Europeans. A mental illustration: Imagine itworkup.co.za was being run by some Germans or Britons and they had a dispute: Do you think they would have handles the dispute the way these guys are doing it? I doubt. This dispute was handled in "Eastern European" way, even if the disputants come from a country that is a member of the European union.
Now you're being silly. Yes it's one market. But when we speak of Eastern Europe we speak of Belarus, Russia etc. Especially in the context of markets. Because EU is a common market with common standards.
You demonstrated your ignorance when you brought that up in that context. Now you bring in 'culture' into it.
Explain to me "East European" culture. I'd like you to explain what you mean by this.
Explain to me things like this or this. Is this German culture, then? Would you trust a German site after such things? Would you trust Japanese companies after Hitachi/Eskom and Takata? Dude. LOL. Don't generalise about people. I've also been f-ed over by Mercedes Benz SA who sold me a damaged part still sealed in a box, "Made in Germany", just my fault I took 6 months to check it. Or Japanese businesses which f-ed me over. Dude, you can't attribute corruption to one group.
There are many examples of US, Canadian and British businesses which have done similar things. This was a common occurrence during the 2001 DOT COM bust for example, I've had to deal with such examples myself with unfulfilled orders, sites like DVDExpress, Express.com (US) and DVD-DEPOT (Canada) did this. DvD-Depot did this in 2004. In SA you've had Raru collapse and something similar happened, it was run by Anglo-Afrikaaner South Africans.
I think you're ignorant and confused.
Dude "East Europe" in the EU is a million miles ahead of South Africa. Those countries are even overtaking countries like Spain and Portugal and soon even the UK, in terms of the economy. There is no comparison between SA and those countries in terms of development. They were behind SA in the the late 90s but in the past 20 years they're way ahead. And corruption is strongly stamped out other there.
This is nonsense. The site is run by a local personel here, in SA, it's not run from Lithuania.
By the way, is there any evidence anyone did not receive their orders here? I'd like some proof.
So far we only know the South African guy who runs the business in SA shut the side down for a few days and failed to communicate properly. That's nowhere near anything as bad as what happened to people with Raru.
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ld13
Honorary Master
Popcorn, anyone? 
Popcorn, anyone?
Guy made a mistake. He thinks Western Europe is not corrupt. He made a mistake earlier and instead of just correcting himself shifted the argument to 'culture'. That wasn't even his original take, it was the sort of products sold and not the culture of the people running the parent company which itself had nothing to do with what the local store did anyway.
I just thought of another example. A German shop (and supplier of window components) which would not (and it's likely illegal) take VAT off for items exported outside the European Union. They ship directly to SA but charge the same product price as to ship to France or the Netherlands or to SA. Which means we get to pay VAT here on top of German VAT.
This doesn't make sense. ITworkup owes James Jakov Grcic hosting fees, but James Jakov Grcic is the only one with access to ITworkup's bank account. How does that work?
Durban port warehouse seems to be where it'll arrive after being shipped from Europe. Everything not local used to say in stock at warehouse, then in stock at external warehouse, and now in stock at Durban port warehouse.
airborne
Honorary Master
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I highly doubt they are shipping orders via sea, that will take a lot longer than just a few weeks to get from Europe branch to port onto ship then to South Africa off the ship and out of customs.
Progenix Oj101
Dealer
Corsair shipments take an average of 10 days to get here via sea, however some can take much longer (eg Asus has been delayed by two weeks twice). Just saying.
ghostRgg
Expert Member
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I think some clarity is going to be needed on this whole situation.
There are two whole separate stories here:
ONE - Fenway
You are saying there is a new company called Fenway Supplier. Everything about the domain and its hosting is REDACTED FOR PRIVACY, which is at lease a little suspicious in my eyes.
Contact details: 0633290965 - Just an MTN number with a lookup name of Mahlaku.
Looking at the Company registration for this new company. It looks like Timothy (I won't go into further details here) is the newly appointed director along with one other.
Secondly, this system on the site looks identical to the old ITWorkup system.
Getting into the actual stories:
This was posted from the ITWorkup team, from what I can tell this is the same team that claims to have been running the imports from the ITWORK branch overseas.
The above does seem correct, the ITWorkup store was redirecting to CSSI at the point of closure. What does strike me as odd but makes is the reply to one of the Facebook posts by ITWorkup.
Off of the above, it looks like CSSi was the company that had the physical store, premises and handled the stock and logistics.
TWO - ITWorkup aka James/CSSi
This is on the main domain itworkup.co.za with the contact details of [email protected] or 011-541-9944 Linked to a Landline registered for IT Workup Johannesburg
We then have James with a PSA notice on the itworkup domain about how the company is not shut down and will be continuing and his own Company CSSI will be running things.
The company registration for IT Workup is under James Grcic
What's the actual story?
Clearly it needs to be made clear on who was actually running the logistics, the website and the store. If the Original team was the one directly dealing with the ITWork from overseas, or if CSSi is the logistics company. Both of these shouldn't be able to function at the same time. There are conflicting stories going on.
This is a perfect case for anybody who wants to explore investigative journalism.
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