Online auction Web site Carnaby has been offline for over a week with no explanation to users. Emails to Carnaby bounce back to sender, and the company's phone rang on Sunday with no answer.
A call to Carnaby's Web-hosting company, MPINet, revealed that the site had an "inactive" status. The MPINet representative said that there were no records that Carnaby had submitted forms to change their DNS and didn't know if the account was permanently shut off.
Carnaby was founded in 1998 by Rick Antunes and Piyush Patel. In May 2002, Carnaby purchased GrabABargain, which has a business model similar to Half.com and was co-founded in 2001 by Rick Antunes' son, Peter Antunes. GrabABargain announced in early January on its announcement board that the two companies had "mutually decided to end their relationship" on December 27, 2002. The GrabABargain site is live and operational.
In September, Carnaby Inc. appointed Michael Palandro as chief operating officer and Alisha Parker as chief financial officer. One month later, it announced it was purchasing Zenith Technology Inc., a public company, from Prime Companies, Inc. The deal, which fell through, would have resulted in Zenith Technology being restructured as Carnaby Inc., the holding company of Carnaby.com.
