Ebay

Meg Whitman Incorporated Starting To Unravel

Broadcatching

LOS ANGELES TIMES BLOGS

The California governor’s race took on a circus-like atmosphere Wednesday as a former housekeeper for Meg Whitman alleged the Republican gubernatorial nominee employed her for nearly nine years, even though Whitman knew the housekeeper was in the country illegally.

Flanked by attorney Gloria Allred, former Whitman employee Nicandra Diaz made the accusations at a tearful Los Angeles press conference Wednesday. Diaz said she asked Whitman for help with her immigration status in 2009 and Whitman refused. “I felt like she was throwing me away like a piece of garbage,” Diaz said.

Whitman responded to the charges in a statement Wednesday. “After nine years of faithful service, Nicky came to us in June 2009 and confessed that she was an illegal worker,” the statement reads. “Nicky had falsified the hiring documents and personal information she provided to the employment agency that brought her to us in 2000. Nicky told me that she was admitting her deception now because she was aware that her lie might come out during the campaign. Nicky said she was concerned about hurting my family and me.”

Whitman continued: “As required by law, once we learned she was an illegal worker, I immediately terminated Nicky’s employment. It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I considered Nicky a friend and a part of our extended family.”

Whitman’s attorney produced documents indicating Diaz filled out forms in May of 2000 in which she stated she was eligible for employment in the United States. Diaz also provided a Social Security Number on the form that turned out to be false. Allred said her client had been “exploited, disrespected, humiliated and emotionally and financially abused.”

A spokesman for Jerry Brown’s campaign did not immediately comment on the allegations.

This is not the first time Allred has emerged in a California governor’s race. In 2003, just days before the recall election, an Allred client claimed she was the victim of sexual assault by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Those claims were later dismissed.

— Anthony York in Sacramento

What Exactly is the Problem Over at EBAY?

Ebay, Meg Whitman, Omidyar, Paypal, Skype, Tech

Fixing eBay

Salon Dot Com

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The answer to fixing eBay is easy: fire John Donahoe and get somebody in there who understands what eBay founder Pierre Omidyar understand in the 1990s – EBAY IS A COMMUNITY AND 90% OF ITS USERS ARE HONEST.

EBay has made it impossible for members to be part of a community by its rigging of the contact system. Meg Whitman and John Donahoe’s Ebay had this fear of losing money if it let sellers and buyers actually communicate with each other easily. And don’t tell me Big Brother eBay doesn’t monitor what emails it allows.

The company has raised selling fees to the point of insanity. It has zero telephone support. It’s support emails are worthless and are written by robots. Nobody can get an honest answer and, sorry Mr. Donahoe, but SKYPE was one of the stupidest endeavors ever. 100% of eBay users already had phone service of some kind or another. Who the heck wants to switch to an Internet provider when there’s always a good chance your Internet connection is going to conk out? Does anybody really want Skype to replace their cell phone? Why does anybody need two phone service providers?

The new rule wherein Sellers can’t leave negatives for Buyers is as dumb as dumb gets, which makes Mr. Donahoe a very stupid man. He’s a total failure as a chief executive. He’s wimpy and wishy washy and clueless. He’s also idealess, unless it’s a bad idea.

The other new rule wherein PayPal is the only thing that can be mentioned as payment is another dumb idea. The raise in fees, the no-negatives-to-Buyers dictate, and the PayPal only declaration has done what nothing else could. IT SENT SELLERS AWAY FROM EBAY IN DROVES.

The company knows it. It knows sales are down. It knows why. No one at eBay has the guts or the backbone to admit the truth.

Donahoe has failed the company. It has made eBay a nasty, suspicious, demeaning place on which to do business – at least for Sellers – and, what? It wants to blame the economy for its problems? Baloney.

EBay dug its own hole by the way it treated Sellers and now it’s paying the price. Almost everyone who posted on eBay’s chat rooms and boards the past two years predicted that eBay would eventually kill its Golden Goose. Well, it has.

To succeed, eBay needs to go back to basics. GO BACK TO THE BEGINNING. It needs to poll EVERY SINGLE SELLER and ask what’s wrong. EBay has the email capacity for that. But, I think they’re terrified of the negative response it will receive.

Once again, the technocrats destroyed a good websites. Techies who think they know better. Techies who think that because they can think it up, it’s going to work and help. Once again, these techies learned the hard truth. You can’t cock up a site with tech features and expect people to be happy or to keep caring. Everything became too complex. SIMPLICITY SHOUTS.

And when you’re nasty to the people that made you rich, the people that made you rich will tell you to kiss-off.

I used to sell thousands upon thousands of dollars of product each year on eBay. I don’t sell there anymore, and I hardly bother to buy. EBay doesn’t even advertise anymore. It’s a wounded company, limping towards irrelevance because of what it did to its Sellers.

I now pay $40 a month to a local antique mall for a showcase in which I put my items to sell. I do very well. I no longer need, want, or care about eBay. You know why? Because eBay hurt my feelings. It made my feel unwanted. That’s why.

— Jude Estlin