Friday, July 3, 2009 - Back in the Gude Olde Daze of Ebay they had Square Trade - and it was a scam from the outset.
Way back in 2002 or so, when I first started getting into Ebay - is when I found out about the Dark Side of the Force - being the HUGE discrepancy between what the people in Ebay say, and what they do.
And just how badly they fuck you around while doing it.......
I forget exactly what the issue was, non delivery of product or getting totally outraged with their appalling customer service and Escrow or something.....
But anyway it was pretty piss poor - which really started kind of cemented into my mind that Ebay - that according to the Ebay speil of What we say - doesn't match what we do - or the Big Happy Ebay "community" (sic) is basically a huge mass of buyers and sellers, on a website run by sleazy crooked management - who provide NO customer service at all....
This is an example of just how this company operates.... note the sly wording in the contract at the end.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3078461/
Man arrested in huge eBay fraud
Buyers criticize auction site’s seller verification service
By Bob Sullivan
msnbc.com
June 12, 2003 - Police in South Salt Lake, Utah, are working with eBay to determine just how many people were victimized by what authorities say was one of the biggest frauds in the auction site’s history. Police arrested 31-year-old Russell Dana Smith last weekend after hundreds of auction winners complained that they sent $1,000 or more to a company named Liquidation Universe for laptop computers they never received. Police say the firm appears to have raked in $1 million from about 1,000 victims in just a few weeks.
Meanwhile, would-be buyers are also pointing the finger at SquareTrade, an eBay seller verification service, which had vouched for Liquidation Universe’s legitimacy — and, the buyers thought, offered a fraud guarantee.
Detective Darin Sweeten said Smith set up his Liquidation Universe shop in a tiny South Salt Lake strip mall in February.
“It was just a small business in a small strip mall. I know that he did not do any public walk-in traffic,” Sweeten said. The store sold exclusively on eBay.
Liquidation Universe, which actually began selling on eBay in October, received high marks until mid-May, said eBay spokesman Kevin Pursglove. In fact, it had 750 positive ratings from customers.
But then complaints started rolling in from customers who had sent money but never received their item — in most cases, a laptop computer. On May 16, eBay shut down the account and told local police and the FBI.
“This one is going to be among the higher amounts of fraud we’ve seen, both in number of victims and in dollar amount,” Pursglove said.
It’s not clear if the firm was designed from the start as a scam, he said, or if it was simply a business which went sour and could no longer deliver to its customers.
Sweeten said the town’s cybercrime unit, which was formed during the 2002 Olympics, quickly began surveillance of the strip mall. On May 22, when it appeared employees were packing up boxes and planning a move, police obtained a search warrant and seized company records.
Smith was arrested June 8 and is currently being held without bail.
Since the arrest, police have heard from about 1,000 victims who say they have lost $1 million to Liquidation Universe, Sweeten said.
“It’s bold, something that was very organized. They were very skilled at what they were doing,” he said.
So skilled, in fact, that Liquidation Universe had participated in eBay’s new SquareTrade seller verification service, which is run by a third-party company, SquareTrade.com. The company’s principal business is online dispute resolution, Pursglove said, but it also offers a special program designed to reassure auction buyers that they won’t be scammed.
SquareTrade logo called deceptive Participating sellers pay a fee to SquareTrade, which then verifies the seller’s identity and provides a special, Good-Houskeeping type logo place on the auction listing.
Consumers say they were lured into buyers computers from eBay seller Liquidation Universe because they believed SquareTrade offered them $1,000 in fraud protection.
But the logo, consumers say, was deceptive. It included the words “$1,000 protection.” Many consumers believed they would be reimbursed up to $1,000 if they ran into trouble with their auction. But actually, buyers have since learned, SquareTrade’s protection was capped at $1,000 per seller, not per buyer — leaving a tiny pool of cash to be spread among victims.
SquareTrade CEO Steve Abernathy did not return phone calls.
“I bid on an auction that ended April 27 and paid $1,261 and bought 2 laptops,” said Corey Bayer, of Jamestown, N. D. “I saw the $1,000 fraud protection. There was no, ‘Click here for details.’ But I assumed the most I’m going to be out is $261, so I took the chance.”
But when the auction started to go south, and it appeared he wouldn’t get his computer, Bayer went to SquareTrade and checked its terms of service. Then he realized he wasn’t really protected against fraud after all.
“The guarantee is a maximum liability per seller, not per buyer. So say there’s 100 of us, we all get $10 apiece,” he said. “This logo doesn’t hold any water at all.”
EBay sent out a letter to the victims on Wednesday apologizing for the incident; the letter indicated that Square Trade was going to alter its policy in this case, saying the firm has “agreed to make some additional money available to defrauded users.”
Pursglove confirmed that eBay was working with Square Trade to provide additional benefits to the victims.
But on a private bulletin board and Web site devoted to helping Liquidation Universe victims get their money back, most say they are still angered by SquareTrade’s logo program.
“Most of us made our purchases because the logo was put on there,” Bayer said. “Otherwise, I would have never made the purchase.”
Friday, July 3, 2009 - Meg Whitman - sells child porn toys on Ebay - Part 6.
The Hypocricy of Meg Whitman
Meg Whitman sells these on Ebay.
Then she says this in her policy speeches.
Whitman: State budget cuts must not jeopardize public safety
LOS ANGELES -- Tens of thousands of criminals in California would walk free if lawmakers decide it’s too costly to keep them behind bars.
But Meg Whitman says public safety can’t be sacrificed to fix the state’s budget mess.
While education and rehabilitation are crucial parts of the reform process, California lives depend upon tougher sentencing, and a working parole system, Whitman says. And it’s time to crack down on criminals and spend smarter to keep people safe.
“Unfortunately, while politicians have been raising spending, raising taxes, and raising doubts about their ability to lead, they also have started to jeopardize the first duty of government -- and that is public safety,” Whitman said Friday to a crowd of more than 100 at the 27th annual meeting of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation in Los Angeles.
“It’s an act of supreme negligence that lawmakers have mismanaged the budget to the point that it threatens public safety. We need to safeguard our law enforcement resources and keep prisoners behind bars until they finish their time.”
The Criminal Justice Legal Foundation is dedicated to restoring a balance between the rights of crime victims and the criminally accused. President and CEO Michael Rushford said the nonprofit is looking to all of the gubernatorial candidates to see whose ideas align best with the organization’s.
Whitman’s interest in helping law enforcement was a “breath of fresh air,” he said, especially for this group of advocates who have, for too long, seen a broken criminal justice system.
“I think she had some good, solid ideas about what to do,” Rushford said. “We don’t think it’s just lip service with Meg, and that’s important.”
Whitman told the group that spending in California has been brought to the brink of insolvency, causing job loss and businesses to leave the state. But it has also created a domino effect that now has public leaders proposing early releases from prisons, police layoffs and raids on local budgets earmarked for law enforcement. She fears lawmakers are seeking short-term savings over long-term safety.
“This is not only fiscal irresponsibility, it’s dangerous policy and just simply poor leadership,” Whitman said.
As governor, Whitman said she would find at least $15 billion in savings and efficiencies within four years and reduce the state’s payroll by at least 30,000 positions.
When it comes to public safety, Whitman said she would make spending a top priority, while still casting a discriminating eye as to how those dollars are spent.
“More money alone isn’t the answer to improving education in our state, and it isn’t the answer to improving the fight against crime either,” Whitman said. “We need an independent cost-benefit analysis of how our corrections and rehabilitation dollars are being spent.”
Whitman advocated for a more effective parole system that prevents convicted felons from committing crimes again. In March, Lovelle Mixon shot and killed four Oakland police officers while on parole for two previous firearm-related crimes. It’s a story that has haunted Californians, and Whitman says it’s a result of an underfunded parole system.
Whitman also supports tough sentencing -- in particular California’s three-strikes law which significantly increases the length of time repeat offenders with felony convictions remain in prison. The third felony strike means a mandatory 25-years to life in prison.
And for offenders who have committed the most egregious and violent of crimes, Whitman supports the death penalty and wants to see it more swiftly enforced.
“I support the death penalty because it is just, and because I believe it is a deterrent to the calculated, malignant act of murder,” she said. “We may not know precisely which lives are saved when justice is done, but we know innocent people are alive today who wouldn’t be if capital punishment was not the law.”
Rod Pacheco, district attorney for Riverside County, said it would be difficult to find a candidate better suited than Whitman to reform the criminal justice system.
“She touched heavily on substantive matters dealing with the death penalty and public safety but she also dealt with it morally and ethically for society,” he said. “It wasn’t just an academic discussion -- she was leading, and that’s what we need in California right now.”
“She’s going to get the job done. The public safety system in the state needs to be completely overhauled and recast and we need somebody with the strength to do that and some commitment and some ideologies, and she’s got all of those. She’s going to make a difference -- when she becomes the governor, she will make a huge difference in that area of the state bureaucracy.”
Friday, July 3, 2009 - Meg Whitman - sells child porn toys on Ebay - Part 5.
Yes Meg Whitman - the seller of Porn and Child Porn - is in the running to become the Governor of California.
THIS:
Plus This:
Plus A Face Job:
Equals This:
Meg Whitman, 52, retired from eBay in March 2008 following a decade with the company. She helped eBay grow from 30 employees and $4.7 million in revenue to more than 15,000 employees, almost $8 billion in revenue, and a network of 12 million users in California alone. Before eBay, Whitman distinguished herself in leadership positions with Procter & Gamble, Bain & Company, Disney, Stride Rite Corporation, FTD, and Hasbro. On February 9, 2009, she announced the formation of her Exploratory Committee for Governor of California.
Friday, July 3, 2009 - Meg Whitman - sells child porn toys on Ebay - Part 4.
Yes the Child Porn Toys that Meg Whitman - who is now running for Governor of California, have working vaginas.... which means more sales and more money for Meg Whitman.
Installation of Holes
The below pictures are taken from Yohko/Yuuko/Chris - concealed vagina type.
(Kumiko/Carol employs the similar method, having delicate lips at the fringe)
Ordinary opening.
(it shuts more tight when
legs are closed)
Friday, July 3, 2009 - Meg Whitman - sells child porn toys on Ebay - Part 3.
This is Meg Whitman - former CEO of Ebay - who sold these child sex toys for the last 6 years of her management.
These are more details of the sales of these child sex toys - from the Ebay site.
Life-Like Rubber Foam Love Doll Christine
This spectacular love doll is made from the revolutionary material, Silica-Urethane (Urethane Foam Rubber). It feels surprisingly almost like real skin! It is better and lighter than silicone. The softness of the Urethane foam is almost same as the soft type bread. The surface looks like human skin, having bread-like foam inside.Millions of bubbles inside the entire body makes the doll soft so that the user feels just like he embraces a woman's actual body. Certain numbers of the bubbles appears on the surface (just like breads). The user will feel it "warm" because the material reflects the user's body temperature.
The doll has a tight and soft concealed type vaginal entry for your pleasure play (the doll has one removable insert).
Although the doll arrives with the eyes are closed, the eyeball set can be installed for additional charge before the delivery.
As long as you keep the doll away from bright light, heat and moisture it could last a long time.
Some reports indicate that there are many users who enjoyed having our dolls for over 10 years.
This doll is made in Japan and shipped staright from the manufacturer.
Delivery usually takes up to 5-6 days.
Available in 2 variations Standard Set:
shaven pubic area
sexy panty
lube
make-up set
Blond straight long hair type Wig
Deluxe Set:
Sexy panty
lube
make-up set
Blond straight long hair type Wig
sailor uniform
Medium, Black / Long, Black / Contemporary, Black / Long, Blond / Short, Blond
You may select any of these wigs for the doll or purchase extra
(Long , Blond comes with the doll)
Measurements:
Measurements:
Height: 4’2”/130 cm
Weight: 6.6 lbs/3 kg
Doll measurements: chest/waist/hips - 24.5" x 22.2" x 25.3"/ 63 x 52 x 65 cm
Package: 9.8” x 9.4” x 4’6”/ 25 x 24 x 141cm
Chris has two cousins: Yuuko and Yohko. They all have the same body.
Friday, July 3, 2009 - Meg Whitman - sells child porn toys on Ebay - Part 2.
This is Meg Whitman - former CEO of Ebay - who sold these child sex toys for the last 6 years of her management.
These are more details of the sales of these child sex toys - from the Ebay site.
Life-Like Japanese Love Doll Yuuko
This spectacular love doll is made from the revolutionary material, Silica-Urethane (Urethane Foam Rubber). It feels surprisingly almost like real skin! It is better and lighter than silicone. The softness of the Urethane foam is almost same as the soft type bread. The surface looks like human skin, having bread-like foam inside.Millions of bubbles inside the entire body makes the doll soft so that the user feels just like he embraces a woman's actual body. Certain numbers of the bubbles appears on the surface (just like breads). The user will feel it "warm" because the material reflects the user's body temperature.
The doll has a tight and soft concealed type vaginal entry for your pleasure play (the doll has one removable insert).
Although the doll arrives with the eyes are closed, the eyeball set can be installed for additional charge before the delivery.
As long as you keep the doll away from bright light, heat and moisture it could last a long time.
Some reports indicate that there are many users who enjoyed having our dolls for over 10 years.
This doll is made in Japan and shipped straight from the manufacturer.
Delivery usually takes up to 5-6 days.
Available in 2 variations Standard Set:
shaven pubic area
sexy panty
lube
make-up set
Blond straight long hair type Wig
Deluxe Set:
Sexy panty
lube
make-up set
Orient Black long hair type Wig
sailor uniform
Medium, Black / Long, Black / Contemporary, Black / Long, Blond / Short, Blond
You may select any of these wigs for the doll or purchase extra
(Long , Black comes with the doll)
Measurements:
Measurements:
Height: 4’2”/130 cm
Weight: 6.6 lbs/3 kg
Doll measurements: chest/waist/hips - 24.5" x 22.2" x 25.3"/ 63 x 52 x 65 cm
Package: 9.8” x 9.4” x 4’6”/ 25 x 24 x 141cm
Yuuko has a twin sister, Yohko. They are different only by their heads.
In the image below: Yuuko on the left, Yohko on the right.
This item has been added to My eBay for Guests.
As a guest, you can: Track up to 10 items on this computer in My eBay Receive an email reminder for this item a few hours before it ends
A federal court has granted the Internal Revenue Service permission to search PayPal members' offshore bank accounts and credit card records to identify possible tax evaders.
Under the order, issued by a U.S. District Court judge in San Jose, Calif., the IRS can view those records under certain conditions, the Justice Department announced this week. The IRS is seeking the access as part of its larger Offshore Credit Card Program, which aims to crack down on U.S. taxpayers who hold money offshore to avoid paying taxes.
The IRS is seeking information on U.S. taxpayers who have signature authority over bank and credit card accounts issued by, or through, financial institutions in more than 30 countries. The foreign countries, which range from Bermuda to Costa Rica to Singapore, have bank secrecy laws that allow account holders to refrain from disclosing income and assets that are subject to federal income taxes in the U.S.
PayPal currently operates in 10 of those countries, including Costa Rica, Singapore, Hong Kong, Switzerland, Malta and Luxemburg.
According to the order, the IRS can review the bank and credit card accounts of PayPal members, providing they meet three stipulations.
One is that a "reasonable basis" exists for believing a person may have failed to comply with IRS laws. A second requirement is the investigation relates to a particular person. Furthermore, the information being sought must not be easily obtained through other sources.
The Justice Department, on behalf of the IRS, filed its petition with the court in October. The court issued its order in February. A department representative said the law enforcement agency did not choose to disclose the court's actions until this week during a press briefing.
Online payment service PayPal, which is owned by eBay, has since received a summons order from the IRS and is reviewing its options, said Amanda Pires, a PayPal spokeswoman.
PayPal, which received the summons roughly two weeks ago, is reviewing whether to provide the information, appeal the court order, or take some other action, Pires said.
She noted the online payment service has had a long working relationship with regulators and that its privacy policy states it may release members' information if required by law.
The company, however, takes a strong view on protecting users' information, she added.
Over the past several years, the IRS has been turning to the Internet to crack down on tax evaders. In 2002, the IRS sought ways to track potential tax evaders by reviewing keywords in their search results.
The Justice Department has asked PayPal Inc., the online-payment-processing unit of Internet auctioneer eBay Inc., to turn over some customer records as part of a tax-evasion probe, a top tax official said.
U.S. District Judge James Ware in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California in February issued a "John Doe" summons to PayPal, of San Jose, Calif., for the records.
Eileen J. O'Connor, assistant attorney general for the Tax Division, mentioned the summons to reporters during a news conference on tax-enforcement trends. A "John Doe" summons permits the Internal Revenue Service to obtain information about possible tax fraud by people whose identities are unknown.
Ms. O'Connor said the request is part of a Justice Department and IRS investigation of possible tax evasion by U.S. taxpayers using credit cards issued by offshore banks. An estimated $40 billion dollars ( Anm.: 40 Milliarden USD) in federal tax revenue is lost every year because of the use of credit cards linked to accounts held in foreign tax havens, according to the Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration.
The government made similar requests of MasterCard International Inc., Visa International and American Express Co. in 2000 and 2001. It has sought payment information from 141 merchants. "This is just fact-finding by the IRS," Ms. O'Connor said. "PayPal is one of the mechanisms by which money stashed overseas might be spent."
The summons requires PayPal to provide account and transaction records relating to U.S. taxpayers with MasterCard, Visa and American Express cards issued by banks based in tax-haven countries. The request covers Dec. 31, 1999, through Dec. 31, 2004. PayPal spokeswoman Amanda Pires said the company is evaluating its options. She said the request covers banks based in 35 countries, yet PayPal is available in only 10 of those countries.
In a court filing, the Justice Department said foreign countries such as Antigua, Luxembourg, Panama and Switzerland have bank-secrecy laws that compel U.S. investigators to seek records from other sources, such as credit-card issuers.
The IRS and the Justice Department contend about 72% of taxpayers reviewed through its "Offshore Credit Card Project" examinations in 2005 had underpaid their taxes by using offshore payment cards and bank accounts.
Pay Pal has been mailing all its customers to tell them:
PayPal was granted a bank license with the Luxembourg bank authority. Under this license, PayPal will be regulated centrally by the Commission de Surveillance du Secteur Financier (CSSF), the Luxembourg bank authority.
On 2 July 2007, your customer relationship will be automatically transferred from PayPal (Europe) Ltd. to PayPal Luxembourg.
It says this is because:
The transfer will enable us to market our service to online merchants across Europe and allow consumers to use PayPal in more places and ways across the web. Other eBay group companies, such as Skype and eBay, have an important presence in Luxembourg, so it makes sense for PayPal Europe to co-locate with them.
I don’t believe that. There’s nothing that can be done from Luxembourg that cannot be done from the UK, where PayPal (Europe) is now. I think there are three real reasons:
Pay Pal will pay less tax;
Pay Pal will not be as effectively regulated;
Information exchange will be harder. Luxembourg tries hard not to play that game. And tax authorities are increasingly asking for data. If that information is located in the UK tax authorities can now get it. That will be harder from Luxembourg. It’s a tax haven that still promotes secrecy, after all.
I think those are the real reasons. And if that’s the case the use of such mechanisms as PayPal as part of money laundering will increase. In that case this move is wholly irresponsible.
As reported by the ny times - The US government is expanding its investigation into “offshore tax evasion” to include services sold by a large processor of credit card transactions.
The Internal Revenue Service has asked a Federal District Court to order First Data to reveal account information on merchants that sell offshore services such as financial transaction processing.
The summons, if approved, would force the company to ID US clients who, through an offshore credit card, offshore debit card or other unspecified financial processing methods, “may have diverted unreported income offshore or received unreported income from undisclosed offshore sources or have taken improper deductions or credits or have failed to withhold tax on certain payments made offshore,” all going back to 2002.
The I.R.S. is claiming that First Data has marketed and sold offshore services to US merchants – offshore service providers, who in turn used First Data’s service to help their clients hide what otherwise would be taxable income.
First Data spokesperson Ms. Goeson said, “we have an excellent track record of cooperating with all government agencies and expect to continue our practice of complying with all lawful requests for information with due regard for the confidentiality of our customers’ data.”
The I.R.S. investigation seems to be targeting a subsidiary known as First Data Independent Sales. The subsidiary, which works with 3,200 independent sales offices and agents, began pushing offshore processing services through a web compay from Bermuda called First Atlantic Commerce.
First Data, according to the I.R.S., “clearly markets offshore merchant account services to U.S. merchants as a means of tax avoidance by advertising its services on the Web sites of foreign promoters of abusive offshore tax schemes and products.”
The declaration claims processing and settling functions of the credit card transactions were performed by First Data Merchant Services.
Mr. Reeves is the lead investigator of the I.R.S.’s efforts to examine offshore credit card abuses.
In the past, the I.R.S. issued a summones to eBay, Visa International, and Mastercard. The agency wasnt able to convince many clients with credit cards linked to offshore accounts to surrender their identity. However, the IRS is now broadening its focus to include merchants.
«At a meeting of EU finance ministers in the small but prosperous duchy, Luxembourg refused to agree to a lifting of the tax advantages that have prompted iTunes, Skype, eBay, Santa Claus and other big Internet companies to set up shop there. That effectively blocked the package, because adoption of tax measures requires unanimous agreement by all 27 EU members.
Telecommunications companies, satellite broadcasters and other companies providing online services apply a value added, or sales, tax based on where the company is established, not where the customer is. That makes Luxembourg, where VAT on Internet-related sales is 15 percent, an attractive place to operate. In neighboring Germany, for example, the rate was raised to 19 percent this year.»
Corporate Tax Loopholes Ripe for Crackdown, Some Say
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By MATTHEW SALTMARSH
Published: April 7, 2009
PARIS — Government leaders are heralding the recent progress in dissuading offshore tax evasion through secretive havens like Switzerland, Liechtenstein and the Channel Islands. But what of the potentially bigger prize for revenue collectors: cracking down on corporate tax planning?
A patchwork of rules and divergent tax rates allows multinational corporations, especially banks, to set up offices outside their main markets and book earnings accrued over a broad area in the country with the lowest rate, shifting revenue away from countries that impose a higher tax burden.
By setting low corporate tax rates, countries like Ireland and Switzerland hope to tempt companies to invest, bringing added benefits like employment and research centers. They also set an atmosphere that prevents countries from raising corporate taxes out of fear that companies might flee if rates rise too high. Companies, of course, want to keep their taxes as low as possible.
But with Western governments shifting to a more interventionist bent as the recession deepens, the burden of re-filling their dwindling coffers will fall increasingly on hard-pushed and less-mobile workers. So the time may be ripe for countries to look again at closing loopholes for companies, according to some experts.
Mario Monti, the president of Bocconi University and a former European commissioner for the single market as well as a former antitrust chief, said there was a need to define exactly what constituted corporate profit; then, countries should try to agree on a floor for company tax rates that would not be breached. If that cannot be globally, he suggested, at least it might be possible regionally.
“Tax revenues are falling and each member is playing the role of tax haven relative to its partners,” Mr. Monti said. “How can governments take care of redistribution if their hands are tied?”
The agreements made with tax havens like Switzerland and Andorra before the Group of 20 meeting last week cover tax evasion and fraud. The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development announced Tuesday that the four countries left on its tax haven blacklist — Uruguay, Costa Rica, Malaysia and the Philippines — have now committed to meeting international standards.
But Stephan Kuhn, tax chief for Europe, the Middle East, India and Africa at Ernst & Young, foresees no major changes for companies from the G-20’s pledges because the vast majority are not involved in tax fraud. Rather they are working within the complex web of rules.
“There is a freedom for moving capital and freedom to locate where you like,” he said. “Companies are constantly looking to save costs, and tax is a major cost.”
Officials cite some steps taken already against companies working offshore and argue that more companies will fall into line.
“We’ve made more progress in the last two months than in the last 10 years,” said Jeffrey Owens, director for taxes at the O.E.C.D., which has been trying for more than a decade to improve the exchange of information and avoid beggar-thy-neighbor tax policies. “We’ve moved very substantially to a level playing field,” he said, adding the recent agreements apply as much to companies as to individuals.
“We’re in favor of fair tax competition,” Mr. Owens said. “It’s up to each country to decide its own rate of tax.”
Corporate tax rates have been slipping in recent years and now range from 35 percent in the United States to 15.8 percent in Germany and 12.5 percent in Ireland, according to Ernst & Young. That does not take account of tax breaks like regional grants, and few companies actually pay the stated rates, since they are able to take advantage of a variety of complex tax breaks.
The situation becomes most contentious when assessing what balance sheet items should be accounted for where, and at what price. Transfer pricing, or booking the price of intercompany transfers of assets at sometimes artificially low rates, is a particular minefield for authorities.
“For big multinational corporations, paying tax is essentially optional,” argued Jason Sharman, a professor at Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. “The crackdown has been centered on individuals. Authorities are de facto allowing companies to play fast and loose with the books.”
BusinessEurope, which represents 20 million European companies from its base in Brussels, declined to comment on the issue.
The operations of a company like eBay, the U.S. Internet giant that owns the online calling service Skype, shows how complex corporate fiscal matters have become.
The eBay virtual marketplace runs across Europe and does not distribute physical goods. Its European headquarters is in Bern, where the corporate tax rate is on average 18.6 percent, according to BAK Basel, a consultancy. It also has subsidiaries registered in Dublin and a Luxembourg registration, which allows its E.U.-based users to pay the low Luxembourg value added tax of 15 percent.
In addition, eBay’s payment arm PayPal is registered as a bank in Luxembourg, while its U.S. operations are incorporated in the tax-friendly U.S. state of Delaware.
“Like many other multinational corporations, we are subject to tax in multiple U.S. and foreign tax jurisdictions and have structured our operations to reduce our effective tax rate,” the company said in its 2008 annual report. In 2008, eBay made a $404 million provision for taxes, about 19 percent of its reported income.
Other foreign companies with an important European presence in Switzerland include PepsiCo, Mattel, General Motors and GlaxoSmithKline. Microsoft, has used subsidiaries in Ireland to shave its annual tax bill.
Swiss officials argue that Delaware offers similar tax advantages.
According to the state, 63 percent of the Fortune 500 companies are incorporated in Delaware, which charges no income tax on corporations operating outside the state and has no tax on royalties, allowing some corporations to transfer ownership of trademarks and patents to subsidiaries in the state.
It is impossible to gauge exactly how much money is lost by national tax authorities from offshore centers. But there have been a few estimates, and some signs of action.
A report released in 2008 by the U.S. Senate estimated that some $100 billion in taxes could be evaded by the use of offshore tax shelters, including $30 billion to $60 billion from corporations.
A study this year by the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that many of the largest U.S. corporations operated subsidiaries in offshore havens that might let them evade or defer tax bills. It singled out Citigroup as having 427 subsidiaries in offshore havens like the Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands and Switzerland.
A French government report in 2007 estimated the annual loss from fiscal fraud — including sales tax, personal and corporate evasion — at €20 billion a year, or $16.5 billion at current exchange rates.
A recent report from the publication Alternatives Economiques found that among the CAC 40 companies in France, there were around 1,500 offshore subsidiaries; banks were the biggest offenders.
Last week, Paris prosecutors confirmed they were investigating whether the oil company Total, the tire company Michelin and the French operations of sportswear maker Adidas had committed tax fraud through bank accounts in Liechtenstein. The companies denied the accusations.
In March, the British revenue service estimated that it had lost from £2.1 billion to £6.6 billion a year, or $3.1 billion to $9.7 billion, during the early part of this decade because of corporate tax avoidance. The Trades Union Congress, an umbrella union group, suggested that the figure is more like £12 billion.
In a statement, the revenue office said it “takes any attempt to get around the tax rules extremely seriously” and is “well aware of the type of avoidance structures referred to in recent press reports and has an excellent track record for closing them down.”
European Union countries tried to avoid what was called “a race to the bottom” by establishing a nonbinding code of conduct. It was completed in 1997 and has been updated periodically since then.
But, many analysts say, it is largely ineffective as there was no effort to harmonize rates. “There was a lack of political will,” said John Christensen, director of the Tax Justice Network, a group that aims to improve fiscal openness. The E.U. group studying the issue, he added, “operated in total secrecy and so it was prone to lobbying.”
The Tax Justice Network has proposed that companies should detail accounts of their activity in each country in which they operate. That, Mr. Christensen said, would also help identify risks building in the financial system. It would also raise the cost of doing business.
“Most politicians are still being very timid,” Mr. Christensen said. “Companies will always seek out the weakest link.”
According to a report in the Australian Financial Review, eBay Australia has 5 million Australian users that turned over an estimated one billion dollars since the new tax system came into force. eBay charges a listing fee plus a commission called final value fee on all sales. eBay claims it makes no profit in Australia and does not have to pay taxes. Please give this some thought... ...... with a quarter of the Australian population on their books they still can't make a profit! Every lolly seller could do better! Or maybe he would only look better because he couldn't dig a giant tax hole to fly his loot right through cyberspace into a Swiss bank. Are they just minimising taxes?
eBay has no qualms in making their sellers pay! Australian GST registered sellers are forced to include GST in their eBay prices. So what about eBay fees? eBay takes a commission on the final value which means that we actually pay commission on the GST as well!! Commission for a multinational that pays no tax in Australia on a tax we pay to the Australian Government- that must be the ultimate con!!! And to make it worse, because eBay avoids paying GST on the commission, sellers are denied their input credits.
Don't think for one minute that we're talking peanuts. I was amazed to learn how much top sellers pay in eBay fees! I don't want to disclose any individuals but they range from $ 100,000 to several hundred thousand per annum. EACH!!! You read correctly, f e e s not turnover! You need a very big calculator to work out how much that is for all the GST registered sellers amongst the 5 million Australian eBay users. 1/11th of that should have been allowed as input credits for the registered sellers. They missed out and so did all of us through lost taxes.
The purchase of a second-hand car between an Australian seller and buyer clearly is a GST supply. If mum and dad sell their old Holden it's not. If a registered business sells the same car it is. If the supply is taxable the commission on the supply is taxable, too. Yet eBay argues that somehow they are disconnected from it all because they channel their commission through a Swiss company. Try to sell the same car through an Australian car yard or advertise it in an Australian newspaper. They all pay GST and income tax for the very same transaction.
Does anybody outside the corporate arrogance of eBay Inc really think it's ok for a cyberspace invader to sign up 5 million Australians, take their money and blast off without paying a cent of taxes? Does anybody truly believe that this is anything but tax evasion and an insult to every registered Australian business that pays GST and income tax for an identical transaction?
My argument is that eBay's compliance with Australian tax laws is highly questionable and that the law has clear provisions for such cases, regardless of the tax status or the location of the independent contractor (eBay jargon) that charges the commission. If the contractor doesn't supply an Australian Business Number, sellers have to deduct the full tax rate from their commission payment. I have asked the ATO to clarify this point with a private ruling on whether or not PAYG Withholding applies to eBay commissions. If I have to withhold, every other GST registered seller has to withhold.
I'm in contact with the ATO and I understand that they are ready to rule by the end of April.
I cannot give you odds on the outcome but I bet my last dollar that eBay will ultimately lose this case. Not because of me. There are thousands of disgruntled sellers out there that have paid too much for too long. And there is precedence: eBay's digital tax evasion with the help of a Swiss go-between has already been outlawed in Europe. In European countries eBay had to include value added tax with their commission way back in 2003.
Despite the clear European verdict, eBay continues to operate the same old tax scheme in Australia. You have to ask yourself why they didn't simply get an ABN and start charging GST on their commission. Innocent they are not.
A paediatrician is warning that "net literate" parents are putting their children at risk by buying drugs on the web.
Dr Nadeem Afzal, a consultant paediatric gastroenterologist, carried out an investigation of medicines for sale on eBay for common gut complaints such as constipation, diarrhoea, colic and abdominal pain. He found that 53% of the 186 gastrointestinal drugs on offer were advertised for children. One of these, Infacol for colic, was being sold with a broken seal and the description "slightly used".
Other sellers did not list side-effects or provide use-by dates, and some suggested double the dosage that would normally be given in the UK.
His findings have concerned the Royal Pharmaceutical Society of Great Britain, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry and the British Medical Association.
Afzal said he was particularly worried that 42% of sellers gave no contact or address information so purchasers would have no legal recourse in the event of a problem. Other "dangerous practices" included laxatives being described as slimming pills and as treatments for diarrhoea.
Afzal, a consultant at Southampton General hospital, presented his findings to the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health spring meeting to raise awareness and is now calling on eBay to place better guidance on the site.
The drugs on offer over a period of a month were mainly over-the-counter remedies, but did include some antacid treatments that are prescription-only for the under-16s. One seller's listing said it was suitable for over-12s.
ABPI spokesman Crispin Slee said: "Anyone who buys prescription drugs over the internet is taking a huge risk. It is worrying enough to think that adults are self-prescribing in this way. But to learn that parents are putting their children in harm's way beggars belief. Parents from the Google generation are playing russian roulette with their children's wellbeing."
In the study, 42% of sellers did not mention dosages, 93% ignored side-effects and 14% didn't list what the drug was suitable for. Almost a third of sellers were offering drugs alongside household goods such as gardening tools, cosmetics and toys. "I suspect net literate people are tempted to buy online to save money and for convenience's sake," Afzal said. "This is not about the blame game, this is about awareness."
He added: "The onus is on the lister, not on eBay. That should change. They should state online: 'Check the MHRA [Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency] guidance on the sale of medicines.' Also, people need to be made aware that just because a seller has got a 99% positive feedback rating, it does not mean that this [product] is not counterfeit."
The Royal Pharmaceutical Society estimates that two million people buy drugs regularly over the internet, many from legitimate online pharmacies. But other sellers are offering counterfeit or substandard drugs. In April, GP magazine reported that one in four family doctors has treated patients for adverse reactions to medicines bought online.
David Pruce, director of policy and communications at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said: "It's horrendous that people would even consider buying medicines with broken seals or from unknown sources. You should never take a prescription medicine without a valid prescription, let alone give these to your children. The medicine could have bad side-effects or worse."
A spokesperson for eBay said: "We strongly encourage our users to be entirely accurate in their listings and to ensure that the packaging is intact. We are now looking at new ways of strengthening safeguards in this area."
(Oh and why only now? - Now that the spotlight is on this shit hole company called Ebay for allowing this practice to go on for SOOOOOOOO long; like it has with all the rest of it's criminal activites)
Hmmmm My spies have sent me some info that the tiresome hack, the dynamic duo Ebay and Payapl are putting out more of the same old, same old, Ebay / Paypal scams....
Ebay tells of a great sale and to rush along and buy it all from THEIR website; Never mind all the remaining sellers they have bullied and strong armed into complicity.
But the scumminess in this deal is that Ebay / Paypal have rigged it so that the deal only applies IF you sign up and or use Paypal - and pay via Paypal - only to sellers who accept Paypal....
And in signing up - you agree to be bound by all of Ebay and Paypal's terms and conditions.
Well fuck me! - What a treat that is.
And of course no scummy Ebay sale would be complete without the legendary and amazing
"Ebay and Paypal terms and conditions"....
Composed of All of the Ebay policies... I think at last count there was about 20 of them.
There are also about 20 of the same policies and user agreements for Paypal.
Then we have the Product Disclosure Statement; and
The Financial Services Guide.....
All in all coming to about 600 pages of A4 print; rigged of course in "We take the money and give you nothing" Ebay sleazy lawyer speak;
Spread out across some 127 web pages...
And they can all change without notifying you, as often as 5 times in 3 hours...
So CHECK OUT the highlighted sections in Ebays own Terms and conditions for this promotion alone - the guarantee that they don't guarantee - "That is guaranteed - in writing!"
WOW - Scumbag Ebay lawyer speak - and it's the foundation of ALL Ebay and Paypal user agreements and policies....
Terms & Conditions
This offer is open to selected eBay.com.au registered members who are Australian residents and are 18 years of age or older. By using or attempting to use this voucher you agree to accept and be bound by these terms and conditions.
Only one voucher per registered eBay.com.au member. This voucher is valid for one eBay.com.au purchase only and is valid for up to 10% off the item price (excluding postage) up to a maximum of AUD$100 off.
To redeem this voucher, when making a purchase on eBay.com.au, and using PayPal as your payment method, enter this voucher code into the voucher box during the checkout process. The email address you registered for your eBay and PayPal accounts must be the same in order to redeem your voucher successfully. For help in changing or adding email addresses to your PayPal account, click here. If you don't have a PayPal account, you can open one for free at www.PayPal.com.au
In order to redeem this voucher there is no minimum purchase value. There is also no maximum purchase value, however the maximum discount is $100.
This offer is valid only when you pay with, and the seller accepts, PayPal as a payment method.
The discount is limited to the amount shown on the voucher off the final, total item cost, excluding any postage and handling cost.
All transactions applicable to this voucher promotion must comply with the eBay.com.au and PayPal.com.au User Agreements and associated policies, located at http://www.eBay.com.au and https://www.PayPal.com.au respectively.
The voucher is valid for use between 00:00:01 AEST 19 June 2009 until 23:00:00 AEST 28 June 2009. All vouchers must be redeemed by 23:00:00 AEST 28 June 2009.
This voucher cannot be combined with any other voucher, site discount, rebate, offer, gift voucher or other promotion offered by eBay or PayPal.
The voucher has no cash value, cannot be transferred and cannot be forwarded to a third party other than eBay and PayPal's intended recipient.
The parties submit to the non-exclusive jurisdiction of the courts of the state of New South Wales.
eBay and PayPal Australia Pty Ltd ("PayPal") make no representations or warranties of any kind regarding any product or service provided by any third party in connection with any voucher promotion.
eBay or PayPal will not be responsible for any performance or failure to perform any services related to any voucher promotion, or for any costs, damages, accident, delay, injury, loss, expense, or inconvenience that may arise in connection with the use of the voucher, provided that nothing in these terms shall limit eBay's or PayPal's liability for death or personal injury caused by its negligence.
The PayPal service is provided by PayPal Australia Pty Limited (ABN 93 111 195 389) which holds an Australian Financial Services Licence, number 304962. eBay is an authorised representative, number 308318, of PayPal for the purpose of providing information about PayPal. eBay and PayPal are not acting as your agents, are not providing personal financial advice to you and do not take your individual circumstances into account in providing information about PayPal. You should consider the Product Disclosure Statement and Financial Services Guide https://www.PayPal.com.au before deciding to sign-up for or use the PayPal online payment service at
Ahhh yes the good old Ebay and Paypal double speak and slippery wording - The Four Finger Effect.
Double Dipping and Double Meanings.
Great.
So fuck Ebay and Paypal, and their sale, and their terms and conditions and the shitty rip off fees and piss poor customer service - and their scumbag lawyers.
Thursday, June 18, 2009 - Ebay can fuck off and die..... Scummy freebees, and even higher fees (again)
Yes that parody of eating dog shit, known as Ebay, has just announced 5 FREE listings a month for the sellers;
And to back it up by demonstrating how stupid the management of this company really is, the offer is piss poor, the savings if any are minimal, but the final sale fees are also waaaaay up - again; and to top it all off - it comes with the endlessly awful Ebay / Paypal scams, rip-off's and piss poor customer service.
It's called giving you a crumb and taking your meal (and then shitting on the empty plate)....
I tend to wonder how these people in Ebay can be so pathetic as to think most sellers or prospective NEW sellers are this half baked as to consider their offer as a great deal - because no one else does.
eBay announces 5 free auction listings a month, yawn.
Good writing instructors tell students that drama must be created immediately in a story or an article to capture attention. Sometimes, that's just too difficult to achieve. This ones a yawner.
It's all to do about nothing I'm affraid, eBay's 5 free auction listings announcement.
I can hear the groans again, "oh no, more griping about eBay, even when the company is trying to do something good". But come on, is this the best they can pull out of a hat, 5 free auction listings a month?
This is a pittance to those that would list successful auctions on eBay, here's why: When I sell via an auction on eBay, I start it low and let it go. I subscribe to the philosophy that if starting price is low enough, you invite more people to the party. This is not new, and I didn't invent it. It's auction 101. Because I start all my auctions at $9.99 or less, the listing fee is 35 cents an item.
The 5 free auction listings would save me...drumroll please. $1.75 a month!
Now to be fair, the savings are a little more if you were to start your auctions out at higher prices. But guess what? Most savvy auction sellers know that you get a big fail when you start out an auction at a high price. For this reason smart auction sellers start red hot items out low to get a bigger bidding pool, which creates more competition in an auction atmosphere.
This is a big yawn, trust me, few will run to eBay to get 5 free auction listings a month. If anything people are scratching their heads saying, "I don't get it".
Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay Marketplaces, said:
"By eliminating the upfront costs of selling on eBay, we hope this new structure will encourage all sellers - new, occasional or experienced - to use the offering as a cost-effective way to sell on our site and earn a little extra cash."
It's taking all the restraint I have not to get uber snarky here. Where in the world does $1.75 count as even a LITTLE extra cash?
What's more, is that eBay has worked very hard in the last 1 year to project an image of a company that wants to get away from the auction format. Recently, Geoffrey Fowler of the Wall St. Journal featured myself, and Jack Sheng in a front page feature article titled "Auctions fade as eBay offers wholesale items at fixed prices".
So why this crazy, half hearted, discount offer to auction sellers? Is eBay a rudderless ship? The auction side of the eGiant certainly seems so. I sincerely hope for the sake of the company, that the "Costco plan" works out, because I don't think that 5 free listings a month is going to help bring any numbers back to eBay.
Quite frankly, as an auction seller, I'm insulted that eBay either thinks $1.75 would be an incentive to me, or that I just can't do the math. If eBay is sincere about offering a "cost-effective way to sell on the site, they could start by bringing the a some of the quality back that it's auction sellers were accustomed to.
EBay Waives Some Listing Fees, But Changes Commission Fees
By Scott Morrison Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES
SAN FRANCISCO (Dow Jones)--In an apparent bid to attract new sellers, troubled e-commerce giant eBay Inc. (EBAY) said Tuesday it will waive some listing fees for people who want to auction goods on the company's marketplaces platform.
San Jose, Calif.-based eBay, which is struggling to compete with Web retailers such as Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN), said sellers would be able to list five products for auction every 30 days without having to pay up-front listing fees.
But the move could prove ineffective because the new pricing structure may actually cost sellers more in commission fees than under the previous pricing structure, depending on the auction starting price and final selling price.
EBay has in the past year come under intense criticism from small sellers who have grown disenchanted with fee changes that made it easier and cheaper for bigger merchants to list products in large quantities.
Critics have argued those changes, part of the company's ongoing turnaround strategy, have transformed eBay from a quirky online auction market into a high-volume fixed-price retail site.
The company said it hoped Tuesday's changes would attract new sellers to try the site without upfront costs.
"By eliminating the upfront costs of selling on eBay, we hope this new structure will encourage all sellers - new, occasional or experienced - to use the offering as a cost-effective way to sell on our site and earn a little extra cash," said Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay's marketplaces unit.
The company typically charges listing fees, known as "insertion fees," of 10 cents to $4 for items put up for auction on eBay, whether or not those goods are sold. Those fees, which depend on the value of any particular item, will still apply when a seller exceeds more than five listings within the 30-day period. The company will also continue to use a tiered system to calculate commission fees on all items sold.
Items that aren't subject to listing fees, however, will be subject to a flat 8.75% commission, up to $20, meaning that, in some cases, sellers could end up paying higher fees than they would have under the tiered system.
EBay is in the midst of a multi-year effort to turn around its ailing marketplaces business, which last year generated more than half of the company's $8.5 billon in annual revenue. Ebay also operates online payments unit PayPal and Internet telephony division Skype.
The company's marketplaces business has suffered as online shoppers gravitate to rivals such as Amazon, which offers fixed-priced items and free shipping. Ebay recently told investors it will focus on the "secondary market," which includes out-of-season and overstock goods, as one-of-a-kind used and antique items.
On Tuesday, eBay shares fell 1% to $17.23.
-By Scott Morrison, Dow Jones Newswires; 415-765-6118; scott.morrison@dowjones.com
If there's one thing that's sure to turn the heads of bargain-seekers, it's the word "free," and a new eBay program capitalizes on this fact by waiving some insertion fees. Unfortunately, there is a catch or two, and the auction company doesn't seem likely to win over many of its critics with this move.
eBay first announced the "5 Free Insertion Fees Every 30 Days" idea about a month ago. On the front end, it was exactly as advertised, which was nice enough. Sellers have never enjoyed forking over cash when their products don't change hands.
The trouble came when sellers noticed that a final value fee of 8.75 percent (or $20 - whichever's less) could actually cause them to owe eBay more money than usual under certain circumstances.
Now, as the program rolls out, it appears that nothing's been changed. Sellers just need to do the math carefully and consider opting out of the new fee structure by using an eBay or third party listing tool.
Still, eBay executives have their fingers crossed that the change will result in increased participation. Lorrie Norrington, president of eBay Marketplaces, said in a statement, "By eliminating the upfront costs of selling on eBay, we hope this new structure will encourage all sellers - new, occasional or experienced - to use the offering as a cost-effective way to sell on our site and earn a little extra cash."
4 Comments
By wikoogle (WPN reader) - Thu, 06/18/2009 - 09:49
We are all previous sellers and buyers on ebay. And we have grown to hate ebay due to the litany of practices they've pioneered to establish a monopoly and squeeze every drop of money out of their sellers and thus buyers.
Here is a list of ebay's actions that we are most displeased about...
1.) Just in the past few years, ebay has slowly increased the percentage of their commission for goods sold from a little over 6% to 8.75% of the final ending fee!! A 50% increase in your commission/share of the profit in just a few years is absolutely unacceptable!!
2.) When overstock.com popped up as a competitor to ebay offering lower commission rates, ebay proceeded to buy them out, gut the auction portion of their site, and only then did it start to increase it's commission rates ever higher.
3.) Ebay has gone to extraordinary lenghts to shut down other competitors like yahoo auctions and amazon auctions, and are now engaged in buying up any online auction and classified listings left over.
Recently, they bought up 27% of Craigslist (a rival) and are currently being sued by Craigslist for using that stock share to undermine Craigslist. Once any remaining competition is done away with, expect to see ebay's commissions rise even higher. This is the definition of monopolistic anti-competitive tactics.
4.) When paypal first opened to provide people a cheap easy way to pay for online auctions and other purchases, ebay proceeded to buy out the company, and later increased it's commission rates. Whereas ebay used to allow sellers to enable buyers to pay for items with cashier's checks, and money orders even just a few months ago, ebay recently changed this policy. Now the only payment method that can be used on ebay is paypal.
Any sellers that tell their buyers they can pay via money order or check if they don't have a paypal account, get their auction closed by ebay, without a refund of the listing commission fees. This ensures that ebay gets a cut of the price twice, first for the auction's ending price itself, and then a percentage of the paypal payment as well. Most sellers including I've had auctions that ebay ended prematurely, without warning , and without refunding the listing fees because they mentioned that they will accept payment via either paypal or money order from buyers that don't have a paypal account.
5.) In addition to the continual increases in the commission fees, ebay has taken away sellers right to leave nonpaying buyers and buyers who abuse the auction site bad feedback. Sellers no longer can leave negative feedback to bad buyers. This policy along with the higher commission rates led to many sellers boycotting ebay as well.
Seriously, does ebay's management not see the direct correlation between the higher commission rates it started charging 2 years ago, with the loss of sellers (and thus buyers) from it's site?
Yet, in an effort to squeeze every drop of money out of us, ebay has continuously increased the commission fees more and more and each year. And as a result, it has become less and less profitable for all of us. Many ebay stores have had to close. Ebay's repeated milking of your sellers with higher and higher commissions and more restrictions is only going to continue your sites trend of losing business, and it's stock's decline. And as this petition goes to show, we, the previous buyers and sellers on your site, are well aware of what you have been doing to squeeze every drop of profit out of us.
We strongly urge to google or some other competitor to launch an auction site to compete with ebay that is FREE and completely supported by ad revenue to provide relief to the many sellers that have had to close up shop on ebay due to the commissions going up from 6% to 8.75% in just two years. And we urge them to do so before ebay completes it's current buyout of craigslist.
Ebay is such a great example of galloping management incompentence ruining a vibrant and successful company. Ebay had a unique attribute - it was the place to go to find fascinating and wonderful stuff for auction - and where to find valuable items too - it was becoming the Sotheby's and Christies of ecommerce and with the chance to dominate even these. I was a biggish ebay seller and buyer for many years, I don't list any more as there's little point, and now my standard search, which used to pick up many items of interest to bid on, now only returns a few. Little point logging on any more really - with the neat stuff going, the "eyeballs" are going too, Ebay's no longer unique, just another big box estore and there are better ones out there. I wonder too if ebay had any idea of the demographics of their customers - the despised small sellers - the (ex) sellers I know locally certainly aren't the mom and pop borderline poverty types but are rather well-off collectors with tons of disposable income - I guess they're elsewhere now.
Hi, I did some calculations and realize that it can be a good and a bad thing. To simplify I assumed that the starting price is in the same range as the final value. So up to 45$ the new fees are advantageous, between 45$ and 65$ is about the same. Between 65$ and 450$ the new fees can cost you up to 7.60$ more than the old fees... For 450$ and up, it's a real good deal.
So if you plan to sell an item between 65$ and 450$, you better using a listing tool.
There are a lot of complaints from sellers about Ebay fee and negative feedback. Now, many sellers moved out from Ebay and start with other website. I think Ebay should pay more attention to sellers who create the traffic and money for Ebay.
I have heard of seller complaints on ebay for 2 years but tried to stay on ebay. But they just do not welcome smaller sellers like me. Fees, changes, bad buyers can insult and say what they wish and you cannot retaliate with a negative feedback, etc etc WOW it is one nightmare.
With effect from today, I am taking my business elsewhere and I am currently writing to all me past clients about my migration away from ebay.
Wednesday, June 17, 2009 - Meggy goes down - in flames Part XXXXIIII - Meg Whitman scums for money and asks you to spam for her
Meg Asks for Help - June 16, 2009
Team Meg,
Thank you for your interest in my exploratory campaign for Governor. I so appreciate not only your interest, but your thoughts and ideas as well. I invite you to join me as I campaign across California – through my website (megwhitman.com), and through Facebook and Twitter!
I believe we can change this state, but restoring California will not be easy. It will take time to uproot old habits… old ways of thinking… and old ways of doing business. In essence, we must create a New California.
What is A New California? Simple. It’s the combination of the Golden State’s rich heritage, natural beauty and optimistic people combined with a future where we have the strongest economy, best schools, solid infrastructure and quality of life.
California used to be the envy of the world – delivering limitless opportunity and prosperity. But we lost our focus and our leaders have failed to get it back. I believe that we can and must work together and take action to restore the state’s standing as a global leader.
Please join me in these efforts. One way you can help, today, is to invest in my campaign with a simple contribution of $10, $25, $50 or any amount you can. Please Click Here to contribute today!
And, to ask you one more thing, can you please forward this email to 10 of your neighbors, friends and colleagues and encourage them to visit megwhitman.com and sign up to help.
Together we can change California – and do it we must – because we all love California Meg Whitman too much to let it fail! for her to not personally profit from your gullibility.
Many thanks,
NUT Meg
(Donating to her cause is a good thing, 10c at a time, 10 times a day, every day, and ask for the receipts to be mailed out to you)
I have something that I would like to ask your opinion about.
Ok, I was trying to sell some of those (brand X) garments on ebay. They kicked them off because they said it was a copyright thing and the items were fake ...bla bla bla.
The fact is they are real and I bought them from Macys myself.
But heres the strange part. I got a question from a user from China asking if I ship international. He had no feed back or history at all.Never bought or sold anything. Just a guy from china .
I said no I do not ship international. A day went by and my auctions were canceled.
Now....listen to this. I relisted the same item under my friends account on ebay. Now he gets the same email from the same guy.
This is very strange don't you think?
Has ebay ever had some undercover people screening for items?
This is the reply:
Ebay is filled with idiots, arseholes and spies........
There are a squillion reports of people having their bad feedback about Ebay removed, from the ebay forums..... and their accounts closed.
As fast as they put it up, the little spies take it down....
Ebays "pollitically correct" revisionist spies - unless it's Ebay friendly speak, to make Ebay look really great, it' ain't going up, and if it does go up, it ain't staying up.
Trading on Ebay is like taking a shit - there is nothing really wrong with taking a shit; except Ebays toilet is filled with alligators and the competitions's toilet isn't.
What you have cited is "pretty fucking nutty" BUT it also completely fits in with the totally insane shit that the people who compose this company, and what they consistently pull on people.
Dealing with the people who run Ebay is pretty much like taking a really huge, really BAD acid trip, that just never ever stops.
Do a search on google, with these words: bus cut head off canada; and see the stories that come up about a guy on a greyhound bus who starts stabbing his fellow passenger to death while he is asleep, and then cuts his head off..... and eating him and disemboweling him......
This really is the kind of "maddness" your dealing with - from the people who run Ebay.....
I mean your only selling a very small number of these garments...... and not 100,000 of them, for the last 6 months, with 2,000 bad feed backs and complaints saying "Arrrgghhh they are selling fakes and really bad ones at that".... which by the way - Ebay refuses to shut down their account, because they are making a heap for Ebay, and your not...
You know?
Cheers
MM
(for the purposes of historical accuracy - The nut on the bus with the knife REALLY did happen, so I have included it here; so that you too, can remember just how great dealing with Ebay really is)
Man accused of Greyhound bus beheading asks judge: 'please kill me'
Sophie Tedmanson
Vince Weiguang Li is led into court in Manitoba
He is accused of one of the most gruesome crimes of recent years – decapitating and cannibalising another passenger on board a Greyhound bus – but when Vince Weiguang Li appeared in a Canadian courtroom on Tuesday he gave no reason for the attack, uttering just three words: “Please kill me”.
Li, who immigrated to Canada from China in 2004, is accused of killing 22-year-old carnival worker Tim McLean in front of fellow passengers on a Greyhound bus which was travelling along a remote highway from Edmonton, Alberta, to Winnipeg, Manitoba, last Wednesday night. He is charged with second degree murder.
Appearing in court in Manitoba yesterday, Li, 40, was ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation as prosecutors revealed that he had a plastic bag containing his victim's ear, nose and part of a mouth in his pocket when police officers arrested him.
Prosecutor Joyce Dalmyn said Li, who was armed with a pair of scissors, was seen by officers “cutting body parts from the victim and eating those body parts” and had carried the victim's severed head back and forth on the bus “taunting” officers.
She said the only response police received from Li when they approached him was: “I have to stay on the bus forever”.
Ms Dalmyn said that in an interview with police after his arrest Li had declined to speak for the most part but on four occasions had indicated in a low voice that he was guilty.
The gruesome and apparently unprovoked murder occurred while some of the 37 passengers slept and others watched the movie The Legend of Zorro as the bus travelled along a desolate stretch of the TransCanada Highway.
Horrified passengers fled the bus as Li began stabbing McLean, who was sitting next to him and was said to be sleeping and wearing headphones when he was attacked.
Witnesses said Li then severed McLean’s head and displayed it to some of the passengers outside the bus before he began hacking at the body.
According to a leaked police tape, one officer at the scene reported seeing Li cutting off pieces of the victim's body and eating them.
Ms Dalmyn said police are looking into information that Li may have spent as many as four days in a psychiatric facility prior to the attack.
However a church pastor who hired Li when he first immigrated to Canada with his wife, Anna, said that he had never showed any signs of anger or emotional problems when he worked there as a custodian.
Since his arrest, Li has declined to speak to prosecutors and his court-appointed attorney.
Instead, when asked by Provincial Court of Manitoba Judge Michel Chartier if he wanted a lawyer, Li shook his head and quietly said: “please kill me”.
Ms Dalmyn said Li is due back in court September 8 when prosecutors hope he will have had a psychiatric assessment.
“Then we can look to consider whether in the psychiatrists opinion the accused is fit to stand trial and whether we are proceeding at that point or whether there are fitness concerns that need to be canvassed by the court,” she said.
In the wake of the attack, Greyhound has scrapped a billboard ad campaign that extolled the relaxing upside of bus travel which had the unfortunate punch line stating: “There's a reason you've never heard of 'bus rage’”.
Is any tech CEO more reviled by his or her own customers than eBay’s John Donahoe? In online forums, sellers seethe about the higher fees and site changes he’s implemented. They write and sign petitions calling for his ouster. Even eBay employees voted him onto Glassdoor.com’s “Naughty List” of CEOs with the highest disapproval ratings.
But while just a few months ago, Donahoe seemed destined to steer the e-commerce giant into irrelevance, a consensus is now starting to emerge that he may instead be turning it around. Investors have driven the stock up 71 percent since it hit a 52-week low on March 9, compared with a 44 percent rise in the Nasdaq. Collins Stewart analyst Sandeep Aggarwal said last week that he sees “many evidences of turnaround” at the company. And the ever-volatile Jim Cramer rebuffed viewer demands to put Donahoe on his gimmicky “CEO Wall of Shame,” saying the stock could rally further.
Most of Donahoe’s changes are small but significant, in that they go a long way toward safer, easier shopping. For example, Aggarwal estimated that more than half of the items sold on eBay are now available for free shipping, up from less than 10 percent last year. “Free shipping” is important as it’s a phrase that generates higher conversion rates in online ads. eBay’s own search engine now promotes more reliable sellers. Recent fee changes have, by Aggarwal’s count, increased the number of listings beyond those found on Amazon. Perhaps most encouraging: Donahoe has finally come up with a coherent description of the new eBay: It’s not Amazon, or even Overstock.com. It’s an online big-box discounter, like Costco.
Other parts of eBay’s cluttered corporate structure are being addressed as well. Donahoe sold StumbleUpon back to its founders and is mulling the retirement of the Kijiji classified site. Skype is gathering enough momentum to allow for a sale or spinoff at a respectable price.
Strategically, much of these changes make sense, but it’s not clear to what degree they’re resonating, especially with consumers. Quantcast data suggests weekly traffic to eBay continues to erode relative to Amazon’s. And comScore’s data from April, the most recent available, showed a 15 percent year-over-year drop in eBay traffic — although that’s a slight improvement over the 20 percent declines logged in both February and March.
Even if the changes work, they don’t address what may be the biggest challenge to eBay’s future: Craigslist. Yes, eBay owns a significant stake in Craigslist. But Craigslist’s for-sale listings, which are free to post, still compete with eBay’s fee-based listings. During the last recession, people looking to raise quick cash by selling their stuff turned to eBay. This time, they turn to Craigslist.
If Craigslist wanted to kneecap eBay, it could find a way to make its for-sale listings nationwide, not just locally, and facilitate shipping arrangements. There’s no way eBay’s fee-dependent revenues would be able to compete with free. That would make the challenges John Donahoe faces today look small.
BAY AREA NEWS GROUP
Posted: 05/16/2009 01:38:42 PM PDT
Updated: 05/16/2009 01:38:42 PM PDT
From the Capitol
The California Chamber of Commerce has listed its 2009 "job killer" bills.
Among the 27 bad-for-business measures the chamber is targeting is Assemblywoman Fiona Ma's Assembly Bill 1000, which would require employers to provide paid sick leave, and Sen. Tom Torlakson's ACA 22, which would increase tobacco taxes by $1.48 per pack of cigarettes. The chamber has a strong record at killing the job killers, particularly in the governor's office. Since Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger was sworn into office, he has nixed 47 of the Chamber's 51 "job killer" bills. In 2008, he vetoed nine of 10.
Among those considered costly workplace mandates:
AB664 (Skinner, D-Berkeley) Increased Workers' Compensation Costs —Increases workers' compensation costs by creating a legal presumption that neck and back injuries, and blood-borne and specific infections suffered by hospital employees are related to employment.
AB842 (Swanson, D-Oakland) Hurts Struggling Businesses —Expands mandates and increases liability for employers related to the state version of the federal Workers Adjustment and Retraining Notification (WARN) Act of 1988.
AB1421 (Swanson, D-Oakland) Pay for Commuting —Imposes new costs on employers that provide transportation to the worksite by requiring them to pay employees for time spent commuting from the parking lot to the workstation.
SB145 (DeSaulnier, D-Concord) Workers' Compensation Apportionment —Erodes recent workers' compensation reforms and leads to higher premiums for California employers by undercutting fair and reasonable provisions in current law that protect an employer from paying for disability that was not caused by a workplace accident.
SB810 (Leno, D-San Francisco) Government-Run Health Care —Creates a new government-run, multibillion-dollar socialized health care system based on a yet-to-be specified 'premium structure' —in essence, a tax on all employers.
Among those considered economic development barriers:
AB89 (Torlakson, D-Antioch) Targeted Tax Increase/Flawed Budget Philosophy —Exacerbates state budget problems and harms tobacco industry by unfairly targeting it for a new cigarette tax, a declining revenue source, to fund new government spending programs.
AB656 (Torrico, D-Newark) Gas Price Increase —Increases gas prices and dependence on foreign oil by targeting the oil industry for a tax on oil extracted only in California.
Among those considered inflated liability costs
SB95 (Corbett, D-San Leandro) Vehicle Price Increase —Imposes new surety costs on car dealers in an already-difficult economy by placing excessive restrictions on the sale of trade-in vehicles and eliminating a voluntary consumer mediation program.
— Sacramento Bee
Online in print
This is a sampling of The Political Blotter written by political writers Josh Richman and Lisa Vorderbrueggen. Read more and post comments at www.ibabuzz.com/politics.
May 12
Republican gubernatorial candidate Meg Whitman was down in Long Beach today, urging state leaders to immediately slash nearly 10 percent of the state government's workforce in response to ugly new budget deficit estimates.
"We haven't looked hard enough at where we can cut. We can lay off 20,000 to 30,000 state employees while prioritizing public safety and teachers," Whitman told the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce. "We shouldn't have to lay off teachers, we need to lay off bureaucrats."
Streamline the state bureaucracy — hmm, where have I heard that before? Oh, wait, I know: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been trumpeting this from his campaign in 2003 right up through this year's crisis. (Remember his first State of the State, way back in January 2004? "I don't want to move boxes around; I want to blow them up. The Executive Branch of this government is a mastodon frozen in time and about as responsive.")
Fact is, "cut the bloated bureaucracy" has been a GOP rallying cry for decades, and yet whenever the study, the audit or the blue-ribbon commission report comes back, we're suddently talking about far less "waste, fraud and abuse" than they'd implied. Is there some fat to cut? Sure. Should we? Probably. Will it fix this deficit? Not even close.
The budget deficit now looks to be about $21.3 billion; it would be about $15 billion if voters approved Propositions 1C, 1D and 1E next week, but that almost certainly ain't gonna happen. And $21 billion isn't 30,000 jobs, as George Skelton put it back in February:
"According to the state budget document, there is the equivalent of 205,000 full-time jobs controlled by the governor. There actually are more workers than that because some are part-time. Do the math based on 16 months, since that's now the time frame of the projected deficit, assuming a balanced-budget package could be implemented by March 1.
"You could lay off all those state workers — rid yourself of their pay and benefits — and save only $24.4 billion. "Meanwhile, you would have dumped 160,000 convicted felons onto the streets because all the prisons were closed after the guards and wardens were fired. There'd be no Highway Patrol because all the officers were canned. State parks would be closed because there were no fee-collectors or rangers.
"Truth is the savings wouldn't even add up to $24.4 billion because some of those employees are paid out of small special funds that are self-sustaining."
Friday, June 5, 2009 - Meggy goes down - in flames Part XXXXII - Meg Whitman (Mrs Potato Face) is fugly.
Fugly - for the non Australians, is an abbreviation for Fucking UGLY... = FUGLY.
And in looking at Meggy Whitman - just before all the cosmetic surgery, she looked really fucking ugly... That is NOT a nice looking woman.... She does NOT look like a NICE person...
And I know stacks of OLD women, and how they look, comes about generally as a result of their character.
If they are happy, generous, fun loving, creative, honest, open and sincere people - it shows in their faces and looks; lines and aging and all.....
Meggy on the other hand, looks like complete shit.
Like it or not, people are interested in other people for sex, relationships and things in common - like triathletes don't hang out at the boozer with people with beer guts, puffing on fags, eating greasy junk food - and who's idea of exercise is to walk to the car and drive 1 block to buy some more smokes and then drive home again....
Meggy - Mrs Rip everyone off blind with scams, fees and extremely bad management - well her face also reflects her character - and her tenure as CEO.... and what she did and how she did it...
I was thinking I'd really hate to be coming home and having to fuck THAT every night..... Uggghhh a paper bag job if ever.
So forget about fucking her, as quickly as you can, and reflect upon what it would be like to work in an office, and to have a boss with a head like that stalking around the place - and the attitude that drives such a character.....
Age and wrinkles in my book mean nothing, an attractive person radiates cheerful ambience;
Consider these women - they look really great.
Most of these women are 20 or 30 or more years older than Whitman and they look great and Whitman at around 56 or so - looks like complete shit; Mrs Potato Head - to the Max.
I was thinking of doing some kind of cruel or illustrative morphing of an image from the "Mr Potato Man" program and Whitmans face... and I thought - "Her head looks like a fucking potato".
I also thought I can't use any kind of photo editing program to any kind of comedic effect, as she looks so fucking ugly that all that will happen is she will look like a REAL potato head with arms and legs on it... and there is nothing funny about that.
The only thing I could compare Whitmans face with was some fish from the bottom of the ocean.
But be mindful that the fish aren't ugly... it's just the way they are.
Whitman however, looks the way she does, as a result of the kind of person she has chosen to become; and the kind of person she has chosen to become, is reflected in the way she chose ran Ebay.
The resemblance between Whitman and the deep sea fish is remarkable - but the fish are not slimebags scamming people to the max with a load of lies, mind games and piss poor customer service.
While this HUGE squid is a "monster from the deep", it really doesn't look much like Whitman;
But Dear Meggy, is a Monster from Corporate America.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation on Thursday launched a new online tool that tracks changes in the Terms of Service agreements of 44 Web sites like Google, eBay, Amazon, Craigslist and Facebook.
The foundation's TOSBack.org site automatically checks every hour for changes in terms of service, privacy policies and other user agreements.
It then displays the terms side by side against previous versions, some culled from the Wayback Machine, with deletions highlighted in blue and additions highlighted in yellow.
Most people skip reading the TOS because it's boring and confusing. "When you do look at it, in most cases you've got to be a lawyer to understand it," said Tim Jones, the foundation's activism and technology manager. "And even if you are a lawyer, a lot of it can be vague."
But that language is the foundation of a person's relationship with the Web site or service.
"Some changes to terms of service are good for consumers, and some are bad," said EFF senior staff attorney Fred von Lohmann in a statement. "But Internet users are increasingly trusting websites with everything from their photos to their 'friends lists' to their calendar - and sometimes even their medical information."
Back in February, when social media network Facebook changed its terms of service, it sparked a grassroots revolt over privacy concerns. In April, Facebook went back to the old policy after a vote by members.
Some terms go months without changes, and when it happens, it's to clean up language or typos. But then there are cases like when eBay changed its user agreement five times between 4 p.m. May 14 and 6 p.m. May 15. The biggest change was language to clarify eBay's policy on counterfeit items.
Right now, the TOS tracker can't explain why the changes are made or what they mean, but it can alert watchdogs out on the Internet who can.
"We launched it to get people talking and thinking about these issues," Jones said.
This article appeared on page C - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle
I was going to look up Ebays latest NAZI speak "user agreement" with all the financial weasle words rigged totally in Ebays favour; but Woooooops the slime in Ebay have changed it again!.... and again... and again.... and again.... and again......
The biggest change on counterfeit items?
What send Ebay 25,000 ermails on getting fakes and counterfits and they send back 25,000 emails telling you, "Thank you for taking part in our customer satisfaction survey"?
You can rest assured that Ebay will rip you off every step of the way... and they won't do squat to stop anyone else from doing it either....
"Why did she risk the assault on her integrity and that of the company she has run so well? She certainly didn't need the money. Nor could she have been unaware of how unfair the practice is to small shareholders."
-- William G. Flanagan, Dirty Rotten CEOs, on Meg Whitman
"It's time to run California like a business."
-- Meg Whitman
Meg Whitman isn't the richest woman in California. She's only the fourth richest. In fact, she's barely the 897th richest person in the universe. And voters get that. That's what gives her that common touch you just wouldn't get from Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands.
And Meg Whitman earned her money herself. All $1.4 billion of it. It came from perseverance, patience and long hard honest work. Except for the $1.78 million from Goldman Sachs. Which she stole.
But she gave it back when they caught her. (Maybe there's a campaign slogan in that: "Whitman for Governor. If You Catch Me Stealing I'll Give it Back.") And the whole incident made her feel just awful.
She not only returned the cash, she emailed this note:
"The last 24 hours have been painful for me. There is nothing worse than having your integrity questioned under circumstances where you know that you did nothing wrong and followed all the rules. Given my experience yesterday, I plan to participate in the growing national debate about corporate governance and business ethics."
And since that day, her life has been charted by one lodestar and driven by one idea: The rules of corporate governance and business ethics must be loosened up.
But I'm getting ahead of myself.
It's like this:
Meg Whitman was the CEO of eBay. EBay's investment bankers were Goldman Sachs. EBay didn't have to hire Goldman Sachs to be their investment bankers, because this was a few years ago, when there were lots of banks, and not just the three we keep bailing out. Goldman Sachs was very grateful for eBay's business and they had a special way of showing their gratitude to eBay's executives. Goldman Sachs would let them buy shares in other companies whose initial public offerings they were underwriting. This was during the dot-com era and IPO companies often posted huge first-day gains. After Meg Whitman brought eBay's business to Goldman Sachs, she bought shares in 100 Goldman Sachs IPOs one day and sold them the next day. She made 1.78 million dollars.
It was a good day's work.
Don't think of it as a kickback. Think of it like Discover, the Card that Pays You Back.
Former SEC commissioner Steve Wallman had a less nice way to describe it:
"It's a black-and-white corporate bribery issue."
Who else was getting Goldman Sachs' insider trading frequent flier miles? People like the hardworking executives at WorldCom and Enron chairman Kenny Lay.
The process was called "spinning." Sorry, you're not allowed to do it anymore.
In 2002, a House Financial Services Committee found out about it. And so did eBay stockholders, who then sued their own executives for breaching their fiduciary responsibilities to the company by insider trading and not bringing enough for everyone.
Whitman and other eBay executives settled the suit by paying three million dollars, while denying that any of the allegations were true. Goldman Sachs kicked in another 300 grand.
By complete and total coincidence, Meg Whitman had been given a seat on the board of Goldman Sachs. She was forced to resign in disgrace. She'd been there 14 months. Which reminds me of my favorite line from Wall Street:
"You'll have the shortest executive career since that Pope that got poisoned."
It must have hurt. To a grade-grubbing ass-kissing resume-polisher like Meg Whitman it must have really, really hurt.
I think it's the whole reason she's running for governor. I think she doesn't just prattle on about cutting unfair regulations all the time because it's a Republican talking point. It's personal. She broke a rule. So the rules must be wrong.
I think what she really wants is vindication for her shame.
I don't think she wants to be governor for the fame or the power. And she's made it abundantly clear that she doesn't want the job so she can help anyone.
I think she thinks the people of California are the tools of her absolution.
http://www.sacbee.com/politics/story/1887681.html
Whitman's IPO stock deals have critics raising ethics issues
By Andrew McIntosh
amcintosh@sacbee.com
Published: Sunday, May. 24, 2009 - 12:00 am | Page 23A
Along with considerable acclaim for her business acumen, former eBay chief executive Meg Whitman attracted controversy and criticism for accepting exclusive opportunities to invest in initial public stock offerings during the thriving dot-com era.
The practice led to a shareholder lawsuit against Whitman and others. It also exposed Whitman to the national political scene when her investment drew a public thrashing by Congress.
Now, as a contender for the Republican gubernatorial nomination in California, Whitman may face deeper scrutiny for her involvement in the since-banned financial practice called "spinning."
She has repeatedly insisted that an investment firm gave her access to more than 100 IPO stocks because she was one of the firm's wealthy private clients, not because she picked the firm to handle eBay's own IPO.
That explanation didn't wash with a Delaware judge, however. In a 2004 preliminary ruling in an eBay shareholders' lawsuit, the judge accused Whitman and other company executives of a conflict of interest.
Whitman and two others settled the lawsuit in 2005, admitting no wrongdoing.
How Whitman handled herself when those stock dealings came to light is particularly pertinent to her potential run for governor, according to David Shapiro, a professor at City University of New York, who specializes in financial fraud and corruption.
"She had no understanding of the appearance of impropriety," Shapiro said. "She didn't apologize. She didn't acknowledge in hindsight that it didn't look good.
"The question now is: what will become of all the conflicts of interest that come before her as governor?"
A $1.7 million spinning profit
Whitman's brush with what grew into a political controversy came during the Internet boom and bust cycles in Silicon Valley, between 1998 and 2002. It involved a financial practice called spinning, which was legal until 2003.
Major brokerages allocated shares of hot IPOs (initial public stock offerings) in technology companies to top executives at other firms.
Investment firms used "spinning" frequently during the Internet boom. It involved offering a company's executives and board members personal shares in IPOs as a reward for giving the investment firms corporate business. Investment firms initially denied that was their motive, but later agreed to ban the practice.
The firms offered key executives shares at starter IPO prices not then available to ordinary retail investors. The executives resold their shares within days, making millions.
After Wall Street whistleblowers exposed the practice, small investors and state and federal lawmakers were outraged.
Whitman was accused of spinning because of her dealings with investment giant Goldman Sachs of New York, one of the oldest Wall Street investment firms.
As eBay's chief executive in 1998, Whitman had hired Goldman Sachs to help take her company public through an initial public stock offering on Nasdaq.
A year later, eBay used Goldman Sachs for a second stock issue and the firm was hired again to advise eBay as Whitman led a takeover of PayPal in 2002.
For all of those services, eBay paid Goldman $8 million.
Starting in 1998 and through at least most of 2002, Whitman also was a private banking client of Goldman Sachs.
During that time, Goldman allocated to her between a few hundred and a couple of thousand shares in more than 100 hot dot-com IPOs, at the starting price. As the stocks surged, Whitman sold her shares, making a $1.78 million profit, she later acknowledged.
Whitman insisted then that the practice was common and legal, and continues to maintain she did nothing improper, said Henry Gomez, a former eBay executive who is now her senior campaign spokesman. Whitman declined to be interviewed by The Bee.
Shapiro, the New York professor, and federal and state lawmakers saw the stock deals rather differently. "A quasi-kickback," Shapiro told The Bee in a recent interview.
Fellow eBay executive Steve Westly, who later became state controller and ran for governor, also was accused of making $1 million by spinning IPO trades through a rival brokerage, Robertson Stephens, that also did work for eBay.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009 - Meggy goes down - in flames Part XXXVIIIII - Mrs Charisma bores everyone shitless.
Yes my Dears, you the great unwashed, the revolting peasants etc.,
Meggy has been pushing press releases out the back door, like huge terds out a cows arse.
Meggy gets the endorsement of X,
Meggy gets the endorsement of Y -
Yadda, Yadda, Yaddddaaaa.......
Blah, blah, blah.......
Like WHO CARES.
She - being greedy and stupid, and running her completely unethical business practices - backed up by a team of "scumbag lawyers" and executives - as the Ebay CEO - have so BADLY burnt soooooo many people, that she hasn't just ruffled a few feathers, she has really screwed with and trashed the lives of millions.....
Thanks to Meggy - much of Ebay's income, is obtained from fencing stolen goods, fakes and fraud - and the staples for organised crime - so "dim-Whitman" can be proud of that too.
The only people she has in tow, consist of nothing more than a sack of leeches out for a trip to the blood bank on the tax payers money; or people like John McCain who's admits to lying his arse off and he was clued on enough to pick Sarah Palin as his vice whatever....
The fact that the only cards left in the deck for Whitman are the endorsements of sleazy people - well it says plenty about "Mrs Charisma" - doesn't it.
So unless she does something really remarkable (read remarkably bad, or stupid); or
She does something worthwhile like upping and dying; or
She spouts more of her "MY" Ebay community tripe - who are the people she put guns to their heads - and said pay up even more or leave Ebay; and then said pay up even more - many times after that; and they really sink the boots in;
Then there is nothing more to add about her for the foreseeable future.
Oh wait.... yes there is - it's a rehash of what a thieving scheming terd she is and the kind of vile company she keeps - like the Enron CEO Kenny Lay for instance;
Meg Whitman was the CEO of eBay. EBay's investment bankers were Goldman Sachs. EBay didn't have to hire Goldman Sachs to be their investment bankers, because this was a few years ago, when there were lots of banks, and not just the three we keep bailing out. Goldman Sachs was very grateful for eBay's business and they had a special way of showing their gratitude to eBay's executives. Goldman Sachs would let them buy shares in other companies whose initial public offerings they were underwriting. This was during the dot-com era and IPO companies often posted huge first-day gains. After Meg Whitman brought eBay's business to Goldman Sachs, she bought shares in 100 Goldman Sachs IPOs one day and sold them the next day. She made 1.78 million dollars.
It was a good day's work.
Don't think of it as a kickback. Think of it like Discover, the Card that Pays You Back.
Former SEC commissioner Steve Wallman had a less nice way to describe it:
"It's a black-and-white corporate bribery issue."
Who else was getting Goldman Sachs' insider trading frequent flier miles? People like the hardworking executives at WorldCom and Enron chairman Kenny Lay.
The process was called "spinning." Sorry, you're not allowed to do it anymore.
In 2002, a House Financial Services Committee found out about it. And so did eBay stockholders, who then sued their own executives for breaching their fiduciary responsibilities to the company by insider trading and not bringing enough for everyone.
Whitman and other eBay executives settled the suit by paying three million dollars, while denying that any of the allegations were true. Goldman Sachs kicked in another 300 grand.
By complete and total coincidence, Meg Whitman had been given a seat on the board of Goldman Sachs. She was forced to resign in disgrace. She'd been there 14 months."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kenneth_Lay
Kenneth Lee "Ken" Lay (April 15, 1942 – July 5, 2006) was an American businessman, best known for his role in the widely-reported corruption scandal that led to the downfall of Enron Corporation. Lay and Enron became synonymous with corporate abuse and accounting fraud when the scandal broke in 2001. Lay was the CEO and chairman of Enron from 1985 until his resignation on January 23, 2003, except for a few months in 2000 when he was chairman and Jeffrey Skilling was CEO.
On July 16, 2002, Lay was indicted by a grand jury on 11 counts of securities fraud and related charges.[1] On January 31, 2006, following four and a half years of preparation by government prosecutors, Lay's and Skilling's trial began in Houston. Lay was found guilty on May 25, 2006, of 10 counts against him; the judge dismissed the 11th. Because each count carried a maximum 5- to 10-year sentence, legal experts said Lay could have faced 20 to 30 years in prison.[2] However, he died while vacationing in Snowmass, Colorado on July 5, 2006, about three and a half months before his scheduled October 23 sentencing.[3] Preliminary autopsy reports state that he died of a heart attack caused by coronary artery disease. As a result of his death, on October 17, 2006, the federal district court judge who presided over the case vacated Lay's conviction.[4]
On July 7, 2004, Lay was indicted by a grand jury in Houston, Texas, for his role in Enron's collapse. Lay was charged, in a 65-page indictment, with 11 counts of securities fraud, wire fraud, and making false and misleading statements. The trial commenced on January 30, 2006, in Houston, despite repeated protests from defense attorneys calling for a change of venue on the grounds that "it was impossible to get a fair trial in Houston" – the epicenter of Enron's collapse. Enron's bankruptcy, the biggest in U.S. history when it was filed in December 2001, cost 20,000 employees their jobs and many of them their life savings. Investors lost billions."[2] Before Lay was put on trial he was estimated to have a gross wealth of approx. 40 million US dollars. It is believed that most of it was spent on legal defense. During his trial, Lay claimed that in 2001 Enron stock made up about 90 percent of his wealth, and that his current net worth (in 2006) was in the negative by $250,000. He insisted that Enron's collapse was due to a "conspiracy" waged by short sellers, rogue executives, and the news media.[8] It was reported that Lay's congenial reputation took a blow as he appeared confrontational and irritable at several points during his testimony.[2] On May 25, 2006, Lay was found guilty on all six counts of conspiracy and fraud by a jury of eight women and four men. In a separate bench trial, Judge Lake ruled Lay was guilty of four counts of fraud and false statements. Sentencing was scheduled to take place on 11 September 2006, but was later rescheduled for 23 October 2006.[9]
A number of books have been written on Lay and Enron including Conspiracy of Fools (2005), Icarus in the Boardroom, The Tao of Enron: Spiritual Lessons from a Fortune 500 Fallout (2002), The Smartest Guys in the Room (2003), 24 Days, and Power Failure. The Smartest Guys in the Room was adapted into a documentary film titled Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, released in 2005.
Margaret Cushing "Meg" Whitman has her snout in the trough with the best of them.
But I really think that she is so stupid, that she "doesn't get the drift" in these bits of jornalism.
So shall go through this, with lots of little corrections and illuminations in red - at least in part until the nausea sets in.
eMeg eBay Republican Meg Whitman bids to save California.
by Fred Barnes
05/25/2009, Volume 014, Issue 34
Meg Whitman is the most interesting person in American politics and, potentially, a formidable Republican leader at the national level (people actually dislike her and don't respect her). At age 52 and a year after stepping down as CEO of eBay, she's running for governor of California. Like Ronald Reagan (fame by association), she's a well-known star (she's a well known arsehole) from another field--the corporate world in Whitman's case--who has entered California politics at the top and now intends to leapfrog an entire generation of ambitious political strivers.
Similarity to Reagan isn't what makes Whitman exceptional (she is only exceptionally incompetent, dishonest and greedy). Nor does the possibility she might copy a fellow billionaire, New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and dip into her own fortune to win high office (in Whitman parlayance "WIN" means CON and MANIPULATE her way into office). Gobs of personal money in a campaign rarely elevates a candidate and never guarantees success. Her only prior role in politics (and that was her only prior role - she has never voted either) was as an adviser to two losing presidential candidates in 2008, first Mitt Romney, then John McCain. Yet she's not entirely a novice. "Business (greed and self interest) has always been my passion," Whitman says. "But I've always followed politics closely (but not closely enough to actually ever vote)."
That's fine, but what distinguishes Meg Whitman and makes her a fascinating political figure is one thing: eBay (Meggy said at the time, "Even a monkey could drive this train") Her decade as CEO of eBay, one of the most successful Internet startups ever, is the foundation of her campaign. "My philosophy of government is almost entirely driven by my 10 years at eBay," Whitman told me. Her philosophy is not new. Her foremost lesson from eBay is that individuals with little or no capital will thrive as entrepreneurs (who she could rip off with ever increasing fees and service cut backs) when offered unrestricted opportunity, an efficient market, a level field playing field, and low costs (well they started off low and then spiraled so high into driving so many sellers out of business). Now Whitman would apply that lesson--and many others from eBay--to California in the form of streamlined government, fewer bureaucrats, deregulation, less spending, and lower taxes (she means higher fees and no customer service)
Her years at eBay did another thing for Whitman. They made her a celebrity known to millions simply as Meg (They mean KNOWN and HATED by millions). Lucky for her, an attempt in her first corporate job at Procter & Gamble to be called Margaret quickly failed. Margaret Whitman? In politics, Meg works better (Meg has never worked in politics in her life). At eBay, she developed a likable, if not exactly charismatic, public personality (most of the staff actually hate her). And as eBay flourished (started to lose sellers and buyers and become the target of vitriolic campigns), she became a favorite of business journalists (name them). Fortune named her the most powerful woman in business in America in 2004 and 2005 (just because a few journos simply call her a success because she is good at being greedy and they also fail to include "user feedback" about Meg herself - doesn't make her a success nor powerfull). When she jumped into the governor's race, Fortune put Whitman on the cover, standing beside a horse. (So? the Fortune editor is either a corporate arse licker or an imbecile - because MONEY does not equal success)
EBay is an online auction and swap meet that began in 1995 as a marketplace for collectibles such as PEZ dispensers.(this is a distorition of a lie initially pedalled by an Ebay Marketing Manager) (A collection of PEZ dispensers, assembled by the wife of eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, is on display at eBay headquarters in San Jose, California.) Now buyers and sellers deal in everything from baby clothes to a Gulfstream II jet that auctioned for $4.9 million. In 2001, Bob Dylan's boyhood home in Minnesota was sold on eBay for $94,600.
Contacted in 1997 about the job of eBay chief executive, Whitman politely refused to meet with Omidyar in California. At the time, she lived outside Boston and ran the division of Hasbro, Inc., that markets Mr. Potato Head and other toys. She had moved east in 1992 when her husband, Griff Harsh, a brain surgeon, became head of neuro-surgery at Massachusetts General Hospital. (Whitman is her maiden name.) Persuaded a few months later by a Silicon Valley headhunter to fly to California, she spent a day at eBay. One day was sufficient. She called her husband that evening and announced she was ready to uproot their family (two sons) and move to California. When she arrived in 1998, eBay had 30 employees, $4 million in revenues, and 300,000 registered users. When she left in 2008, it had 15,000 employees, $7.7 billion in revenues, and nearly 300 million registered users worldwide, more than 12 million of them in California. From 2002 to 2004, eBay was the fastest growing e-commerce company in the world (that also stole more money from more people, promoted more fraud and more fakes and failed to do anything to stop or remove the scammers).
"No company changed my life the way eBay did," Whitman says. It shows. The corporate culture at eBay is unique (the Ebay employees think she is an arsehole). The headquarters is in a nondescript building on the outskirts of San Jose. Executives, even the CEO, have cubicles instead of offices. "It creates a very non-hierarchical company," Whitman says. "People who will stop by your cubicle would not go to an office." (Ok so battery hen office's make it OK?) The room set aside for conferences is smaller than the living room of Whitman's home a half-hour's drive away near the campus of Stanford University. Her husband heads the brain tumor unit at Stanford University Medical Center.
Whitman is chronically pleasant (other people describe her as deceiful, dishonest and shifty). She's garrulous but not given to small talk (at least in my three conversations with her). She once described herself to Patricia Sellers of Fortune as "frumpy, but she delivers." Indeed she has delivered. When eBay's website crashed in 1999, was out of commission for 22 hours, and later suffered periodic outages, Whitman spent weeks at eBay 24/7, sleeping on a cot. "I was scared," she says. (Oh fuck no - the servers have crashed, "Oh Oh Oh Meggy feigns a feint") She feared eBay would collapse. She wound up hiring a new technology chief at better than twice her own salary. At her insistence, eBay users were offered refunds for listing fees. (That was about the only time they ever were, unless under the duress of consumer protection laws)
The egalitarian culture (what?) at eBay grew out of the company's extraordinarily democratic, libertarian, and populist business model (horseshit propoganda - chronic mismanagement at best) It's a laissez-faire model that's wildly out of favor today in Washington (because it only suits lazy idiots like Whitman to implement a "look good and do nothing" style of managment). The eBay idea: Create a minimally regulated market (this means no standards of service or accountability - just lay back and let the users send you the cash) and let the users decide what's for sale (well it is their stuff they are selling - dumbarse). Business permits aren't required, nor do users pay local or federal taxes. "We inspired people to start businesses," Whitman says (no "We provided the infrastructure to sell on, and made money off others efforts). "Your next door neighbor (as well as the crooks selling fakes and frauds) has an equal chance of success as a big corporation. We made a small number of rules (they make rules only to suit them selves as they go along), we enforced those rules (only if it suits their own self interests), and we got the heck out of the way (we interfere like mad in the affairs of all those we ought not). We kept taxes low (to start off with) --which were our fees (which rose to nothing but unbridled greed)--so that people could keep more of their money (and then be forced to pay it all to us) and grow their businesses on eBay (while we ripped them off for everything and then kicked them off and stole their money). We didn't try to tell the market where it was going to go." One result is that 1.3 million people now make some or all of their living on eBay.(Is that 1.3 million in total - including all that have come and gone or used to?)
Whitman's oft-repeated example of the eBay model at work is what she calls "the car story." In 1997, Whitman was informed that 300 used automobiles were listed for sale on the website. She was completely surprised. Cars on eBay? This was unexpected, but she and her team quickly decided to open a separate section on eBay for cars (a new opportunity to exploit). Today eBay is the largest retailer of cars in the world.
Political writers in California have been unimpressed by Whitman's entry into electoral politics. (as they should be - and they are not unimpressed with the entry, they are unimpressed with her and the lies she tells) They've watched successful CEOs collapse in past statewide races. The veteran reporters at the popular Calbuzz website, Jerry Roberts and Phil Trounstine, mock her as "eMeg" and "her Megness."(not forgetting NUT-Meg and Dim-Whit-Man)
Whitman came off poorly in February in an interview by Michael Finnegan of the Los Angeles Times. He asked why her voter registration until 2007 was "declined to state," though she called herself "a lifelong Republican." (only for the last 2 years and she never voted for anyone ever before that) She said she felt the CEO of eBay should appear politically neutral (since when? This woman stinks with cheap lies and cover ups). She registered as a Republican to vote in the presidential primary in 2008 for Mitt Romney, her former boss and longtime friend. ("Oh Mitty I love you" says Meggy)
Despite press skepticism,(It's not skepticism - they know she has a track record of being incompetent, greedy and dishonest) Whitman looks like the frontrunner for the Republican nomination for governor (according to who?). Evidence of this comes from her chief opponent, California insurance commissioner Steve Poizner, the lone Republican currently serving in statewide elective office apart from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Poizner has begun criticizing Whitman for decisions she made at eBay (criticising is a Whitman spin for pointing out the facts about her past conduct) and for skipping a debate on the referendums in the May 19 special election. She ignores him. California is a Democratic state, yet the Republican primary a year from now matters (A year of spinning bullshit won't cover the already the uprising from the incensed people who are EX ebay users). In 2010, Republicans will have held the governorship for 23 of the past 28 years, 84 of the past 109.
When Whitman spoke at a fundraiser for House Republican whip Eric Cantor in Richmond, Virginia, in February, she played up her experience at eBay. (The entire meeting started talking amongst themselves and generally ignored her) She turned down an offer of a limousine to take her from Washington to Richmond, by the way, and drove herself there in a rented car (yeah - so what?). "I was president and CEO of eBay for 10 years," she said. "And eBay reinforced two important Republican concepts with which I had been raised." (What? Lying and Cheating?)
The first: Americans are "motivated by economic opportunity to achieve great things." By creating e-commerce, eBay "became the home of so many inspired individuals, Americans with the courage and passion to create businesses and jobs. I ran eBay with those folks in mind. We purposely kept regulation on eBay to a minimum so that small business could innovate."(And all them folks started warring with her and Ebay, and most of the best of them left ebay and went to alternative auction sites or set up their own online shops - they gave Ebay the arse because of stupid, greedy and incompetent people like her)
The second: "Less government is simply better." (Meggy means "stealing money from people and avoiding accountability through deliberate mismanagement" is something that she uses to her advantage) Her career before eBay "had not involved me too closely with taxation, government bureaucracy, or regulation," (This means she is clueless, incompetent and lazy) she said. "But after years of watching government try to tax and regulate the success of eBay sellers (she means getting her and ebay out of having to pay their dues, and generally syncing their modus operandi with the large scale of fraud and fakes being trafficked by Ebay), I left eBay with a strong belief that government's role in our lives should be limited. . . . (limited to the degree that she can continue to lie, cheat, steal and scheme and never be held to account) Government can only help create the conditions for prosperity. Prosperity itself is up to each of us."
The concepts are free market bromides, but they serve Whitman's purpose of linking eBay and politics.(no she is trying to get away with fabricating the illusion that just because she ripped off a heap of people and got rich that some how this lie she is fabricating, equates her with being a fit and proper and competent person, in the position of public service - most people know that her and her chums are nothing more than a bag of leeches wanting to get into the blood bank) She makes the same points in her stump speeches in California. But the lessons from eBay--lessons applicable to the cause of saving California--go far beyond the two broad concepts. When I interviewed her in Washington and later in California, she mentioned at least eight more, some small, some large.
* Count heads. We were having lunch three months ago when the subject came up of where to turn if revenues decrease. "Head count," Whitman said. "Any person who's ever run a business, whether it's a dry cleaning business, a flower shop, or Boeing, they totally get it," Whitman explained in a later conversation. "When you see revenue drop, you have to bring your costs into line or you're out of business." That means cutting the number of employees. (Meggy has no personal expereince of ever running a small business - she has hidden behind the walls of corporate deceit - and she and her bullshit business acument - has burnt so many people so badly, that if she was to be running a small business - it would probably get burnt to the ground with her in it)
Schwarzenegger hasn't done that in California. The state payroll (345,000-strong) has grown 2 percent as revenues have fallen in the past year. The governor "has 4,000 appointments," Whitman notes. "Think about that for a minute. I mean, 4,000 appointments? First of all, what do these people do? Maybe you only need 2,000." Whitman has her own lingo. Non-online companies are "land-based." OPM? That's "other people's money."
* Listen to people. Whitman responded to emails and implemented suggestions from eBay users. Her car story reflects this policy. Whitman, who studied economics at Princeton and has an MBA from Harvard Business School, insists "a bunch of MBAs sitting in a room, I promise you, would not have figured out" the value of selling cars online. "But eBay users did. . . . We provided the tools, and it is eBay users who created eBay. And it's not the California government that created California. It's Californians who create California. So the analogy, I think, people really understand."(The only thing Whitman listens to are the voices in her own head telling her that she is the messiah and that all and sundry must fall to the knees and worship her)
* Focus, focus, focus. Her words. Whitman is skilled, according to her associates at eBay and other Silicon Valley firms, at concentrating on a few big problems and coming up with solutions. She says this is what she would do as governor. "You've got to focus on three things: jobs, government spending, and education," she says. "Beginning, middle, and end of story." If you try to do too much--"boil the ocean," she calls it--"you get eaten alive by the bureaucracy. You get eaten alive by the legislature. You get eaten alive by the entrenched interests. You get eaten alive by the lobbyists." (Focus, Focus, Focus? Whitman has fucked up so many things, sooooooo badly I doubt that she can even focus on her own bowel movements)
* Compete. California is hemorrhaging jobs, mostly to Arizona, Nevada, Texas, Utah, and Colorado. "It's because those states are easier to do business in," Whitman says. "Lower taxes, simplified regulation, and they compete. California is not used to competing because for so long we were the Golden State." No more. "If we're going to compete, we've got to get state spending under control so we can save money to compete."
(California is hemorrhagin jobs? After she fucked up the lives and minds of so many sellers and buyers on Ebay, Ebay hemorrhaged sellers and buyers - so I'd like to hear old Prune Face's explain to us all just exactly what is her grand plan for California?)
* Cut the layers. "There's a rule in business that for every layer of management, decisions take twice as long," Whitman says. "It's exponential. If you have three people, they take four times as long. Five, they take 20 times as long. In a government bureaucracy, if you've got layers and layers of people, it's really easy to say, 'no, no, no, no, no,' and there's 27 reasons you can't get anything done." By streamlining decision making, "you'd get more done."
(I think Meggy means "shorten the path between her and your bank accounts - by removing all legislation that inhibits her, and then write new legislation that eases that and removes all accountability at the same time)
* Face bad news. "I used to say at eBay, 'Do not sit on problems.' Bad news is much better early because you have a chance to do something about it. So no surprises. I want to know the worst case all the time." In California, with a $150 billion budget and a huge bureaucracy, "you just don't decide that you're going to change something next week," Whitman says. Something like the state's "spending problem of epic proportions."
(Meggy wants to know the worst case, and that is what she created on Ebay; now she is telling you the exact opposite - Revisionist Self History by Meggy; it's called selling you her lie)
* Save to invest. At eBay, "every year, you would try to save money from doing the things you did last year and the year before--either stop doing things or do them better, so you free up money to invest in new things," Whitman says. That idea--basically operating more efficiently to free up funds--"is a very foreign concept in government."(so is telling the truth - to Meg Whitman)
* Use information technology. Sacramento, the state capital, "is the most inward looking place I've ever seen," Whitman says. Information technology, constantly updated, runs eBay. "But the information infrastructure that runs the state of California is stuck in 1982. . . . We run 17 financial systems at the state on 1982 Oracle financials. We don't actually know what the high school graduation rate is because we don't have the IT infrastructure that tracks the kids." (they didn't track the amount of fraud on Ebay, nor the number of accounts they froze and stole money from with other peoples money in them either)
Mitt Romney is Whitman's mentor. He hired her in 1981 to work for his business consulting firm, Bain & Co., in San Francisco when she was two years out of business school. "You're basically looking for intelligence," Romney told me, and getting-along skills. Whitman had both.(only according to Mitt "sigh - I love him" Romney - tho millions of Ex Ebay users would probably disagree with him)
In 2006, as he was gearing up to run for the Republican presidential nomination, Romney had breakfast with Whitman at the Stanford Park Hotel near her Silicon Valley home. After she agreed to join his campaign as financial co-chair and part-time adviser, Romney broached another subject. "Meg, you really ought to get in this yourself." Whitman laughed. Later, after Romney lost, she signed on with John McCain's campaign. McCain, too, urged to her to run for office. By then--fall 2008--she'd hired Jeff Randle, a talented Republican consultant who'd worked for Schwarzenegger and former Governor Pete Wilson, and had already spent a year studying California's staggering problems and the obstacles to solving them.
Whitman is energetic,(as her fat gut and un-snipped double chin shows) as well as smart and knowledgeable on issues (yeah? name them?). On the Romney campaign, she was expected to be a celebrity surrogate (an upgrade?) with business credentials to reinforce Romney's message. But she quickly became a policy adviser and strategist (a down grade?). "She learned the entire federal budget cold and referenced it from memory (Meggy can't seem to answer any of the questions put to her about anything) when we were brainstorming on policy prescriptions," says her friend Dan Senor, a partner at a New York-based investment fund who met her on the Romney campaign.
What has struck me about Whitman is how normal she seems.("SEEMS" is the operative word here) She's rich (she got rich by robbing people and lying to them - and by being an utterly lazy and incompetent CEO). She donated $30 million to Princeton to build a sixth college on campus (dubbed Whitman College) (which is the only thing she has ever donated too). But she routinely flies Southwest, travels by rental car to save money, and appears unfazed by her fame. Senor watched the third presidential debate at her home last fall, during which she cooked dinner. That was the debate in which McCain said Whitman was the kind of person he would want as treasury secretary (McCain fessed up about lying to gain political advantage too - and he has a talent for picking scheming idiots like Palin). "Meg heard her name, looked up at the TV for a second, and then went back to the tuna steaks," Senor says. "It was like she barely noticed. . . . No commentary, analysis, or patting on the back."
Whitman's virtues don't automatically make her a good candidate (nor does her complete lack of virtues either). Romney says her eBay experience brought out "the other part of Meg," her people skills. "She was not your typical CEO who does well in the boardroom but not on the shop floor," (and all the staff hate her) he says. "Being CEO of eBay is quite different. It was a people movement. It made over a million people entrepreneurs (who they robbed and ripped off with rapacious greed). She was more a leader than a CEO." (well only according to him)
With Randle's help, Whitman has gained the support of two heavyweights in state politics, ex-Governor Wilson and Representative Kevin McCarthy of Bakersfield, the deputy Republican whip in the house. With Whitman, "it won't just come down to party politics," McCarthy says. Indeed she has considerable support among non-Republicans in the high-tech community (name them?) and Hollywood (she worked for Disney from 1989 to 1992). But those elites are a tiny fraction of the electorate. When I talked to Michael Reagan, the president's son and a talk radio host, he wondered about her popular appeal. So did Marc Andreessen, the designer of the first popular web browser, Mosaic, now a high-tech entrepreneur and Democrat who's backing Whitman.
California has been cruel in recent years to first-time candidates from the business world. (but not as cruel as the Ex Ebayers who she has driven into the lunatic fringe with her incompetence and greed - and their down fall) Northwest Airlines boss Al Checchi spent $40 million in the Democratic gubernatorial primary in 1998 and got 12.5 percent of the vote. Bill Simon, a wealthy investor who was the Republican nominee in 2002, lost in a landslide. Neither Reagan, elected governor in 1966, nor Schwarzenegger, who won in 2003, had previously been elected to statewide office. But they were popular actors. For others, winning a down-ticket office helped.
Checchi and Simon found their business records were their greatest vulnerability. Since Whitman has made eBay her chief talking point, her opponents are scrutinizing her tenure there and at other companies. Steve Poizner, her primary challenger, has pointed to eBay's purchase of online telephone company Skype as evidence her business prowess is overrated. Skype is now for sale by Whitman's successor at eBay for less than she paid for it.
Whitman faces a daunting collection of rivals. Poizner too is wealthy, and he is backed by one of California's most influential Republicans, former state senator Jim Brulte. A third Republican candidate, former congressman Tom Campbell, is also a serious threat. The three Democratic candidates aren't slouches either: Mayors Gavin Newsom of San Francisco and Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles, and former Governor Jerry Brown.
Whitman's success depends largely on how Californians feel about their state next year. California is an economic basket case. It has the highest tax rate and biggest budget deficit in the country, third highest rate of home foreclosures, an unemployment rate (11.2 percent) that's never been higher, and, as Whitman says in every speech, its schools rank 47th of the 50 states in math, 48th in reading, and 43rd in science. Only 14 percent of Californians are satisfied with the state's performance. "Those are the people who aren't paying attention," says Wilson. (Thanks to Whitman, Ebay also has the lowest approval rating, and the highest amount of fraud, fakes and theft of any e-commerce site in the world)
The question is whether California voters are ready to gamble on an untried newcomer. Whitman says she and she alone has the know-how and background to revive the state (Yes the old boiler's delusions of grandeur are growing). "Look at where California is and what we need," says McCarthy. "The skill set? She has it all." Her supporters in the business orbit say the same (name them - and then show us their track record for corruption, theft and greed). A second question--an unanswerable one for now--is whether she can master Sacramento. Democrats and unions dominate the town and the legislature. And they'll still be powerful after the 2010 election.
But let's assume Whitman is elected. She'd be governor of the biggest state, a brainy, conservative, accomplished woman (a stupid, greedy and incompetent woman) at the top of the Republican ladder with precisely the experience that Sarah Palin lacks (There was no shortage of lack in Palin - and the same goes for Whitman). That she's a social moderate may be worrisome to conservatives. She's pro-choice on abortion but voted for Proposition 8 last year, which barred gay marriage. When Reagan was elected governor in 1966, the speculation about national office--president, vice president--erupted instantly. If Whitman is elected in 2010, it will erupt again. ( The other IF's - is forget the issue of IF she gets elected; because she won't. The other IF is she has burnt an awful lot of people really badly, so the other IF is IF the ex ebay users she has burnt don't get to her first)
Fred Barnes is executive editor of THE WEEKLY STANDARD.
See the disparity comes when the PR people and the spin doctors come out with "The sunshine is brighter where she is"; and yet all the ex ebayers and "those sorts" who have been ripped off or burnt badly by the managerial incompetence and greed of this woman, tend to speaker of her in terms like, "She is one of the biggest turds to ever come floating down the pipe line".
So I am thinking, "Whoring" is a common enough phenomenom - whether literally or indirectly; so I am thinking, "Are these people actually fucked up enough to actually believe what they say?" or are they the kind that will say exactly the kind of crap that cretins like Whitman like to think and hear about themselves?"
I mean even leeches are smart enough to suck the blood out of one host and then when they are bled dry, then to jump on the next one - and Whitman, while she lasts, is one fat cashed up cow who is also stupid enough and dishonest enough to think that people won't notice the difference between what she says or has said about her, doesn't match what she has been doing - and how incompently and dishonestly she has been doing it.
Could I get on her gravey train and feed her the kind of shit that keeps her puffed up ego inflating?
"OH Meggy your so wonderful, clever and amazing. You took a small start up company and made millions of people happy and rich, yes Meggy I love you cause your so wonderful etc., etc., etc."
Yep - cause talk is cheap - and so is bullshit.
That leads to the next issues:
Credibility.
While Meggy is up there spinning the bullshit of her grandeur and delusions, she and her PR team face one major problem.
Think of it like this, If I were to be running a small business and after 3 years, I had "a few disgruntled customers" from things like lost or mispleaced accounts and similar.... that would have to be responsibly worked through and resolved.
But where Meggy and her delusions of grandeur fuck up badly, is that SHE was the CEO of a company that operated principly on outright greed and dishonesty - and NO customer service to back up or support anyone.
The company also profited from FRAUD and FAKES, engaged in FRAUD and the laundering of money.
The company also would take cash from anyone who gave it, - no matter how many complaints against the crooked sellers and or buyers.
Meggy instituted policies of wringing as much cash as she could from jacking up the fees as much and as often as she could.
And the whole operation was underpinned by dead shit lawyers who wrote illegal and convoluted contracts and terms of use.
In short Meg Whitman and her stooges burnt, fucked over and ripped off an absolutely astronomical amount of people.
She and her stooges in Ebay and Paypal really caused an enormous amount of damage to an awfully huge amount of people
The issue is that while Whitman and her team of bullshit artists try to put all the spin on her and her campaign with thier "The sun shines out of her arse" commentary, there are an enormous amout of very virulent and really really really fucking pissed off people who are only too happy to lay terds in her bowl of soup.
People are going to be taking shots at her - for her dishonesty, her greed and her incompetence; at every opportunity, in every forum - every time she sticks her head up.
There is an awfully huge amount of people and there is an awfully huge amount of good reasons for doing so.
Meg Whitman cannot overcome the sins of her past.
The final issue - Being a Leech.
With Meggies PR campaign to get us all to believe with didn't happen did, and vis versa; and the people she pays to tell us all such shit.
Well they are either the sorts who love to live in the land of perpetual mental masturbation, or they are just leeches jumping on board for another well paying meal ticket - while it lasts.
The trouble is each way - is that after having to tell such a hideous amount of lying to make Whitman appear to have any creditbility at all, which will now and forever be smeared with the shit from her greed and incompetence - by the people only too happy to do so; is that after being associated with such an abject failure as Whitman and being known to be a pathalogical liar for her, personally it's not the kind of association I would like to include in my CV.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009 - Meggy goes down - in flames Part XXXVII - How her lackies spin the shit
Meggy uses the sleaziest of tactics to recruit "new friends" to her cause - which is by the email address harvesting from ones stupid friends...
Be sure to help Meg by going to MegWhitman.com and signing up 10 of your friends or family members to receive our email updates. Thank you for your support! Todd Cranney Deputy Campaign Manager - Political Director Whitman for Governor 2010 Exploratory Committee
As one who has "been a victim of" a stupid and now ex friend, who decided to try and get an Ipod by signing up "his friends" to an arsehole spammer - I take the dimmest view of this practice and the people who either do it or ask others to do it for them.
I think in terms of respectfullness for ones peers and out of plain good manners, I have ONLY ever signed any of my friends up for about 2 or 3 things - without their consent, in my entire life because the issue on hand is important, useful and informative - and it's from a LEGITIMATE company.
Meggy's emails on the other hand are nothing more than spin and bullshit from manipulative and dishonest people - starting with Meggy.
Given the fact that she has to resort to "spam" email address harvesting techniques to do it?
Sign up 10 of your friends (without their consent) to her sleaze fest campaign?
These kinds of activites say plenty about Meggy as a person, along with her campaigners.
Also, during the first of her three "vision speeches" today, Whitman evitaed, "Californians can no longer afford the government they have. ... I will give them the government they deserve." Yikes, indeed.
But that's not news. The real news here is that Meg got a makeover. You like?
Reply | February 17, 2009 3:01 PM
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Author Profile Page [2] | sf_bikebike
Im sorry, but that lady is nasty.
Reply | February 17, 2009 3:04 PM
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Author Profile Page [3] | mattymatt
You'd think she'd have learned to be more tolerant of fags, considering how many it must've taken just to fix her hair and wardrobe.
Reply | February 17, 2009 3:40 PM
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Author Profile Page mariconsoy replied to comment from mattymatt
and to select the right string of pearls
Reply | February 17, 2009 3:47 PM
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Author Profile Page [5] | travin
I think we should view her utter blindness to how awful she looked for so long as an indication of her inability to understand the deep subtleties of governorship.
Reply | February 17, 2009 3:52 PM
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Author Profile Page [6] | FNREEDIE
Two million jobs created if she wins ... and three million if she doesn't.
Reply | February 17, 2009 3:56 PM
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Author Profile Page [7] | KWillets
Promising us the government we deserve without wearing leather just seems insincere to me.
Reply | February 17, 2009 4:03 PM
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Author Profile Page [8] | Grrg
I say thank god for the What Not To Wear intervention. In that youtube announcement her makeup, hair, and lighting were SO SO bad that I actually felt sorry for her. Now that she looks basically okay, I can go back to hating and fearing her.
Reply | February 17, 2009 4:04 PM
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Author Profile Page manys replied to comment from Grrg
she seems to be addicted to peach.
Reply | February 17, 2009 4:08 PM
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Author Profile Page [10] | redseca2
Wow - Definitely Mothra versus Godzilla if she runs against Feinstein.
I remember a fem boy in white wedding dress mud wrestling competition sometime back in the '90's at the Club Uranus. That might make a good debate venue.
Reply | February 17, 2009 4:59 PM
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Author Profile Page [11] | megang
Looks like her neck got some work too!
Reply | February 17, 2009 5:10 PM
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Author Profile Page [12] | The Angry Young Man
She looks like an ugly, evil Tipper Gore.
Go Moonbeam!
Reply | February 17, 2009 5:42 PM
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Author Profile Page travin replied to comment from The Angry Young Man
I was thinking she's the love child of barbara bush and bette davis.
Reply | February 17, 2009 6:04 PM
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Author Profile Page [14] | The Angry Young Man
I can see that. In that first photo she looks like a leathery old Angela Lansbury who was rode hard and put up wet.
Reply | February 17, 2009 6:09 PM
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Author Profile Page [15] | GlenParker
Anybody but Gavin Newsom.
Reply | February 17, 2009 7:27 PM
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Author Profile Page [16] | RobInSF
That is one self-loathing, ugly bull dyke. Her stylist must be the same miracle worker who made Greta VanSustern not look nearly as hideous or Hilary Rosen not look so fat and angry.
Reply | February 17, 2009 8:04 PM
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Author Profile Page [17] | bennyinsf
Since we only elect Governors to four-year terms, and since her promise to create two million jobs is over a period of five years, does that mean she expects to be elected to two terms or have the fifth year of her plan implemented by another Governor? Did she choose five years to implement the plan so that if she were elected the first time, she can claim during the next election cycle that she still needs another year to backup her promise. Why can't she just promise 1.5 million jobs in the first four years? SNEAKY, SNEAKY: She's already asking for a second term, and she hasn't even earned the first.
3) I’m 58 years old. I’ve been a proud member of the Republican Party for two years.
4) My campaign website is called Megwhitman.com. Its background is the color of money.
5) I have an MBA from Harvard, just like George W. Bush. What could go wrong?
6) I’m running for governor because I strongly believe that California should be friendlier to business and, uh, I guess that’s about it.
7) Did I mention the billion dollars?
8) People say I use too much business jargon when I frame strategy fundamentals trend paradigm.
9) I have two beautiful sons and their names are Prioritize and Skill Set.
10) Last week, the LA Times asked me my position on school vouchers and my answer was "I don’t know how to answer that question."
11) Last week, the LA Times asked me if schools should report the children of illegal immigrants. My answer was "I want to think about that a little bit."
12) Last week, the San Francisco Chronicle asked me my position on offshore drilling and my answer was "That is an issue I would like to study further."
13) Wait, someone just handed me a card. I do have a position on an issue besides statewide business-friendliness. I also want to cut taxes and spend more money on education.
14) Which won’t be easy, since 55% of the state general fund budget is spent on education.
15) I’ve just been handed another card.
16) "This is an issue I would like to study further."
17) I believe gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to adopt children.
18) I supported Proposition 8 because I don’t believe gay and lesbian couples should be allowed to marry.
19) And I think their bastard children deserve a wonderful education that I’ll pay for by cutting taxes.
20) On second thought, this is an issue that I would like to study further.
21) When the San Francisco Chronicle asked me about my plans to reduce the size of government I said, "I can’t be that specific on it."
22) I believe we "have a moral responsibility to be good stewards of the environment" but I don’t believe we should be raising emissions standards on automobiles or "doing things that damage the car companies."
23) The American Lung Association rates Los Angeles the worst city in America for year-round particle pollution. 3rd worst is Bakersfield. 5th worst is Visalia. 8th is Fresno. 9th is Hanford.
24) A few years ago, when I was running eBay, I was asked about our expansion into China:
Q: Can you give us your thoughts on doing business in China given the civil rights issues there?
A: We do not have the issue that many of the portals have doing business in China because in China, we are not serving news, we’re not serving really anything that has to do with commentary.
My position on civil rights in China isn’t even "I’d like to study it further." It’s "Who gives a shit."
25) California’s unemployment rate is 9.3%. There’s gotta be someone else who wants this job.
Just what california needs a rich republican that got her money by using the ebay stock crutch.No we need someone who is for the working class that has a degree for the job. No actors , no well to dos , someone with a working class ethic.She turned ebay into a nightmare from what it used to be she will do the same for california.Many people have money now they want the fame part of their life. I could do alot better things with 50 million if she really wanted to help humanity.But she is out for fame , id vot no on this one or californina will be in another 8 years of hell.
Growing up, I loved my hometown Triple-A Long Island Ducks. Of course, I also love the L.A. Dodgers and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks, but nobody ducks and dodges better than MEGaDUCK!
I was a dodgeball champion in second grade, third grade and high school, played pickup games of dodgeball at Princeton and still play games whenever I can.
I used to be the Head Duck in the eBay, but I ducked out.
GOP gov's candidates debate: Details, soundbites, gimmicks and a no-show
Former state budget director Tom Campbell came armed with a white board and a multi-point plan to cut the state budget, state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner came light on detail and big on sounds bites -- and former eBay CEO Meg Whitman didn't come at all.
But that's what made the first official GOP gubernatorial debate Tuesday between Campbell and Poizner a study in contrasts and ideas -- and occasionally, a testy one.
The two met Monday before the Sacramento Press Club to substantively discuss the special-election ballot measures and their disgreement over Prop. 1A, which would extend $16 billion in new taxes while providing a spending cap and "rainy day" fund that Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger says is critical to close the state's enormous deficit.
Poizner opposes it; Campbell supports it.
Whitman, who also opposes Prop. 1A, sidestepped the meeting altogether -- retreating to easy soundbite tossing in TV and radio interviews. Judging by the former executive's non-answers to date on the sticky questions, it's no wonder she went running.
Poizner's operatives aimed for levity, festooning the meeting room with little yellow rubber duckies aimed at pushing the lampooning MegaDuck 2010
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
By: Ina Steiner
Thu May 7 2009 13:05:07
How do outsiders view Meg Whitman's performance at eBay? And how important is it to her campaign as she runs for governor of California? The Capitol Weekly gives some insight into those questions in an article published today.
First, should voters look to eBay in measuring Whitman's competence? Author Garry South says, "when association with one major company is the prime credential on which you are seeking to become governor, that entity and your stewardship of it legitimately will come under intense, microscopic scrutiny."
So which issues did he think were relevant? Whitman's $2.6 Billion mistake has already become a campaign issue, so it's no surprise that tops his list, and he also believes eBay's stock decline is relevant.
But wait, there's more. "While Whitman was CEO, the company also came under heavy fire for forgeries and stolen items, dishonest sellers and inaccurately described merchandise." (The issue of fakes on eBay made big news yet again this week with headlines such as, "eBay Saves Historic Treasures By Selling Fakes. One AuctionBytes reader called it a "back-handed compliment.")
South goes on to say, "In addition, criticism was leveled at the Whitman-era eBay for generating revenue growth by ever-increasing fees on sellers, which was an unsustainable, self-defeating strategy."
Given that one of Whitman's biggest campaign promise is job creation, and her biggest boast about her time at eBay is - Job Creation - then it would seem the plight of sellers under her reign deserves the "intense, microscopic scrutiny" that South mentions.
In fact, the other big campaign promise Whitman makes is that she will reduce government spending. It may be difficult to use eBay as an example of where she's cut spending while lowering "taxes" (i.e., fees). After all, one might ask, where did that $2.6 billion come from that she used to buy Skype?
It will be interesting to see if California media will scrutinize what industry insiders call "eBay math" as Whitman continues to tout her record of job creation. Maybe they can make sense of the "number of registered users" and "number of sellers making a living on eBay" statistics.
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Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: ebay=penny stock
Thu May 7 13:27:38 2009
Don't forget her replacement. The famous DonnaHole.
I'd be willing to bet she drops out of the race with some fabricated excuse.
The noise is going to only get louder now.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: Ari
Thu May 7 14:26:47 2009
Let's not forget Whitman was also the CEO for one of the internets biggest pornography merchants....would love to see the sales/user metrics for the Adults Only catagory in the Everything Else section on ebay which has always sold Hardcore XXX porn. Believe me, it's alot of money!
Some California voters might find it interesting that much of Whitman and eBays fortune was built selling porn.
Family values!
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: Neville Golding
Thu May 7 15:32:39 2009
"criticism was leveled at the Whitman-era eBay for generating revenue growth by ever-increasing fees on sellers, which was an unsustainable, self-defeating strategy."
That sounds very similar to our current Democrat President's strategy...hmm Maybe Meg's a Dem. after all.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: Patricia
Thu May 7 15:59:18 2009
Of course Whitman's years at Ebay will come under scrutiny. Whenever one applies for a new position their past experience is examined. Whitman can't make it on looks alone (that was a funny).
If the Skype fiasco and the unscrupulous fee hikes year after year only to throw the money down the dry well that is China doesn't get to you then I don't know what will. We've had two terms of ''Ahnold'' and he's doubled the government, raised taxes and almost brought us to bankruptcy! As if we haven't suffered enough now along comes Whitman? That's entirely too much to ask of any state even one the size of California!
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: JoeS
Thu May 7 17:10:09 2009
South goes on to say, ''In addition, criticism was leveled at the Whitman-era eBay for generating revenue growth by ever-increasing fees on sellers, which was an unsustainable, self-defeating strategy.''
I was saying this 3 years ago in other places. Whitman, followed by Donahoe, beat up the sellers with fees and anti-seller policies in order to show growth for investors. That was the easy way out by putting all the burden on the sellers. This strategy has had negative consequences that we are witnessing now.
It's simple supply and demand, the higher the fees, the less demand for the product/service. Everytime Meg or JD raised fees, the less the sellers used the service. The facts and numbers are starting to bear this out (and no, it's not necessarily the economy like Ebay management wants everyone to believe).
The author is right, this strategy is self-defeating and non-sustainable. Throw in the anti-seller policies and you have a recipe for disaster.
Both Whitman and Donahoe, are responsible for the mess at Ebay now. What's worse is the spin coming from management the last couple of years is it's the sellers fault for the problems at Ebay and they must be punished. The negative results for those actions, we are seeing now, speak for themselves. I personally don't believe things will get better until a whole new management/BOD is in place. They may run it into the ground before that ever happens though if they continue down this self-defeating path. I'm glad I phased Ebay out long ago.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Henrietta
Thu May 7 17:17:23 2009
Job creation! How many customer service pinks got laid off in San Jose? Some of whom had more seniority than Meg.
The service provider that has no service and fired all its customer service providers is not a good augury for California under Governor Meg.
I guess the 700 who got laid off in Vancouver don't count because they are not in the USA
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Fruity
Thu May 7 17:30:03 2009
Maybe they should look into just how greedy she was regarding the 9/11 auction for America
Yup, she wants to talk about small business and job creation, but what people dont recognize is that the policies that are set up directly put more burdens on the smaller sellers. You know, those who make up the bulk of the merchants here. They do that because Meg Whitman created the biggest Sweat Shop. Kathie Lee has nothing on Meg
I'm sure we can all come up with lists to blanket the State of California with what that woman put in place and put into motion. DSRs were on her watch, you can implement something so paradigm shifting as that without planning well 18 months prior to deployment. How about China our #1 priority where we subsidized their free listings was her watch.
How about some anti-competitive acts
Or maybe the Goldman Sachs fiasco
Those number of sellers making all or most of their living from ebay? Well ask Meg why it dropped 300,000. From 1.3M to 1million.
Ask her about poorly priced, multiple quantity items that were diluted the buying experience .. where you kicked the store sellers into auction core in the summer of 2006. It wasn't store sellers that were the problem. It was search results where all buyers saw was 5 pages deep of the same pair of Ugg BOOTS
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: RicRoe
Thu May 7 18:39:18 2009
So Whitman created jobs at eBay....it was not long after her departure that many of those workers started receiving pink slips.
While eBay struggles and continues to hang on, it is obvious that many of the layoffs at eBay were non essential employees.
Whitman wants to run on creating non essential jobs?
Sounds like every other policitican to me.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: Patricia
Thu May 7 18:48:45 2009
@Fruity - I well remember the Auctions for American stint Whitman pulled. She beat her chest and bragged that Ebay would make a million dollars a day to help New York! It was maddness and, of course, it hit sellers right in their holiday season. In the end they didn't make near what they said they would. I think the total was like 8 million - give or take a million because we all know how expert Ebay is with numbers. They kept the total pretty quiet....they destroyed the holiday season and they probably lost their shirt too! Patriotic people were dredging junk from their basements and selling it for big bucks!
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Harriet
Thu May 7 19:01:51 2009
It would be hard to cite job creation. There have been several layoffs at eBay, over the past year or two, some publicized a lot, and some not.
Combine that with the almost forced exodus of small sellers, and you have a not so glowing picture of "job creation".
Yes, she is no longer CEO at eBay, however, this was all planned during her reign and merely executed by Mr. Donahue.
They are two peas in a pod.
There is a lot for California to be worried about with her.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: YES123
Thu May 7 19:53:09 2009
Megs replacement invoked a policy change that no paper payments were to be in auction descriptions !!
THESE TWO AUCTIONS HAVE BEEN RUNNING ALL WEEK WITH CASHIER CHECK MENTIONED IN THE AUCTION DESCRIPTION--150343504015--150343506070
Dear ebay--If you are going to make a policy you should enforce it~~~~~~
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: Jake
Thu May 7 20:57:37 2009
I guess the 700 who got laid off in Vancouver don't count because they are not in the USA
...most of these lost jobs have been re-located to the Phillipines ????
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: voodoo
Thu May 7 21:22:11 2009
Well if they moved those 700 jobs from canada to the phillipines then we should have no reason not to understand them.
Providing we can speak phillipineses or whatever they speak down there as it sure isn't English.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Ming the Merciless
Thu May 7 21:23:27 2009
Interesting that yet another blogger missed the Skype patent fiasco that occurred during Neg Meg's imperial reign.
What rational investor would buy Skype stock when the engine that makes it run doesn't belong to ebafia, isn't theirs to sell, and the men (The Skype inventors) who do own this critical patent have told ebafia to stop using it.
Why is the business media and the blogosphere ignoring this blockbuster story?
DEATH to ebay corp. in 2009.
NEG MEG WHITMAN in 2010.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Daisy
Thu May 7 21:48:18 2009
Don't forget Ebay moving $3 or $4 billion to an off shore account to avoid paying American taxes.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Ming the Merciless
Thu May 7 22:33:48 2009
@ voodoo
They speak a language called Tagalog in the Philippines.
===============
Maneuvering both domestic and international profits into offshore banks through a series of dummy corporations is the norm rather than the exception today for so called 'American' businesses.
When all is said and done, parasitic corporations who use these perfectly legal schemes end up paying about 16% of their cooked books 'profits' to Uncle Sam while most middle class taxpayers are taxed at a rate of 25%.
The corporate tax rate is supposed to be 35%, but these unpatriotic and unfair tax avoidance strategies are why the American middle class is subsidizing large corporations who haven't asked for bailouts.
THIS MUST CHANGE.
As I recall -- and I might be wrong -- another aspect of NEG MEG's self-serving September 11 fundraiser was that the buyer was FORCED to pay with NEG MEG'S fiasco payment service, BillPoint.
BillPoint was among the first of NEG MEG's visible poor decisions. She tried to squeeze too much out of the sellers and offered little or no value in return (just like ebafia is now), sellers rebelled, and stopped accepting BillPoint.
So ebafia did one of the few things it does very well. In the absence of in house competency, they swallow (or like MercExchange case steal via patent infrigement) up platforms that do work well and proceed and to screw them up as well.
While PayPal is a Wall Street favorite, PayPal offers less and less value for its retail and seller customers with every policy change.
Mega greedy ebafia just can't seem to learn that the supply of geese and golden eggs is finite and getting smaller every day as ebafia becomes more hostile toward sellers.
DEATH to ebay corp. in 2009.
NEG MEG WHITMAN in 2010.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Ming the Merciless
Thu May 7 23:29:24 2009
I suppose these latest "captured efficiencies" (700 Canadians fired) will bumpy enafia's stock up a little tomorrow as Wall Street loves to see rank and fie corporate employees fired.
The efficiencies that should be captured are The Don Horleone and his accomplice in crime, The No, ebafia's most notorious non paying buyer.
Today's Wall Street is completely out of control and doesn't understand that each job loss harms individuals, their families, and national economies.
People who are employed spend and save more than the unemployed -- a fact that seems to escape the Wall Street Greed Machine.
WALL STREET & ITS SYNCOPHANTIC BUSINESS MEDIA MUST BE REFORMED.
Death to ebafia in 2009.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: swift one
Fri May 8 00:03:04 2009
Guess as a registered Republican, if we are all unfortunate to have her as a choice, I will be switching parties for sure!
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: angryjim
Fri May 8 00:27:01 2009
Whitman probably thinks she is owed the job of governor. Probably resents the fact she has to run in an election for the office and has to earn the votes of all the little people to succeed.
Resume wise, she has very little to offer in the way of the relevant skills and knowledge needed for this position. All around a very poor choice for such a high public office. Makes Bush II look like a statesman.
California deserves far better.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: ebay seller
Fri May 8 00:33:43 2009
I only hope that if by some miracle Meg is elected governor she finds a cushy job for John Donahoe on her staff.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Philip Cohen
Fri May 8 02:13:25 2009
“eBay announced this week it would close its Vancouver, Canada customer-service facility in September. eBay's Australian website told users that the closure would mean the transition of support services for Australian buyers and sellers, including telephone, email and live chat services, to existing facilities in the U.S. and the Philippines by early August.”
Mostly to the Philippines, I’ll bet. Now, where else can we make some more savings so that these senior executives, who are presently running this company into the ground, can try to resurrect those performance bonuses for 2009. I am sure they can find some more jobs to export to a low-cost-labour country, but not their jobs, of course. But will that save the bonuses. I doubt it. Too much damage has been done already to this company to expect a revenue turnaround in any but the long term.
Sorry Shane (eBay Australia forum moderator), but staff loyalty counts for nothing with the people presently running this company. The return to shareholders is the only consideration because that is the mechanism for calculating executive remuneration and those (missing) performance bonuses.
Actually, they do speak English in the Philippines, the problem is their accent is sometimes so strong that you cannot understand them.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: shymy
Fri May 8 02:33:33 2009
Last time I saw a mouth like Meg's....
It had a hook in it.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Ming the Merciless
Fri May 8 03:11:10 2009
Yes, they do indeed speak English in the Philippines but their native language is Tagalog.
In addition to outsourcing hundreds of American tech and service rep jobs (and now Canadianobs) to India, NEG MEG WHITMAN in 2010 is also vulnerable as a candidate on the H-1B visa issue. She allegedly hired an unknown number of foreign workers to work in this country instead of hiring qualified Americans.
And what about her big Republican flip flop on where stores would appear in search? That demonstration of incompetency damaged core sellers irreparably, and ebafia made no restitution. This sorry episode in ebafia history demonstrated yet again that NEG MEG made decisions without thorough and thoughtful consideration of consequences.
Meg's dog can't run the state of California.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Melanie
Fri May 8 07:34:12 2009
Ahhh...Be careful how you treat the people you meet on the way up because you're going to meet the same people on the way down.
If one of Meg's disposable peon Ebay sellers tells 10 people about how little they meant to ebay during her tenure, and they tell 5 people, and they tell 3 people... who is left?
The same number of people to whom Ebay was responsive; Certainly I couldn't be enough to get elected.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: joe
Fri May 8 10:38:44 2009
California voters and residents are just "noise"...M.W.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: don't forget
Fri May 8 11:12:44 2009
Don't forget the most basic quality "honesty" or should be say "dishonesty".
Meg was good at saying one thing and doing another, and issuing a press release to to try and cover up what was really happening.
But wait, maybe that does make her the perfect candidate for public office.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: ejholden
Fri May 8 12:39:38 2009
Terminator ... Starring Arnold Schwarzenegger
Terminated ... Starring Meg Whitman
Be afraid, California ... Be very afraid ....
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: Ming the Merciless
Fri May 8 14:54:27 2009
Past and present California ebay users should be preparing their fraud stories -- both buyer and seller fraud -- along with documentation to bombard the media next year about how NEG MEG tolerated if not winked at fraud, stolen merchandise, and other crimes committed on ebafia in order to generate revenue.
Meg's supporters and campaign staff are NOW preparing a list of perceived negatives and positives and will be planting feel good Mom Meg stories in the California media about Meg's superhuman efforts to combat fraud, fencing, etc. on ebay and about how much she loves her family, dog, and horse. Meg will trot out all the clueless, wide eyed sellers who positively drooled whenever NEG MEG smiled at them or hugged at ebafia live.
Their goal is make NEG MEG look like Mother Theresa with a MBA who will "save" California.
Every aspect of NEG MEG's life should be investigated. I've heard stories that a 20 something son believes and behaves as if he's privileged royalty and may have had "problems" in college.
The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior, and NEG MEG more than tolerated marketplace fraud, tanked ebay stock, made a serious of strategic blunders, and failed completely to develop a long term plan to transition ebay properly.
NEG MEG expropriated technology that ebay lacked the ability or will to create for themselves, refused to build a safe and stable platform infrastructure, and was responsible through negligence for allowing the hacker Vladuz from obtaining and publishing thousands of ebay users' credit card number, user IDs, and passwords.
The typical CEO profile is one of entitlement. These people actually believe they're entitled to billion dollar salaries, golden parachutes, bottomless stock option packages, homes around the world, expensive toys, and most of all POWER.
NEG MEG is the corporate equivalent Marie Antoinette who told starving Frenchman to eat cake if they couldn't afford bread.
MEG - the deepest DREG in the bottom of the corporate barrel.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Gail
Fri May 8 15:31:51 2009
Personally, I'm thrilled that Meg Whitman has entered the political ring. I'm hoping this will bring much needed media coverage to the underpinnings of eBay. If the media goes after Whitman the way they go after every other politician's past dealings, eBay's bones will be laid bare.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Jim
Fri May 8 16:09:08 2009
If success in business is a pre-qualification for success in politics then explain Obama (or ANY of his cabinet). Not a lick of business experience anywhere to be found!
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Christmas Stocking Factory
Sun May 10 09:47:27 2009
We were relocating from California to Florida in 2002. One interesting bit of information - already back then, the mover we have used had 50% special packages on relocation TO California, citing mass exodus from that state.
Right about that time, news media reported on Whitman and other eBay execs being investigated for stock spinning with Goldman Sachs (a practice that is illegal today) and Whitman resigning from Goldman Sachs Board. The lawsuit brought up by eBay shareholders was settled in 2005.
http://tinyurl.com/ps77ef
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay
by: bajaskp
Sun May 10 13:11:28 2009
Well looky hear all the Libs and failures who sold on Ebay have a voice.
As a 8 year seller on Ebay I am very pleased with Meg Whitman. Of course you folk-ers really would not understand the big picture. Our sales have increase 3 fold since the calamity in our economy as people are finally learning to shop and spend more wisely.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: FOAD Ebay
Sun May 10 21:35:22 2009
@bajaskp
Well looky "HERE" another dumb ebay employee who can't even spell.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Ming the Merciless
Mon May 11 01:54:32 2009
This set of Toolbox Trolls sound like ebafia's nastiest TSAM out of Salt Lake City.
This guy is not only hyperactive but suffers from an acute case of adult attention disorder. Combine this with inbred arrogance and rudeness that ebafia likes to hire for, he should win ebafia's Employee of the Year award.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: nadine
Mon May 11 18:04:14 2009
Meg is going around telling the same tall tales about how great eBay is that she told John McCain last year: empowering the individual, 1.3 million people make a living on eBay, etc., etc.
If I were her opponent I would make an ad contrasting Meg's happy talk with tales of eBay's corporate greed, unfairness, and incompetence.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Ming the Merciless
Mon May 11 18:59:31 2009
California ebayers shouldn't assume NEG MEG's competition knows anything at all about what she really did to ebay.
As long as her Republican, Democrat, Green, etc. competition let her get away with these lies, she will continue to tell them.
If California ebayers would start emailing and calling the campaign headquarters of various candidates and giving them verifiable FACTS about NEG MEG, she could be stopped in her horse tracks before the primary season formally begins.
Death to ebafia in 2009.
NEG MEG WHITMAN in 2010.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Ming the Merciless
Wed May 13 02:48:21 2009
Vancouver ebay employees who were dismissed last week will be delighted to know that most if not all of their jobs are going to the country of Jordan in the middle east hardly known as a bastion of fluent English or European language speakers.
The Ho continues to outsource North American jobs to NEG MEG'S Republican cohort Mitt Romney and to cheap labor markets like Jordan.
Ebafia: America's most despicable corporation run by America's most despicable, deceitful, and duplicitous executives.
Ebafia: where sociopathy reigns.
Meg Whitman to Draw Intense Media Scrutiny to eBay by: Bruce
Thu May 14 03:14:22 2009
I knew McCain was doomed when I heard that Meg Whitman was working for HIS campaign.
Saturday, May 16, 2009 - Meggy goes down - in flames Part XXX - Meggy will fuck CA, like she did with Ebay.
In the beginning - Ebay grew because of the people who wanted to buy and sell - through the only real available medium on the internet at that time, that would enable them to do so.
Meggy and co., only put in just barely enough staff to keep the show rolling - and to put it bluntly, they said "Fuck providing any Customer Service".
Then around 2004, Meggy said, "Ahhh fuck them all, we are the 1000 lb gorilla in the ring - let them eat cake, we are going to cut the non existent customer service back to ZERO and start jacking the fees Waaaaaaaaay up".
She plans to do to the people who make California, exactly what she did to the people who made Ebay - she is going to gut it and she is going to fuck it - and she will make you all pay for it too.
Meg Whitman, who became a billionaire while helping eBay grow to 346 million users, called Thursday for sharply shrinking California's work force by laying off more than 30,000 state employees.
In a luncheon speech to the Roseville Chamber of Commerce and an interview afterward, the Republican gubernatorial candidate and former Silicon Valley CEO repeatedly spoke of slashing "head count" and said she would outdo Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in cutting state employee ranks.
On a day when Schwarzenegger proposed eliminating 5,000 state jobs and cutting $9 billion from the budget, Whitman said: "I would do a bigger number of layoffs."
Whitman has vowed since February to cut 10 percent of California's 345,000-employee work force if she is elected governor. In her appearance Thursday before hundreds of luncheon guests, she described her plans to invoke a CEO-style of governance.
She said she would start by hiring a team with a mission to slash state agencies and departments.
"The governor gets 4,000 appointments, 400 of which make an enormous difference because they are agency heads or department heads," she told the gathering. "Those are the individuals that will streamline regulations, that will collapse departments and will lay off middle management and superfluous overhead."
Whitman didn't spell out how she intends to navigate a fractious state Legislature, a two-thirds budget vote requirement and powerful state employee unions to impose her will as governor.
But in an interview, she said she was prepared to make significant cuts in the state employee ranks even if it adds to burgeoning unemployment in California.
"There will always be dislocation," she said. "But the most important thing is we have to get a government that the citizens of California can afford. And as badly as I feel about the 30,000 or 40,000 people that will lose their jobs, I feel even more badly for the millions of Californians who are paying higher taxes, who are looking at a state that is not working."
Whitman, who is still officially an exploratory candidate, has donated $4 million to her campaign to date.
She is facing a challenge from another deep-pocketed Silicon Valley entrepreneur, Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner, who sold a wireless technology firm for $1 billion in 2001.
Also seeking the GOP gubernatorial nomination is former Rep. Tom Campbell.
The three candidates oppose key special election initiatives Schwarzenegger and the Legislature are counting on to lessen the state budget crisis.
Whitman and Poizner are against Proposition 1A, which would set state spending limits but trigger $16 billion in extended tax hikes, and Prop 1C, which would allow $5 billion in borrowing against future lottery proceeds. Campbell supports 1A but opposes 1C.
Whitman said she is angry over higher taxes approved in the recent state budget deal. She gave an example of a family of four earning $40,000 that will get $800 back from the Obama administration's stimulus program – only to have to pay $732 in new state taxes.
"They might as well have just done a wire transfer from Washington, D.C., to Sacramento, California," she told the luncheon crowd.
(And it's a good thing they didn't use Paypal to do it either)
She does not seem to be the clearest thinking former CEO to come down the pike. She talks about cutting jobs, not programs. Cutting 30,000 staff across the board will not improve efficiency of state agencies, it will probably reduce it. That is not a logical approach. If she wants to shrink the size of state government, then she should name the programs or state agencies that she would eliminate. Since those agencies were likely created due to some laws that were passed by previous Legislatures and Governors, she should also name the related laws that she wants repealed when she eliminates agencies or programs.
The problem with this simplistic "Well just cut them 10%" is that it ignores at least 2 problems. FIRST not all the state's employees work in "general fund" departments. For instance, the DMV is supported by DMV fees (which does NOT include the car tax). While cutting there would allow reductions in some of the license fees (welcome to Californians) it wouldn't "solve" the deficit. You also can't transfer the funds, because of prior voter actions. SECOND, it is pretty hard to cut without changing policies and programs. The state, for example, has mandated minimum nursing staffing levels at state hospitals. So not only do you have to lay nurses off, you have to change the mandates. I REALLY hope meg is getting this explained to her. The last thing I want is ANOTEHR governor who has to learn about the complexities from scratch and then we find has no ideological rudder to help her/him navigate sacramento.
you know, there's an old saying... when you point at somebody else, there are three fingers pointing back at you. we, the voters, have enacted a number of rather expensive propositions without any input from the legislature that does the budget. minimum levels of this. percentages of that. reductions of property taxes. we, people. not them. we have carefully and with the best of intentions crafted a constitution that makes it nearly impossible to balance a budget because nobody bothers to include funding sources in their bills. add in the federal mandates in order to get stimulus or even special use funds? i almost feel sorry for them. almost. they -are- politicians after all. :) so before you go getting all in a huff over what our "useless" legislature has done? take a look at what you did first. do yourselves a favor and the next time a really good proposition crosses the ballot make sure it includes a way of paying for itself because we are as much a part of the problem as they are.
Wow! The right wing radicals are just drooling over Meganormus Whitlessman's obviously totally flawed approach to fixing the problem. Little do they realize that old, well-established huge businesses like "Montgomery Wards and Gottschalks went out of business BECAUSE they followed such outdated ideas!
Follow the money (or lack of) and you get a much better picture of what needs to be done indeed. In the previous example, you lower your workforce and expect to lose an equivalent part of your customer base BECAUSE they EXPECT the same level of service for the same level of THEIR expenses.
IF the people of THIS state are ready to say, "Cut the services!", cut the workforce appropriately. But, for now, it is more important to find out WHERE all the money comes from and how it's used if we want to really fix the income/expense balance. Laying off special-funded employees does not save a dime on expenses, but DOES reduce the level of income and services further.
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zencord wrote on 05/15/2009 08:40:51 AM:
Still waiting to hear how she will solve the remaining 99% of the deficit with that CEO-style of governance...
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EqualRights4All wrote on 05/15/2009 08:25:38 AM:
I guess Ms Whitman forgot state workers vote. I'm not even a state worker, but her arrogant stance really upset me. There's no way I'd vote for someone so out of touch with the working people.
Meg, take your millions of dollars and go on a cruise in pirate infested waters.
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GUnit1024 wrote on 05/15/2009 07:51:45 AM:
Hey right wing nut job, our votes do NOT count. You really think that the CA voters voted for these lying, thieving,
"public servants" we have in office, you think people go to the polls and say yeah he's a scum bag I'll vote for him. No politician tells us the truth. I'll do this, I'll do that, yeah right. They are not in it to serve but to have power over we the people.(Period...)
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docmartin wrote on 05/15/2009 07:08:10 AM:
Unions. Back in the 60s, I put myself through college by working at Addresograph - Multigraph, a giant 19th Century factory in Clevelnad. The union was the International Association of Machinists. Now that was a union. You could not abuse workers in those days.
The SEIU 1000 people do their best, but they really have no power. Unions were systematically broken down by allowing a mass migration from the south of people who would work for peanuts. I carpentered in the 70s and made enough to buy a good truck and a small piece of land. Our pay dropped by 70 percent, after crews showed up, and worked for next to nothing -- and did shoddy work.
This is still going on. If you pay an illegal immigrant to mow your lawn, fix your house, fix your car and etc. YOU are the person who helped bring down the once-great state of California. You saved a few bucks but opened the door to an endless supply of social, civil and moral problems that have destroyed a once great way of life.
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docmartin wrote on 05/15/2009 06:59:36 AM:
Some of you want free services, free roads, free police and free everything else. I make $39,000 a year and work hard for the money, the same as everyone else in my section, branch and department. What we do keeps California and its residents safe from crime. To call state workers lazy or blame unions (???) is just plain stupid.
I hate to break it to some of you but so-called private industry in the USA is the biggest parasite of all. The wealthy don't pay taxes -- they have accountants to figure that one out. Most corporate entities have their own way of avoiding levys.
But poor lower-middle class schmoes like me end up paying a ton of our STATE SALARIES on taxation, the same as some of you hard working people. The rest goes to local stores, the occasional movie night out and feeding our kids.
So get off our backs, learn what is really happening in this country -- the systematic looting of our institutions by quick buck artists and if you have a brain, please use it.
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rightwingnutjob wrote on 05/15/2009 06:01:07 AM:
Boomer54 wrote on 05/15/2009 00:58:05 AM: We don't work to support gov't, gov't is supposed to work for us! Public service./// Boomer, you are correct to a point... we do work to support government, it's jsut that we have let our government run amuck and allowed them o take control... Are there areas where we could cut and trim some fat? yea there are, be we are paying people to support programs that we have either directly or indirectly said we want. You wnat to reduce the size of government, quit voting for people who's goal it is to increase the size of government.. It's tiem that people start to realize that your vote really does count. We are where we are today because we have allowed ourselves to let these boneheads put us there. California is nothing ore than a giant welfare state with open boards that allow anyone to enter and utilize the services that we are paying for, and the borders i'm talking are not limited to the southern border.
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rightwingnutjob wrote on 05/15/2009 05:48:26 AM:
I'm not a state worker either , but she just lost my vote... I'm at a loss to understand what is so difficult about managing the finances of the state.. we have a constitution that lays out the reason that "we allow" the government to lay and collect taxes. although I do hold a certian degree of compassion for certain groups that will need assistance, it really does not extend beyond teh disabled or the elderly... It's not mine nor your responsibility to ensure that other's children go to college, have a roof over their head or have medical coverage. It is a responsibilty of those who bring them into this world, or the families of those who do... It's time that people and government start accepting accountabilty and responsibility... there are so many excuses as to why they don't, and no inititive to find the reasons to why they can.
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GAWnCA wrote on 05/15/2009 05:43:13 AM:
It's time for government to be run like a business and not a honey pot for some idiot that couldn't run a household budget let alone a government budget. Most of the idiots under the dome have never held a real job. They have no idea what it is to have to actually manage something and make it work. As long as they can stiff the tax payer they'll do it. What about all these non-essential commissions that the voter has no say over? How many millions of dollars would it save to abolish them. How about all the staff the legislators employ so they don't have to do their job. More millions, and then there are the school administrations, the money never makes it to the class room or the teacher. Since when should a public employee have a union to bilk the worker and tax payer out of more BILLIONS?
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Jimsac8 wrote on 05/15/2009 01:14:00 AM:
I did not say that I am a state worker. If you read carefully, you will see that I did not say that I am a state worker. I did not say that. Read carefully before passing jugement on me.
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Boomer54 wrote on 05/15/2009 00:58:05 AM:
Jimsac: The problem with you gov't workers is that you're union, so you're salaries and perks cost us much more than you're worth. Sorry, but that's just the way it is. We want less government, not more. Trim the fat.
Look at the schools, the dropout rate is abysmal, the education sucks, teachers aren't teaching, yet because of unions, they keep sucking us dry. It's time for a major overhaul of this non-functional system. We don't work to support gov't, gov't is supposed to work for us! Public service.
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flangeku wrote on 05/15/2009 00:44:33 AM:
State workers are not pawns. When any business needs to reduce costs, head count reductions often follow. It sucks, but state workers are not special.
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Jimsac8 wrote on 05/15/2009 00:38:15 AM:
Why are state workers always used as pawns for the budget mess. They have nothing to do with the budget deficit and have no control over the politians behavior or the lobbyist behavior, who are the real cause of this budget mess. I do agree with reducing state spending and not increasing taxes, but don't use state workers as pawns because they are tax payers and have families too and are just as fustrated about this budget mess as much as every working family is.
Mercifully, for California voters, the 2010 gubernatorial race looks to be less of a circus. But that doesn’t mean it is going to be boring. After choosing Republican Pete Wilson over Democrat Dianne Feinstein in 1990, Californians will have another shot at electing their first female governor if Meg Whitman, former eBay CEO, wins the Republican nomination.
Whitman’s career statistics are impressive: She increased eBay’s revenue from $4 million to almost $8 billion in a decade and eBay had 12 million users in California alone. And unlike Schwarzenegger, who has never let go of using “I’ll be back” in speeches, I doubt Whitman will force us to relive her past glories with a campaign slogan about the prize going to the highest bidder.
Of course, business acumen is no guarantor of political success: her friend Mitt Romney can tell her that.
Despite Whitman’s credibility with the Silicon Valley crowd, where eBay is based, so far her social networking effort is lackluster compared to Democratic hopeful Gavin Newsom. “Meg Whitman for Governor” has a scant 2,448 friends almost 20 times fewer than Newsom’s 47,799 friends. (Even one of my Facebook friends, PJ Kim, who is running to represent District 1 of the New York City Council, has 1,126 cyberfriends on his campaign page.)
Newsom became the youngest mayor of San Francisco in a century in 2004. But at least one former Democratic governor probably thinks Newsom could show a little more respect for his elders.
Jerry Brown, who served as California’s chief executive from 1975 to 1983, is expected to run again, though he has not formally announced his candidacy like Whitman and Newsom. Brown, currently California’s attorney general, seems determined to hold every level of state and local office in California — and not necessarily in any logical order.
Brown-Newsom family ties go back a way. Brown appointed Newsom’s father to the state appeals court and Brown’s father Pat Brown, himself a former governor of California was friends with Newsom’s grandfather.
Whitman, Newsom and Brown aren’t the only names to watch. The GOP slate is likely to include state insurance commissioner Steve Poizner, also a wealthy Silicon Valley entrepreneur and former Rep. Tom Campbell, who served a stint as state finance director for Schwarzenegger.
Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, a Democrat, is also considering a run, which could lead to a fun North-South race between California’s most prominent cities and their respective chief executives.
Villaraigosa is not going to Twitter while Rome burns, said one of the mayor’s advisers after Newsom’s announcement. But perhaps he was just lining things up to shift the online popularity contest over to LA-based MySpace, which could use a little help these days.
Still, this could all become irrelevant if Feinstein decides to enter the race. A Field Poll released in March showed that she would be the instant Democratic front-runner, with 38 percent support, compared to 16 percent each for Brown and Villaraigosa and 10 percent for Newsom. Whitman led among with Republicans with 21 percent, followed by Campbell at 18 percent and Poizner at 7 percent.
But with Senate Democrats teetering at the 60 vote filibuster-proof magic number and a Democrat in the White House, my guess is that Feinstein will want to reap the benefits of her seniority in Congress.
Then again, those trying to learn Feinstein’s intentions may want to consider what she is telegraphing on the Capitol Hill softball field this summer. The name of her office’s team: Never Say Di.
Liriel Higa is a former Congressional Quarterly reporter who now lives and writes on the West Coast.
Saturday, May 16, 2009 - Meggy goes down - in flames Part XXVIII - Meggies Body Language...
I saw Meggy talking to this guy and I just took all of 1/10th of a second to scan her.....
The guy has come up to chat with her, he seems pretty sincere.
She being a shifty and sly individual - she doesn't like being in the presence of sincere people.
Her body language - being the closed arms and the grimmace at him, she is saying "Fuck off - and go away" - and this is to a volunteer at her lamer phone in.
Mind your this is a screen shot from some completely staged footage - just imagine if it wasn't - you think she would even stop to spit on "the dirty peasants" down there?
Meggie's expression - well she looks as pleased to be talking to this guy, as much as a junki with a kilo up her crack is when the police sniffer dog sticks it's snout in.
Saturday, May 16, 2009 - Meggy goes down - in flames Part XXVI - Meggy is truly FUGLY Part I
Yes.... I am not into picking on people cause of they way they look, cause you can't help the head you have got; but character - character is everything.
And character determines how one relatest to others and how one gets on in the world and also how one looks after self.
I noticed in a blog, some one said this:
ggreen
"You would think, being a billionaire, she could afford better dentures."
That complexion and gum colour....
It's like dead meat after it's been soaked in cold water for a day or two.
Poizner video rips Whitman as 'no, no, no' on debate
State Insurance Commissioner Steve Poizner is letting Silicon Valley rival Meg Whitman have it for declining to show up at a May 18 Sacramento debate on the special election ballot initiatives.
"Will she debate? Will she speak out?" shouts a YouTube video that the Poizner campaign put out. The answer, in music from the classic hit, "Tell Her No," by the Zombies: "No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!"
Whitman's spokesman Mitch Zak said the former eBay CEO passed on Poizner's invitation to debate the initiatives the day before the May 19 election because she considered it a pointless exercise. The Republican candidates -- including former Rep. Tom Campbell -- are in general agreement against the initiatives.
In response to Poizner's video, the Whitman camp accused Poizner of dragging his feet by failing to respond to her invitations for three future GOP primary debates.
"What to you want us to say? 'I'm more opposed to Proposition 1A than you are?' " Zak said of Poizner's special election invite. "If you really want to debate, let's do three -- Northern California, Southern California and the Central Valley -- and let's get them on the calendar."
Poizner spokesman Kevin Spillane said the Whitman campaign stance is "intellectually dishonest."
"If she's willing to debate she could join Tom Campbell and Steve Poizner next Monday at the Sacramento Press Club," Spillane said. "It's already on the schedule. It's time for Meg to stop dodging debates and ducking questions."
So, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman has decided she wants to trade on-line flea-market trading for the governor’s office of the largest state. In one fell swoop, no less. She’s never run for office before at any level.
Truth to tell, I’ve never actually met Whitman. I did, however, run the campaigns that beat the last two novice-candidate businesspeople seeking to be governor – Northwest Airlines magnate Al Checchi in the 1998 Democratic primary and Republican financier Bill Simon in the 2002 general election. I’ve still got the playbook on ‘em. Will Whitman be different? It depends.
One of the major problems with wealthy business types attempting to cross over into politics is their own – how shall we say? – inflated self-impression. Many really do envision themselves as smarter and more accomplished than officeholders who have succeeded in the political system for years or decades. After all, they’ve run a business, created jobs, “met a payroll.” Checchi derided Gray Davis as a “helpless paper pusher” as a way of describing Davis’ 12 years in two different statewide offices and six and a half years as Gov. Jerry Brown’s chief of staff.
In 1998, Checchi also appeared genuinely proud of his messy leveraged buyout of Northwest Airlines in 1989. He regularly bragged even to working-class Democratic audiences that his takeover of the company had been turned into a “case study at the Harvard Business School.” And indeed, it had. But he was apparently hoping no one would actually read the Harvard study. When intrepid political reporter Phil Trounstine pored over it, his resultant investigative piece in the San Jose Mercury News laid out the ugly facts and gave the lie to Checchi’s rose-colored version of the buyout.
In focus groups, we would expose voters to Checchi’s own, unedited bio – “a self-made business man who took over a struggling company and made the hard decisions that turned it around.” Democratic and independent voters alike would sneer knowingly, “Yeah, I know what that means – he made a fortune while firing workers and taking away the rest’s health benefits, and now he thinks he’s a genius because he got filthy rich on the deal.” And, that is exactly how he got to be the 113th richest man in America by 1998.
Simon also seemed equally pleased with his record as a private-sector operator, largely managing enterprises founded or passed on to him by his father, a former treasury secretary. On his own, though, Simon the Younger had bought out the venerable Bekins Moving & Storage, and rechristened it Geologistics – a high-end, worldwide moving company catering to shipping such things as priceless works of art for wealthy tycoons moving from, say, New York to Singapore. It all sounded very classy and upscale.
Except that when we checked into the company, it turned out it was flailing if not failing, and that Simon had been forced to go to Wall Street to sell commercial paper to keep it afloat. Because it was closely held by the Simon family, it would have been impossible for us to determine its solvency absent his need to turn over financials in order to borrow money to save the company. As it turned out, it was far from the success story Simon glowed about.
But the biggest laugher with Simon was his earlier takeover of a company called Pacific Coin. Unbeknownst to the Davis campaign or even to the media, Simon was going through a civil jury trial in Los Angeles in the late summer of ‘02 that resulted in a $78- million-dollar fraud verdict against him in a lawsuit brought by his partner in the takeover deal. So the guy who was promising to run government like a business was found guilty of fraudulently running a business into the ground. (In fairness to Simon, the verdict was thrown out by a judge a month later – but not in time to save his candidacy.) In fact, Simon had so many simultaneous legal actions going on that we started to term him the first candidate for governor in California history whose campaign was covered mainly on Court TV.
When we quickly assembled focus groups to throw this new development at them, people were astonished that such a huge verdict for fraud would be levied against a major-party candidate for governor just three months before the election. But they were even more incredulous when told the nature of the company in which the supposedly savvy Simon had bought a controlling interest. Pacific Coin was, in fact, an old-fashioned pay-phone company – in the age of the cell phone. So much for Simon’s acumen as an investor.
In Whitman’s case, eBay in truth is probably an asset of some value. As senior advisor to then-Controller Steve Westly’s 2006 run for governor, we used his eBay experience to positive effect in building his bona fides as a business-savvy entrepreneur. Voters generally view the on-line auction market as a non-polluting, populist company that allows average people to sell unwanted items and buy things of interest – even to make a living on eBay, as about 400,000 people do.
But in Checchi’s case, I used to say, “You live by Northwest Airlines, you die by Northwest Airlines.” And as with Whitman and eBay, when association with one major company is the prime credential on which you are seeking to become governor, that entity and your stewardship of it legitimately will come under intense, microscopic scrutiny.
In that vein, Whitman’s tenure at eBay was not without controversy or failure. For the last couple years under Whitman, the company experienced a marked slowdown in growth, and its stock lost half its value. In 2005, she also engineered the $2.6 billion purchase of Skype, the Internet-based video calling service, believing that eBay buyers and sellers would find talking to each other directly to be peachy keen. Instead, it turned out to be a lemon, and eBay wrote off Skype and is trying to dump it.
While Whitman was CEO, the company also came under heavy fire for forgeries and stolen items, dishonest sellers and inaccurately described merchandise. In addition, criticism was leveled at the Whitman-era eBay for generating revenue growth by ever-increasing fees on sellers, which was an unsustainable, self-defeating strategy.
Whitman shares yet another commonality with Checchi – a spotty voting record. Voters in polls and focus groups were flabbergasted to learn that the guy who wanted to be elected governor in 1998 hadn’t even gotten off his duff to vote in either the primary or general election the last time California elected a governor in 1994. This was an immediate disqualification for many primary voters (Checchi finished with only 12.5 percent of the vote, despite spending a then-record $40 million on his primary campaign).
Whitman didn’t bother to vote in four statewide elections since just 2003 – including the ‘03 recall election that put Gov. Schwarzenegger in office. À la Checchi, she hasn’t been able to verify whether she voted in the 1994 gubernatorial election, when the controversial anti-immigrant Prop. 187 was on the ballot. She has apologized for these lapses, saying she was busy running a company and had two kids. (Average voters with kids use that as an excuse for skipping the polling place?)
In addition, Whitman was registered decline-to-state until the fall of 2007. How will that sit with die-hard Republican primary voters? We also made great use with Democrats in the ‘98 primary of Al Checchi’s political contributions to Republican U.S. Senate and presidential candidates. Likewise, Whitman has made contributions to Democratic candidates – including to Westly in the last governor’s race, and even to liberal Democratic Sen. Barbara Boxer. How will that fly with purist GOP primary voters?
In the end, there is simply no way to predict how good a candidate Whitman will turn out to be, or how good of a campaign she and her plethora of handlers will manage. But one thing is for certain: She will be running against history as a first-time candidate for governor whose only major credential is having run a major business.
Meg Whitman, putative frontrunner for the Republican nomination for Governor of California, wants to make something perfectly clear about the kind of leader she'll be: The kind who doesn't give a shit.
She'd like to cut corporate taxes and get rid of some regulations and that's it. On any issue but the bottom line, you're on your own. Here's twenty bucks. Now get out of here before I change my mind.
This kind of... oh, let's call it "vision"... lets her avoid a lot of baggage that would bog down your average candidate, who has a lot of fool "positions" on "issues." It also leads to some pretty funny reporting from people who expect her to care about the things that generally interest office-seekers. How can you characterize the opinions of someone who doesn't have any? You end up with scoops like this:
"So first of all, what you should know is I'm not running for governor based on social issues -- I'm running for governor to fix and really transform the California economy." said Whitman, a Presbyterian.
She's not a stealth candidate; that would imply she has something to hide. She truly hasn't given government any thought. It's not just that she hasn't voted very much. It's like she's spent the last fifty years being fed through a tube.
Which should make her the perfect Republican candidate for a Democratic state except for one thing: You're not allowed to not have an opinion about gay marriage.
Meg Whitman tried. And here's what she came up with:
"I want you to know I am all about equal rights and I want to make sure that gay and lesbian people are treated equally under the eyes of the law."
But:
"The reason that I voted 'yes' on Prop. 8 was that civil unions provide virtually all the rights and remedies to gay and lesbian couples that marriage does and my personal point of view is that the definition of 'marriage' is a religious term that should be between and man and a woman."
In other words:
Marriage is strictly a religious idea, and that's why I voted to have it written into state law.
And:
Gay people must have equal rights. And by "equal," I mean "not equal."
As Alan Bennett has the Headmaster say in Forty Years On -- "I'm all in favour of free expression, provided it's kept rigidly under control."
So why did a smart cookie like Meg Whitman choose to make the first political opinion of her life something so tortured we probably do it to detainees?
Because she knows she can't get win a general election without white women, and 53% of them support gay marriage, and she can't get the Republican nomination without Republicans, and 82% of them don't.
Meg Whitman Week -- Monday: Meg Actually Gives an Interview
First I wondered why Meg Whitman announced that she was running for Governor of California two years before the election. Then I wondered why she wasn't giving any interviews. But now it all makes sense: She wants us to have plenty of time to not get to know her.
It's not just journalists she's ducking. She won't even talk to other Republicans. The other two GOP hopefuls, Tom Campbell and Steve Poizner, offered to debate next week's ballot propositions, but Whitman declined.
(Maybe a debate is asking too much. Maybe it's enough that she's voting this year. She doesn't always do that.)
But not giving interviews seems... weird.
As Poizner's campaign points out:
"Meg's refusal to debate Campbell and Poizner is part of a pattern. Meg Whitman is doing her best to avoid the press and questions from the public. She is only attending private events or ones which are carefully scripted and, if questions are even allowed, they are written and pre-screened in advance."
She's sort of the political equivalent of Angelyne, the weird old blonde lady who circles LA in the pink Corvette and no one knows why she's famous or what she wants. The difference between Meg Whitman and Angelyne is it's kind of fun when you see Angelyne.
Whitman gave two disastrous interviews back in February, to the LA Times and the San Francisco Chronicle, and then went so silent you didn't know if she was running for governor or having John Edwards' lovechild.
But now she's back in the ring. This time, though, they're bringing her up slow, and she's only fighting bums and tomato cans. On Wednesday, Fox's Neil "Smart Like Prosciutto" Cavuto. On Friday, talk radio's Hugh "Which One Are Hugh Again" Hewitt.
These are not tough interviews for a Republican.
Meg Whitman has spent her life in fairly high profile business positions. There's evidence that she's spoken to groups. So why is she only engaging in interviews that are the journalistic version of pity sex?
The answer, I think, has a lot to do with Caroline Kennedy and her botched New York Times interview, the one where she said "you know" too much, and the Times didn't clean it up.
The answer is that Meg Whitman can't stop saying "actually."
In her sit-down with Cavuto, Whitman told him things in California where "far worse, actually, even than nationally." She said there was "actually some small rationale" for closing tax shelters and that she could reach minority voters because, "I actually think through talking about jobs and the economy."
Which wasn't so bad. But on Hugh Hewitt she explained that her hometown was actually Cold Spring Harbor, her parents actually met as children in Boston, (Their families were friends actually) and her uncle was actually killed in the Philippines. She actually went to Princeton for women's sports. She sat beside a guy at Harvard Business who actually fought in the Vietnam War. Her husband was actually a friend of her older sister's, who was actually a PhD.
One of the first products she launched at Procter and Gamble was actually Ivory Shampoo. Then she got the chance to work for Bain & Co. and actually moved to L.A. for four years where she decided to actually join the Presbyterian Church.
Mitt Romney was actually her first boss at Bain.
Then she actually started Hyperion Press for Disney and reorganized FTD florists, which was very challenging, because member-owned associations actually exist for different reasons than for profit companies. She learned a lot because it was the first time she was actually a CEO. It also got her interested in the Internet because she actually experimented with FTD.com.
Then she went back east, and that's how she ended up actually at Stride Rite. Luckily, her husband was actually loving being back in Boston.
And all this business experience is applicable to governing because actually you have to focus and actually ask: "What is the most important thing?"
Does Meg Whitman actually have nails in her head?
Fowler says using the word "actually" all the time is "a phenomenon perhaps more suitable for the psychologist than for the philologist." He puts "actually" in the same category of useless words as "you know" and adds, trying to remain calm, that "any meaning they had ever had was soon rubbed off them, and they had become noises automatically produced."
I think "actually" is even more politically off-putting than "you know" because "you know" can sound vaguely apologetic but "actually" sounds like you're talking to either an imbecile who doesn't get distinctions at all, or a hayseed who might be amazed by practically anything.
It makes you dislike her, actually.
The interviews also reminded me of a certain out-of-her-depth Alaskan Governor. And how precarious it got whenever a question didn't directly prompt a sound bite from a list she'd studied. Here's my favorite exchange from the Hewitt interview and you can go listen to it yourself, if you think I'm making it up:
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - Meggy goes down - in flames Part XXI - Mrs Charisma - Her enemies appear on Youtube
Meg Whitman on eBay's Ethical Yardsticks
Mistress of Spin is at it again, this time portraying herself as the champion of wholesomeness over vaguely criminal Ebay sellers. Does your neighbor sell on Ebay? Your aunt, former coworker or friend? Are they criminals? Don't be fooled by Meg Whitman's posturing. For several years Ebay sellers have recognized her as the biggest liar at Ebay. She's become expert at scapegoating Ebay sellers for her financial ends and now she's trying to continue the tactic to serve her political goals.
In two interviews given on the same day, senior McCain economic adviser Meg Whitman contradicts herself in terms of tax cuts needing to be offset by spending cuts. In the first interview, on ABC's Good Morning America, Whitman defends McCain's vote against the Bush tax cuts by saying they weren't accompanied by spending cuts. But in another interview with Steve Forbes on CNBC, Whitman said that McCain's own tax cuts are not "contigent on controlling spending."
Mccain/Palin: Lies, lies, and more lies
(the news presenter calls them on their bullshit and lying)
"One strange Sarah Palin falsehood, which she acclaimed as truth yesterday and the campaign reaffirmed tonight in video was that she successfully auctioned a private jet she deemed unnecessary for the State of Alaska to maintain on eBay. It's a strange falsehood because, in the first place, really, who cares? Moreover, it's bizarre because eBay founder Meg Whitman works for the McCain campaign! She's right there! In the building! And surely she can explain to Palin that she is getting that weird bit of biography wrong".
With hundreds of bloggs, videos, websites and other forms of media popping up all over the internet filled with page after page of horror stories from ebay victims, How can Ebay Continue. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDwQiErBj_M&feature=related
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - Meggy goes down - in flames Part XVIIII - first she says this, then she says that
First Meggy says this:
Whitman, 52, retired from eBay in March 2008 following a decade with the company. Under her leadership, eBay grew from a startup with 30 employees, $4.7 million in revenues, and 300,000 users to a global ecommerce leader with operations in 38 countries, more than 15,000 employees, almost $8 billion in revenues, and more than 300 million registered users. There are more than 12 million eBay users in California alone. On February 9th, Whitman announced the formation of her Exploratory Committee. Former California Governor Pete Wilson serves as her Campaign Chairman joining Exploratory Committee Co-Chairs House Chief Deputy Republican Whip Congressman Kevin McCarthy, Congresswoman Mary Bono Mack, State Senator Tony Strickland, Assembly Republican Whip Nathan Fletcher and former State Assemblywoman Sharon Runner.
Then Meggy says that:
In her mind, Meg Whitman is not the former CEO of eBay. She’s not a gubernatorial candidate, the one aiming to be California’s first female governor.
One of my spies noted:
"In her mind, Meg Whitman is not the former CEO of eBay."
Then who is? Actually, I wouldn't admit to that either.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009 - Police Template Ebay Complaint Statement....
This is a police formula template for making statements about getting ripped off on or by Ebay / Paypal.
It doesn't cover absolutely everything, but it is pretty methodical and if copied, or used as a basis for formulating your own complaint, it seems to have all of the necessary detail - that YOU ought to be including when you lodge your own complaint with the relevant authorities.
Just include all your emails, screen shots saved or web pages printed as PDF's (cutePDF works fine) etc., and then build your own case...
WITNESS DETAILS COVER PAGE
Witness Personal Details
Title:
Family Name:
Given Names:
Date of Birth:
Place of Birth:
Country of Birth:
Gender:
Witness Home Details
Home Address:(include city, state, postcode)
Home Telephone:
Mobile Telephone:
E-mail Address:
Witness Work Details Occupation:
Work Address:
Work Telephone:
Auction Details Type of Auction (eg. EBAY)
Your Auction user ID:
Auction Item number:
Auction Item description:
Seller’s Auction user ID:
Seller’s Bank Details:
Amount & date paid:
Method of payment
Other names used by Seller
Statement Details
Date Statement Taken:
In the matter of:
Statement Taken By:
Place Statement Taken:
BRIEF NARRATIVE OF INCIDENT:
STATUTORY DECLARATION
I, <>, of an address known to police, do solemnly and sincerely declare that:
1. I am <> years of age.
2. I am (please state your occupation and any relevant background about yourself. This gives the Police and the defence some idea about you).
3. I am a registered user of the online auction site www.ebay.com.au. My registered username is << your ebay user ID >>. I have been using the site for approximately << number of months or years >>. << Describe your level of familiarity with the rules and procedures of buying from the site. >>
4. I have conducted << numerous, some, a few >> such transactions in the past where I have received the items that I paid for. << If you are a first time buyer delete this paragraph >>
5. Approximately << time, day and date that you first saw the item that you bidded on and won >>. I was surfing the ebay website looking for << type of product, eg. mobile phone >>, when I saw item number << ebay item number >>. It was a << Brand and type of product >> for << amount $ or which was subject to bidding >>, plus postage of << amount $ >>. A seller using the username << sellers ebay user ID >> was auctioning the << Type of product >>. I checked the seller’s previous feedback. They were positive and did not have any complainants or adverse comments. This made me believe that I was dealing with a genuine seller. Since this was a good price, I decided to bid for it. I entered a bid of << amount of your first bid $ >>. I retained a copy of this item on my computer which I have printed.
6. I am able to produce a printout of a copy of ebay item <>. It is attached to this statutory declaration, marked as annexure 1.
7. About << Time, day and state of notification that you had won >>. I received an email from the ebay-automated service informing me that I had won the auction for the <>. It also informed me that I now had to << method of payment, ie money order, deposit into an account >> of << amount of winning bid >> into the seller’s nominated back account. Details of this account were: << Seller’s bank details: Bank name, BSB number and account number >>.
8. I am able to produce a copy of the email from www.ebay.com.au dated <> detailing the seller’s account details. It is attached to this statutory declaration, marked as annexure 2.
9. About << Time, day and date when you made the payment>> I went to << Type the name of bank and it’s location ie, Bondi Branch >> and withdrew <<$ amount of money>> from account number << your BSB number and account number>>. I then went to << bank name and branch >> and deposited <<$ amount>> into the seller’s bank account number << Seller’s BSB and account number >>.
10. I am able to produce a copy of the <> deposit slip/butt for the above transaction, dated <>. It is attached to this statutory declaration, marked as annexure 3.
Or if you made a payment by internet banking delete the above mentioned paragraph and annexure, then complete the below alternative for internet banking. DELETE THIS PARAGRAPH WHEN FINISHED AND READY TO PRINT.
11. About << Time, day and date when you made payment >> I accessed my << Bank name >> account number <> by accessing the bank’s website on the Internet and entering my secure log-on details. I then transferred <<$ amount of money>> into << seller’s name>> account number << Seller’s BSB number and account number >>. I then entered into the transfer description field the words << if you entered a description put here, otherwise delete this statement >>. The transfer was confirmed by receipt number << receipt number from your bank >> issued by my bank almost immediately after I completed the transaction.
12. I am able to produce a copy of my bank statement for my account <> showing the transfer of money to the seller’s account <> on <>. It is attached to this statutory declaration, marked as annexure 4.
13. About << Time, day and date >> I sent an email to the person that I know as the seller by the name of << seller’s ebay user ID >> on email address << insert email address here >> where I informed << him/her >> that I had transferred the money into << his/her >> nominated bank account. I also provided << him/her >> with my postal address of <>, where he could send me the << product type won >>.
14. I am able to produce a copy of the above email dated <>. It is attached to this statutory declaration, marked as annexure 5.
For each e-mail that you either received from the seller or sent to the seller complete a paragraph similar to the one below and with an annexure that will be a copy of the e-mail mentioned in the paragraph. Please complete each paragraph in chronological order with increasing annexure numbers. DELETE THIS PARAGRAPH WHEN FINISHED AND READY TO PRINT.
15. About << Time, day and date >> I received an e-mail from the seller, << seller’s ebay user ID >> that had been sent at << Time >> the << same/previous >> day. In that e-mail, <> confirmed receiving my payment and thanked me for the same; or << he/she >> acknowledged my postal address and informed me that the monitor would be shipped in the next couple of days, etc.>>. I have also retrieved the header / source details from that e-mail sent to me.
16. I am able to produce a copy of the above email sent by << seller’s user ID >>, << time and date >> together with a copy of the header information for that email. It is attached to this statutory declaration, marked as annexure <<>>.
17. << Describe the course of correspondence between you and the seller, including whether there was any point at which e-mails went unanswered. Also include details of any names used other than the seller’s ebay user id. Include every copy of e-mail correspondence between you and the seller as indicated below >>.
18. << If there were any phone calls between you and the seller describe each with reference to: Date, Time, number on which the calls were received or number which you called and the exact conversation to the best of your recollection >> OR << I did not have any telephone conversations with the seller >>.
19. << include any information here about any inquiries you conducted to establish the seller’s real identity/contact address/phone number AND/OR any contact with other buyers if applicable, and the results of these inquiries >>.
20. When I transferred << amount paid >> to << seller’s eBay user ID >> bank account, I believed that I was paying a genuine seller who did have a << product type >> for sale, and that on receiving of my money, << he/she >> would <> the item to me. I would not have paid this money if I had known that I would not receive the << product name >>. To date, I have not received either the << product type >> or my money back.
21. I << have/have not >> been paid compensation by << ebay/Paypal >> as a result of my report to them. This compensation was << AU$$ >>. I << did/did not >> leave feedback on the seller’s account at eBay. I wish to claim compensation in the amount of << amount paid>>.
And I further declare that I:
(A) Have attained the age of 18 years;
And
(B) I have read this statement before signing it;
And I make this solemn declaration by virtue of the Oaths Act, conscientiously believing the statements contained in this declaration to be true in every particular. I acknowledge that a person wilfully making a false statement in a statutory declaration is guilty of an offence and is liable to a penalty of 2,000 dollars or imprisonment for twelve months or both.
International transactions raise complicated issues in shaping of "content control" rules. The first issue for decision is whether to include international transactions in legislation based on content control provisions. If they are included for consumer transactions, then as Maxeiner has pointed out, comparative studies are required to identify whether terms are valid in foreign jurisdictions. International transactions involving commercial parties are more complicated. For example, the duty to inspect and right to return for defects may be inappropriate if a U.S. seller has shipped 1900 tons of polypropylene to a purchaser in Kenya and the goods are sitting in a warehouse in the port of Mombasa. In this example, a standardized term may incorporate a risk allocation rule of the International Chamber of Commerce. International carriage contracts may place maximum limits on liability, and the goods may have been transferred by combined or successive transport. Any "direct control" rule must be designed to interface with law that controls international transactions such as the CISG, the various conventions on carriage and commercial trade terms. In many instances, the standardized term should be enforced per se; or left to other law.
Other tactics may supplement the reinvention of contract law.[323] Following the European approach, domestic officials may be given authority to police standardized terms and bring declaratory actions against them seeking their invalidity provided the standards used to determine the validity of the term are based on a "direct control" statute. A possible benefit would be the production of precedent to guide the behavior of law-abiding firms. In addition, groups like Consumers Union in the United States and their European counterparts could extend their product evaluations to cover all properties of the commodity including its contractual terms. Buyers often rely on Consumers Union reports to make purchasing decisions. Unlike individual purchasers lacking the time, money or interest in evaluating risk/price terms, Consumers Union has the resources to make these evaluations. Bad publicity alone has the power to force change in company terms. Just imagine a Web site containing a list of firms using what professional consumer groups deemed were abusive terms. In addition, the preference to solve problems outside the framework of law is well established. Recourse to legal solutions is infrequently used given the number of potential disputes and is not always necessary. Many merchants do not stand on standardized terms because they have a financial incentive to keep the customer. Rather, they resolve problems outside the legal system by acting toward their customer not on the basis of contract but on the basis of business practice.
The scholarly literature tends to project an image of a world filled with cutthroat standardized terms. The market study set forth in Chapter Three contradicts that assumption, though a horror story inevitably arises, and if widely published, creates a misperception of the market based on the fallacy of composition. If the image of standardized contract in the literature is correct, the question is why not forbid sellers from using any standardized terms? However, the consensus of the experts, even the European Union Commission, is standardized terms play an essential function in the market in terms of innovation that cannot be better carried out by government. The argument is not new, goes back to Prausnitz, and now is a platitude. The task therefore is to allow standardized terms to develop in the market under conditions where they reduce product cost, while simultaneously using public authority to set limits to standardized terms when they produce inefficient results.
Empirical studies are needed to show the incidence of types of loss in the market, identify the availability and the social cost of insuring against them. A joint effort between lawyers and economists is required to produce this study. Based on that study's results, the caretakers of contract law - legislature, parliament or self-appointed institutions - then would have the chance to develop rules based on non-legal information, commercial reality and soft public policy. Legal doctrine masks the causes of contract problems by resorting to rules about consent and ignores the broader implications of the legal decisions for the market. The proposition that firms are always in the best position to insure and spread risk is facile without further empirical support. Allocating risk to firms may be appropriate under one set of circumstances, but not under a different set of circumstances. Making those distinctions is the major challenge in the creation of comprehensive "content control" rules taking into account nuances of the dynamics of exchange.
The time is ripe for reinventing contract. Instead of hermetically sealing standardized terms within contract law, or dealing with them under consumer legislation, it is preferable to treat them independently and globally. Questions of law arising under the use of standardized terms then would be referred to special law. That approach would avoid recourse to vague judicial doctrine or rigid consumer rules. There is no reason why a code governing standardized terms could not be the product of an international organization to strive for uniformity across borders. Model laws promulgated by the International Organization for the Unification of Private law and the United Nations serve as exemplars. The major barrier to reform is inertia and conservatism. The legal community has adapted to standardized terms within their preconceived notions of contract law as a person with a broken leg adapts to a crutch. But why limp when you can sprint?
A standardized contract is nothing more than a commodity. A commodity is a product commonly available, easily produced and substituted, with little and declining pricing power. Some standardized contracts are products as such. For example, end user license agreements and insurance contracts lack physical attributes; they are the product. Credit agreements closely approximate the contract as pure commodity. Where hard goods or services are exchanged in the market, the standard contract accompanying them constitutes part of the product. Since standardized terms directly influence the price of products, they are indistinguishable from hard components of the product, though intangible. In the ordinary market, the commodity of contract is bought and sold like any product. The reinvented law of contract must stand on this premise.
The consequences that follow are: (1) the deletion of formation requirements based on offer, acceptance and consideration, (2) the elimination of consent as the basis for making contracts effective, (3) the collapse of unnecessary legal categories, (4) using an image of a buyer lying somewhere between the polarities of risk aversion and risk taking, (5) saving useful remnants of existing law, and (6) the creation of content control provisions for select terms deemed necessary for specific regulation. These are normative premises insusceptible of truth verification. But, they do not float in thin air. They rest upon inferences drawn from the history, empirical data, and legal development related to standardized transactions. The criticism that law, reinvented or otherwise, will not stop the production of "unfair" standardized terms does not constitute a fault in the theory. Law can never prevent misconduct, but merely impose sanctions for breaking it.
The entire formation model of contract law must be thrown out for standardized transactions. Formal requirements of offer and acceptance do not correspond to the reality of how the commodity of contract is transferred in the market. These formalities, often rigid and elaborate constructs, are irrelevant to the existence of standardized contracts. The law no more gives contract, as properly understood, its existence any more than its gives a container of automobiles its existence. If there is an exchange of product against payment, the buyer gets the contract, whether the commodity is the contract or whether the commodity contains the contract as a component part. The buyer's understanding of the "terms" of the contract also is irrelevant to the existence of the contract. Buyers do not understand the "inner workings" or "chemical composition" of most commodities they buy. Yet, the legal question of whether or not a sale of a computer or bottle of wine has taken place, and is enforceable, does not turn on whether the buyer understood the role of circuits in the personal computer or the process of fermentation in the production of wine. It follows therefore that standard form contracts come into existence and are effective upon the exchange of money (cash or credit) for products.
In place of formal requirements, one simple rule stands: a standard form contract becomes effective when the sale occurs and the seller either transfers the contract to the buyer or makes the contract accessible to the buyer. The definition is not narrow because it refers to "sale." Following the premise of collapsing categories, sale covers any disposition of a product, as explained later. Irrelevant is the timing of the delivery of the contract and its content, whether that content is a limitation of warranty or license terms. Commodities are shipped in parts, and the institution of contract historically has covered different species of contracts. If buyers do not read standardized terms, and if they did, nevertheless would not understand them, then it makes no sense to predicate the effectiveness of contracts on the ground that the terms were available to the consumer prior to purchase.[302] Making contracts effective upon the transfer of the product thus fits market behavior and creates symmetry between that market and the law. If the seller does not include contract terms with the product, then the background law supplies them. If the seller integrates contract terms into the product, the contract is effective. Whether the contract is enforceable raises a separate question, governed by content control provisions.
No idea is more insipid than the one of consent in the context of standardized terms. From the 1902 decision in Fivey to the 2002 decision in I.lan, there is not one iota of consent on the buyer's part to the terms in the contract. Mr. Fivey signed the document, and the company -- I.lan -- clicked the mouse pointer over the "I agree" button. But the bottom line is that they did not consent to any terms. Absent in each case was thoughtful and deliberate decision after weighing costs and benefits. In other words, the very core of consent was missing. The parties' consent to and knowledge of standardized terms is irrelevant to the existence and effectiveness of standard form contracts. No further comment is needed.
The law of contract resembles "Art Nouveau." However, while ornate design is appropriate to architecture, it is inappropriate to a field that loosely may be called a social science. Reinventing contract for standardized terms requires a departure from unnecessary complexity. If Newton explained the law of motion governing large bodies in three laws, and Einstein equated matter with energy in a single formula, it is not beyond the reach of legal caretakers to develop law for standardized contracts based upon minimum necessary principles. The law has created so many classifications that it would be impossible to address each one. A few examples suffice.
Contract law now distinguishes between consumers and professionals with respect to standardized terms. The distinction is unjustified and unnecessary. The law should treat consumer and commercial standardized agreements under the same set of rules when the underlying dynamic of the transaction is identical: the contract is the function of exchange and not the product of bargain. The empirical data and the case law have shown that the firm behaves like the consumer when it engages in standardized transactions with other firms. A commercial party or legal entity buying products on the open market does not exercise any more bargaining power with respect to secondary contract terms than does a consumer. In other words, the consumer and commercial transactions are functionally equivalent for determining effective contract terms. So long as parties do business with sellers in open markets based on standardized terms, then logic requires their identical treatment.
The variety of legal terms to denote nuances, arguably important in other legal departments, have no place in standardized transactions as to the effectiveness of contracts. A logical starting point is defining terms used in the market that describe the dynamics of the exchange: "buyer," "seller," "product," "open market" and "standard form contract." Let us start with the term "product," used widely in the market but not found in the dogmatic legal texts. For example, Article 2 of the UCC applies to goods, but not to services, information, or extensions of credit. The CISG is equally myopic applying only to goods, with the exception of assembly provided the service component is not the preponderate part of the exchange. In standardized transactions, these distinctions are inapposite. The object of exchange is not germane to the question of the validity of any standardized term.[303] The term "product" covering goods, services, licenses and credit is the solution. The rationale for replacing the myriad terms for identifying the object of exchange with the single term "product" recognizes that the issue of a contract's enforceability transcends differences in what is exchanged on the market and justifies the treatment of an exchange based on standardized terms.
Equally central to simplification is defining broadly the terms "buyer," "open market" and "sale." For reasons already noted, the term "buyer" should apply to consumers, merchants and legal entities. Likewise, the term "seller" covers any person, regularly engaged in the business of selling products that sets or adopts the record of uniform legal terms governing the relationship between itself and the buyer, that is, the standard form contract. Normally, the manufacturer is the party that makes the uniform record of legal terms and that enters into the contract relationship with the buyer, but the definition includes other parties in the chain of distribution if these parties adopt the standardized terms.[304]
Equally unnecessary are distinctions now made mainly for tax, priority and copyright reasons among the terms sale, lease, security interest and license. To reduce divisions further, the term "sale" should cover sale, lease, license or other dispositions of a product in an open market, since the inventiveness of the firm and its counsel cannot be underestimated. The broad definition of "sale" establishes that the underlying dynamic of the exchange, not the "form" of the transaction, triggers application of the rules governing standardized terms.[305] Lastly, a new term must be introduced to the vocabulary of the dogma: open market. The term "open market" means the public sale of a product to a large population of persons having the money to buy it. An open market may consist of a "class of persons" because some sellers do not offer their products to every potential buyer. For example, car lease companies cannot enter into contracts with anyone; by law, the buyer must have a license and have attained a certain age. Similarly, wholesalers offer to sell only to business entities. Limitations of this sort do not change the open market nature of the sale. Additionally, the market itself need not be a physical place like a retail store. It can be a mail order system, an Internet market or the like.
This foray into the "Art Nouveau" of contract law is merely a beginning. The analysis is not intended to be comprehensive but illustrative of the problem of multiplying categories in response to special interests, demanding an exception to a general rule, or to the work of legal scriveners, solving problems discrete to their field by the invention or refinement of legal classification. The edifice of nuance is not needed to identify a standardized term and to determine its effectiveness.
Implied in every law are policy assumptions. The reinvented law of standardized contracts is no exception. The implied assumptions are largely dependent upon the image of the buyer and that of the firm since those assumptions determine the level of protection the law ought to afford to the buyer and the degree of autonomy the law ought to provide the firm. At the outset, the image of the firm underlying standard form contract law is at odds with economics. In monopolistic competition, neither seller's nor buyer's conduct affects price. The demand curve is horizontal.[306] In pure monopoly, the dominant firm, at least in some industries, may be unable to fix the price because the incumbent must guard against new entrants. The price therefore is indirectly determined by competition. In addition, firms' ability to maximize returns is limited by marginal revenue, marginal cost and the law of diminishing returns. The combined effect of these factors, coupled with the financial risks involved in establishing a firm and the high failure rate, produces an image of microeconomics that distinctly differs from the underlying assumption of standard form contract law: universal firm predatory behavior.[307] Moreover, any firm that wants to conduct more than one-off sales must develop the trust of customers by building a good reputation. The firm's behavior is shaped partially by the fact that customers who are ripped off will not make repeat purchases. By contrast, buyers generally are depicted as witless victims.
The level of legal protection for buyers fluctuates between two extremes: the insured transaction and "caveat emptor." The insurance proposal has two defects. First, it presumes a debatable image of buyers as persons with "eyes wide shut." Under this view, the buyer is ignorant of the cost of contract terms by virtue of disinterest, limited knowledge or poverty. The insurance proposal would require sellers to charge higher prices and eliminate risk/price terms from their contracts or to absorb the cost of the risk and reduce their profits. The question never asked is what about exclusions? May firms use standardized terms in sales contracts to set the equivalent of exclusions in insurance policy agreements? This alternative ought to have, but has not, provoked study due to its effects upon behavior and the market. The exact effect of mandating insurance is unknown on the market at large. The effect depends, to an extent, on the elasticity of demand for the product. Therefore, it is likely to have an uneven economic impact upon firms and buyers.
The insurance proposal also fails to distinguish among the range of terms on the standardized contract spectrum. Some terms clearly are in the visible range such as price, quantity and identity of the product. Although buyers neither negotiate nor bargain for these terms, buyers know about them. Indeed, choices of this sort constitute the principal activity of purchasers in the market place. There is no reason to disturb voluntary choice by subjecting it to judicial or administrative oversight.
In addition, from the perspective of setting legal incentives to reduce cost, the insurance scheme is counter-productive. It eliminates the moral hazard. The classic example is that of the person dining in a fine restaurant who suddenly remembers that his luxury automobile is unlocked on the street. Should the diner disturb his fine meal to get up from the table to lock his automobile? If fully insured against theft, the probable answer is, even taking the deductible into consideration: the dinner is uninterrupted. The consequences of certain decisions should visit the decision-maker alone and not the customer base. Prices for products already reflect the insurance costs of theft, fraud and returns.[308] To add additional insurance costs against price/risk terms deprives the risk-taking buyer the option to buy a product at a lower price and assume the risk that an unlikely event leading to a substantial loss will occur. In addition, buyers often create losses by conduct or bad choice, for example, failure to pay or misuse of the product, or entering into a contract exceeding ability to pay. Passing the cost of these losses to the customer base is questionable normatively and economically.
However, the most objectionable aspect of the insurance proposal is its portrait of the buyer: incompetent and dependent upon institutional authority. Evidence shows buyers are not as incompetent as legislation and case law often assume.[309] Buyers' tastes change and wipe out firms. This power should not be underestimated. The insurance proposal reduces incentives for buyers to exercise their decision-making powers to drive bad products, and hence terms, from the market, since products consist of terms as well as functions. The image of buyers underlying this view is descriptively inaccurate. To insulate buyers from all risk is to create a somnambulant population. There are equally valid policy reasons - the moral hazard-- for making buyers in the market alert, careful and inquisitive. Customer choice remains a powerful force in the market as demonstrated by bargaining power exercised by customers in re-negotiating purchase price options at the end of automobile leases and the demise of new products failing to stimulate demand.[310]
Importantly, firms have legitimate business reasons for holding down costs through allocating certain risks to buyers.[311] General economic developments demonstrate the trend of producing better products at cheaper prices. The information economy is illustrative. Electronic commerce has achieved dramatic cost reductions in distributing business products. Examples include music, films, magazines, news, books and sport.[312] Information is expensive to assemble but cheap to distribute. "The fixed cost of creating a useable product is large, the marginal cost of distributing it is tiny. This cost structure implies vast economies of scale in production."[313] Similar cost reductions for better products in other economic sectors are the result of competition and technological development. Proposals for regulating or prohibiting standardized terms acknowledge that, if adopted, sellers would increase the prices of products to spread the risk across the customer base.[314]
Equally objectionable, in the form of a blanket policy, is the "buyer beware" approach. It is inconsistent with the premise that standardized terms are purchased as commodities. With few exceptions, such as high price items, buyers do not examine the contract component of the product. Even if terms are examined, most buyers cannot understand all terms, as the BMW early termination clause has demonstrated. The approach also is unworkable due to the number of commodities buyers consume and the mass marketing and distribution of products. Because buyers are "price conscious," legal professionals drafting standardized contracts for firms shift risk to buyers. The result is objectionable: the practice violates the minimum baseline of fair exchange. Hence, the goal is to find an image of the buyer lying somewhere between Nietzsche's mythical risk taker and Marx's proletariat victim, or in drier terms, between risk aversion and risk taking.
The theoretical basis for controlling standardized terms follows from treating them mainly as commodities. The distinction may be drawn between primary and secondary terms. Primary terms are agreed-to terms such as the price, description, quantity and method of shipment.[315] These terms are governed under traditional contract law. Secondary terms are not agreed-to terms such as disclaimers of warranty, limitations of liability and arbitration clauses governed by special rules. Options, such as those found in insurance contracts, are primary terms even though not negotiated provided they affect the price of the product. In addition, the reinvented law of contract must co-exist and not conflict with other existing law, mainly legislation, for example, the securities market laws.
It logically follows that there must be a duty to inspect the product, including the contract terms, after its transfer to the buyer. The duty to inspect would be limited to apparent defects. Since the market study has demonstrated that most standardized terms are transparent, this obligation would not impose onerous conditions upon buyers. Following general practices, the discovery of a defect would entitle the buyer to rescind the transaction without penalty. Who would bear the cost of transporting the product in a distance sale is a technicality that can be dealt with in "content control" provisions. Even if the buyer did not exercise the right of return, any particular term might be invalid under a content control provision.
The first step toward breaking through conventional thought about contracts is to conduct an inter-disciplinary and empirical study of standard form contracts. The empirical study would ground the debate about standardized terms squarely on firm data and identify their social and economic consequences. No one knows, or appears to care about, the cost of "unfair" terms in proportion to GDP. Similarly, no one knows, or appears to care about, the cost of prohibiting firms from using any term deviating from background law. You would think this would be the first mystery to unravel. Yet, it is not even discussed in the literature.
The sample of contracts and the case law show a pattern of recurring standardized terms posing "perceived" problems in the market. These recurring standardized terms are best governed by discrete "content controlling" rules specific to the problems they pose. In addition, a default rule is required for those cases falling outside the specific rules. That default principle may be centered on the concept that any secondary standardized term destroying the economic value of the transaction is invalid. This approach avoids micro-management of terms but sets limits to the producer's "freedom of contract." Hence, the second step is to examine the attributes of each problematic term to determine which contractual property of the commodity should be enforced within the overall goal of what combination of economic, political and welfare goals the "content control" provisions is intended to achieve. There is no reason to keep the standard repertoire of tools for determining the validity of standardized terms. Rather, the opportunity exists to break through the existing words: "unfair," "unconscionable," "reasonable expectations," and state what they mean, even if that requires going outside legal doctrine to get meaningful definitions.
Direct content control provisions are not equivalent to the list of terms found in the EU Directive on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts. Some terms may be prohibited simply on public policy grounds, such as terms disclaiming that a new product is fit for its ordinary use. However, other terms raise complicated issues of appropriate allocation of risks. These terms require narrow but comprehensive sets of rules to govern their use. Terms raising complex legal and economic questions deserve the depth of draftsmanship afforded contract issues dealt with in codes such as the Uniform Commercial Code. The EU method of regulation depends generally on crude one-line descriptions of suspect terms. It is oversimplified and static.
In the context of standard form contracts, the problems generally involve questions of insurance. The mass production of products and terms inevitably result in defects. The question for lawmakers is how to allocate the risk of loss among innocent parties to the transactions. The EU facile response is to place the cost of insurance on the producer. However, as economics tells us, whenever the producer can pass the cost of insurance onto the customer base, it will do so. Hence, each buyer in one market is the other's insurer, at a higher price per unit. Insurance generally has two major components: premiums and exclusions. The premium is the higher price; the exclusions are the limitations placed on the extent of liability. But theoretically, what is now called an "externality," is a clause of exclusion under the insurance model. There is no meaningful difference between a risk clause in a standard form contract and a clause of exclusion under the insurance model. So what is the problem with standard form contracts containing limitations of liability, or the functional equivalent of exclusions, that are contained in every insurance policy?
Limitations of warranty serve as an example. Based on the sample, most sellers do not disclaim all warranties. Rather, they warrant that the product is free from defects in material and workmanship for a limited period of time, generally one year or longer for hard goods and 90 days for software. Sellers also set remedies for breaches of the warranty, such as repair, replacement or refund, often at the discretion of the seller. The question is not whether the warranty is unfair, unconscionable or defeats the reasonable expectation of the buyer, but whether the warranty follows pragmatically from the nature of the business, the cost of the product, and its expected life. It also depends on allocation of risk as under an insurance contract. Specifying the limits of warranties is not objectively abusive, preserves the "moral hazard" and resembles terms in insurance policy agreements.
For example, assume that there is a 10% chance of product failure and that the product costs $1000. Buyers have on average an asset worth $900, that is, the value minus the risk of failure. Assume further that for an additional 5% of the purchase price, the firm agrees to insure the product against all failure, regardless of cause, and to replace the product. Buyers on average now have an asset worth $850. But, since there is only a 10% chance of failure, the question presented is why impose an additional cost of 5% across the customer base when some customers would prefer to pay less and take the chance that nothing will go wrong. These customers will be right 90% of the time. Under this scenario, risk-averse buyers feel safe; buyers on average are poorer.
A related question goes to the length of the warranty. The useful life of many products -- given buyer taste, distribution of products in versions and technological change -- is short. The useful life may span a few years and then plummet to zero. Who wants a 20-year-old refrigerator or Xerox copy machine? The question is presented: how is the state going to determine which warranty period falls short of what is enforceable. By analogy to insurance, are firms to offer periodic renewal notices in exchange for additional payments of premiums? These types of questions must be explored and answered to set any content control provision governing limitation of warranties.
Certainly firms that sell new products should not be allowed to disclaim all warranties, express or implied. Yet, that is precisely what American law, subject to modifications such as the Magnason-Moss Act, permits firms to do. This rule allows sellers to induce sales by claiming they have something of value and then to deny that claim. Consistent with the theory of contract as commodity, sellers would be prohibited from disclaiming all warranties on new products, and from disclaiming tort obligations for personal injury and death. If the United States had that rule, the judge in the Gonzalez case could have dealt with the claim in one sentence, as opposed to a belabored explanation of unconscionability spread over 10 pages. However, difficult questions arise with respect to sellers of used products termed "as is" and sellers referring purchasers to upstream warranties. For example, based on the nature of the business, the product and its cost, it may be consistent with those factors to permit disclaimers of warranties on used umbrellas but not on used commercial jets.
Limitation of damages is another example. The majority of contracts contained in the sample, and that addressed the issue, excluded consequential damages but did not exclude damages entirely. If, for example, film development companies were liable for the cost of exotic vacations due to errors in film development, the price of film development would increase, probably substantially. Likewise, for reasons of cost and nature of process, dry cleaners are justified in limiting their liability. Dry cleaners cannot possibly "spot test" every garment for its suitability in the dry cleaning process without increasing cost and causing delay in delivery of laundered products. The norm of 10 times the cost of the service is consistent with the business, the cost of the service and the inability to avoid damage. Consequently, the question of damages is inextricably tied to insurance and who pays for it.[316]
While buyers generally quietly accept the loss of uninsured negatives and clean clothes, buyers generally are noisier when it comes to who is going to pay for the loss of higher priced items. Take cars parked and stolen from commercial parking lots. The law of bailment generally applies to these cases. The owner of the car is the bailor, and the owner of the parking lot is the bailee. The parking lot has a duty to exercise care during its custody of the car. If the parking lot does not exercise care and is negligent, the parking lot is liable to the car owner for any damage due to the failure to redeliver the car. The parking lot must prove it exercised care in its custody of the car. This is the background law that would apply in the absence of contract when a person parks his car in a parking lot and the car is stolen or damaged. Because the parties may alter the "background" law through contract, standardized terms altering the background law have posed complicated questions for courts.
Assume a Mercedes Benz worth $75,000 is stolen when garaged in a secure and properly managed parking lot because armed men held the attendant hostage during the theft. Under the background law, the owner of the Mercedes Benz does not have a claim against the parking lot company because the latter was not negligent.[317] If he has comprehensive insurance, he will get the proceeds of the insurance policy in the amount of $75,000. But his payment comes at a price: higher premiums, and probably not only for him but others similarly situated, though completely uninvolved in the event. In other words, all insured drivers pay for the cost of the thief. If the owner is uninsured, he sustains a loss. No one else is damaged.
Now assume the parking lot was negligent because the attendant fell asleep during his watch. The result is the same between the insured owner of the car and the parking lot. The insurance company pays the insured in full. But the former is subrogated to the rights of the latter against the parking lot. If the parking lot is negligent, the firm or its insurer reimburses the car owner's insurance company. In addition, the uninsured owner collects as holder of a claim for loss. When the parking lot is negligent, two costs go up: private automobile insurance and the cost of parking. In a major city the demand for parking space is inelastic. When the parking lot is prudent, one cost goes up: private automobile insurance.
Is there any justification for permitting a firm to alter these results by standardized terms? Assume the parking lot company attempts to limit its damages for negligence by this language: the "firms' liability for loss or damage of vehicle by fire, theft or explosion is limited to $25,000 unless an additional fee is paid when the vehicle is first parked and a receipt for that higher liability is issued." The limitation is irrelevant for the comprehensively insured owner. It also is irrelevant for any uninsured or underinsured car owner when the value of the car is less than $25,000, which will cover most cars in the market. However, the uninsured or underinsured luxury car owner will feel the pain of the limitation. The question is: should the law enforce or invalidate limitations of liability of this sort for purely economic losses? [318] The limitation may be the function of the market for insurance available to the firm, or not. Should legislators or judges shift risks taken by car owners not having insurance or having inadequate insurance to the market of policyholders and customers of parking lots in the context only of property losses? The underpinnings of the background rule-origin in an era prior to the manufacture of automobiles and the development of diverse insurance products-might justify its abolition. The answer to these questions cannot be derived from study of the law alone. But these are the types of questions drafters of content control provisions must answer before putting pen to paper.
Assume a further variation of the hypothetical where the Mercedes Benz owner has 25 mink coats worth $75,000 in the trunk of his $75,000 car when it is stolen. Who should bear this loss? Hadley v. Baxendale instructs that the parking lot firm should not be liable unless put on notice of the special circumstances. But is this rule viable? What if the Mercedes Benz owner says to the parking lot attendant, "By the way, I have $75,000 of mink fur in the trunk." What is the attendant supposed to do in this situation? We know he cannot mark up the fee since he lacks authority. Certainly, there is no special way to handle this car as opposed to others, such as putting it in a vault. The idea of notice is fanciful. Rather, the question of who should bear the loss must turn on an analysis of allocating the cost to the usual suspects: the firm, customers of parking lots, policy holders or the person who created the condition of increased risk. Adhering to the assumption of an "eyes wide open" buyer, the right place to put this loss is on the buyer and no one else. The result would discourage enhanced risk behavior and prevent collateral damage to innocent bystanders: the firm and the respective customer bases.
Current law on the subject is absurd.[319] In Barrett Garages, three automobiles were stolen from an airport parking lot. The insurance company made payments to owners of the automobiles stolen from the parking lot and then sued the owner of the parking lot to recover its payments. The claim check given to each driver contained a limitation of liability clause in the amount of $250. The court of appeals held that the delivery of a claim check to the car owners did not create a contract as a matter of law. Rather, a question of fact was presented in each case as to whether the car owner gave his consent to the terms contained in the claim check. The crucial question was "whether the particular circumstances are such that a prudent man, acting reasonably, would or would not have read the exculpatory provisions in question." This result followed from the court's starting principles that, "It is essential to the existence of a contract that there be mutual consent," and that "a person is bound by the printed contractual provisions of an instrument which he accepts delivery of if, as an ordinarily prudent man, he could and should have read such provisions."
However, under current law, different circumstances produce different results. For example, in Allbright Phoenix Parking, Inc. v. Shabala, the driver parked his car, locked it and paid the attendant the fee.[320] The parking ticket, which the driver did not read, stated that the lot closed at 9:30 p.m. and limited the parking lot company's liability to $100 for loss by fire, burglary, or theft provided the company was negligent. It also stated "articles left in car at owner's risk." At approximately 11:15 p.m., the driver returned to the lot after it was closed. He discovered that someone had broken into the car and had stolen his valuables in the back seat. In denying relief to the driver, the court of appeals found that, because the driver took his car keys, there was "no bailment relationship" between the driver and the parking lot. Hence, the parking lot was not responsible for the loss of items in the driver's car. The court qualified its decision by stating, "We do not decide in this opinion whether a change of one or more factual circumstances would have altered our conclusions."[321] However one views the results in these cases, the method ignores the stakes and evades the roots of disorder.[322]
The law of contract treats the standard form contract mainly as an aberration to be handled by judicial doctrines on a "case by case" basis. Although this assumption is contrary to fact, the judicial doctrines have prevented the enforcement of egregious standardized terms. In spite of incessant scholarly attacks on the citadel of contract, the law of contract has survived the problems posed by standardized terms for more than 100 years, and that law has remarkably withstood challenges to its legitimacy. However, the foundations of contract law now stand on shakier ground. Why after a century of repeated but failed attacks does the law of contract taught in school, codified in the law and reported in decisions appear to be falling apart? The destabilization of contract law appears to be the confluence of: the end user license agreement, the Internet, and the recent failure of Uniform Commercial Code revision.[272]
The business model of structuring transactions based on payment first and terms later, when applied to software licensing, has generated substantial debate in the scholarly literature and in the courts about its legality. The term "mass market contract" has replaced the term "standard form contract" and its pejorative counterpart "contract of adhesion." Even though Prausnitz used the term "mass market contract" in 1937, it was not until the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA) promulgated in 1999, and the sole survivor of the UCC revision process related to licenses, that the term became common in legal vocabulary.[273] The term now has captured the attention of legal scholars and jurists and is used to imply something innovative in the practice of selling products to multiple buyers on fixed conditions in large markets. Internet commerce and software licensing has led to amnesia about well-established legal authority.[274]
With few exceptions, U.S. courts and scholars have gone back to the future. For example, a renowned scholar states, "UCITA for the first time validates post-payment disclosure of terms - "pay now, terms later" - under what is know (sic) as the "rolling contract" theory of contract formation."[275] Another scholar states, "A particular issue involving standard form contracts has recently presented itself. In the computer sales industry, where most transactions occur through telephone orders between the consumer and a sales representative, a standard form agreement is made available by the seller only after the consumer has paid for the purchase and the seller has shipped the goods."[276] Both observations ignore legal history, earlier case law and scholarly literature, [277] not to mention the 1991 United States Supreme Court decision in Carnival Cruise Lines v. Shute, a "positive" legal principle whether you like it or not.[278]
An analysis of four cases demonstrates the controversy: Step-Saver Data Sys., Inc. v. Wyse Techn.; Klocek v. Gateway, Inc.; Specht v. Netscape, and I.Lan Systems Inc. v. Netscout Service Level Corp. The decision in ProCD represents the "business as usual approach" to end user license agreements anchored within the institution of contract. The analysis of the case is not repeated here. By contrast, Step-Saver, Klocek and Specht take the opposite view, treating the EULA as a sinister and predatory novelty in the law of contract. The cases demonstrate the policy conflict surrounding the validity of standardized terms. Recent developments in case law indicate that ProCD is gaining momentum but the ultimately outcome is anyone's guess.
1. Step-Saver Data Systems, Inc. v. Wyse Techn. and The Software Link, Inc.[279]
In 1984, Step-Saver obtained a free copy of a program called "Multilink" from The Software Link (TSL) company. "Multilink" was an operating system for multi-user systems. Step-Saver was building a system composed of a single server and dumb terminals to sell to clients mainly lawyers and doctors. Step-Saver's multi-user system consisted of an IBM server, Wyse terminals and the TSL operating system software. In 1986, Step-Saver obtained copies of an upgraded TSL operating system called "Multilink Advanced" and tested that software. Based on these tests, Step-Saver decided to build its multi-user system based on the TSL operating system. From 1986 to 1987, Step-Saver purchased and resold 142 copies of "Multilink."
Purchases took place as follows. Step-Saver telephoned TSL and placed its order. Step-Saver then sent a purchase order containing the price, quantity, item description, shipping and payment terms to TSL. TSL shipped the order and sent an invoice containing the same terms. Step-Saver made several purchases from TSL. Step-Saver claimed that TSL's sales representatives stated on the telephone that "Multilink" was compatible with most DOS applications. Neither the purchase order nor the invoice contained other contractual terms.
The TSL operating system software, as had the earlier trial software, came in a box with a license agreement. The license agreement contained terms: (1) disclaiming all express and implied warranties, (2) providing for an integration clause that the license expressed the final agreement of the parties, and (3) stating that opening the box, using the software and failing to return it within 15 days, constituted acceptance of the license agreement. The license agreement also prohibited reselling the software.
Step-Saver sold 142 multi-user systems to its customers. The systems did not work and customers began to complain. Step-Saver tried to figure out the problem, but also asked TSL and Wyse for technical help. The three companies failed to solve the problems with Step-Saver's system and each blamed the other for the problem. Twelve Step-Saver customers sued Step-Saver.
Step-Saver sued Wyse and TSL in federal district court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania seeking a declaratory judgment for indemnification of costs incurred in defending law suits against its customers. The district court dismissed that action. Subsequently, Step-Saver filed a second complaint against TSL and Wyse alleging breach of warranties and intentional misrepresentations by TSL. The district court directed a verdict in favor of TSL on the warranty and intentional misrepresentation claims and dismissed TSL from the suit. The jury returned a verdict for Wyse on the warranty claims. Step-Saver appealed.
The Third Circuit treated the box top licenses of the TSL software package under Uniform Commercial Code §2-207 governing the battle of the forms.[280] Here, the form "battled over" was the box top license agreement, the third form in the sequence of writings between the parties. UCC §2-207 provides in relevant part:
(1) A definite and seasonable expression of acceptance or a written confirmation which is sent within a reasonable time operates as an acceptance even though it states terms additional to or different from those offered or agreed upon, unless acceptance is expressly made conditional on assent to the additional or different terms.
(2) The additional terms are to be construed as proposals for addition to the contract. Between merchants such terms become part of the contract unless:
(a) the offer expressly limits acceptance to the terms of the offer;
(b) they materially alter it; or
(c) notification of objection to them has already been given or is ... given within a reasonable time after notice of them is received.
The Third Circuit found that the additional terms contained in the license agreement materially altered the contract and therefore did not become part of the contract between TSL and Step-Saver. Rather, the contract consisted of the purchase order and invoice and express oral statements made by TSL representatives on the telephone. The Third Circuit stated, "In the absence of a party's express assent to the additional or different terms of the writing, section 2-207 provides a default rule that the parties intended, as the terms of their agreement, those terms to which both parties have agreed along with any terms implied by the provision of the UCC." Since the box top license agreement was not part of the contract, TSL never disclaimed express or implied warranties.
The conduct of the parties supported the court's §2-207 analysis. Step-Saver's president repeatedly objected to the terms of the box top license agreement. Step-Saver twice refused to sign agreements that would have formalized the license agreement terms. TSL, however, continued to do business with Step-Saver knowing that the latter had rejected the box top license terms. TSL, in the court's view, was unwilling to forego the transaction if the additional language was not included in the contract. TSL also admitted that one of the terms in the license agreement - the sale prohibition - was not enforceable because the parties agreed otherwise, thereby lending support to the claim that the license agreement did not apply to Step-Saver. The court did not attribute significant weight to the act of opening the boxes and failing to return the product under the circumstances. Consequently, Step-Saver does not stand for the proposition that a party cannot be bound by "box-top" terms through the act of using the product or opening the box.
Nine years later, and subsequent to ProCD, the federal district court of Kansas reached a result identical to that of Step-Saver in a case predicted on entirely different facts, thereby restating and extending the Step-Saver rule. Klocek, a Missouri resident, bought a Gateway computer. Inside the computer box, Gateway included a copy of its Standard Terms and Conditions Agreement (STCA). At the top of the first page, the STCA stated, "NOTE TO CONSUMERS." The first page also contained the following language. "This document contains Gateway 2000's Standard Terms and Conditions. By keeping your Gateway 2000 computer system beyond five (5) days after the date of delivery, you accept these terms and conditions."
The STCA contained an arbitration clause in paragraph 10 providing that any dispute or controversy arising out of or related to the agreement or its interpretation would be settled exclusively and finally by arbitration. Klocek ignored this arbitration clause and filed a complaint, individually, and on behalf of a similarly situated class of consumers, against Gateway and Hewlett Packard in the U.S. District Court for the District of Kansas. The complaint contained claims of fraud, breach of contract and breach of warranty. Klocek, a lawyer, maintained that Gateway failed to provide promised technical support and that his Gateway machine was incompatible with his Hewlett Packard printer and his Internet access. Gateway filed a denial and a motion to dismiss, claiming that Klocek was required to arbitrate his complaint under Gateway's Standard Terms and Conditions Agreement.[282] The district court denied Gateway's motion to dismiss finding that the arbitration clause was unenforceable because not part of the contract of sale.[283]
The District Court compared the decisions in Step-Saver Data Sys., Inc. v. Wyse Techn., [284][285] and U.S. Surgical Corp. v. Orris, Inc.,[286] where the courts refused to enforce the "shrink wrap" terms in license agreements with the decisions in Hill v. Gateway 2000, Inc.,[287] ProCD, Inc. v. Zeidenberg,[288] and Mortenson Co., Inc. v. Timberline Software Corp.,[289] where the courts enforced the terms. Arizona Retail Sys., Inc. v. Software Link, Inc.,
The court found that the contract of sale was formed when Klocek placed his order for the computer and Gateway agreed to send it prior to the delivery of the license terms.[290] Because Gateway did not inform Klocek of the license agreement when he ordered the computer system, the license agreement a fortiori was not part of the parties' agreement, but constituted unenforceable, additional terms under UCC §2-207. Klocek's failure to return the Gateway computer system did not amount to his express consent to terms, since Gateway could not unilaterally set this condition after the fact of sale. The court rejected the rationale of ProCD, stating Judge Easterbrook wrongly assumed that ProCD was the offeror in the sales transaction. Rather, the court found that Klocek was the offeror and Gateway the offeree. Consequently, ProCD could not specify the method of accepting its sales terms since it was not the master of any offer; it was the recipient of an offer.[291] However, unlike Step-Saver, Klocek did not repeatedly object to the standardized term, as did Step-Saver. Hence, Step-Saver fails to provide direct support for Klocek, a distinction the district court ignored.
Since Gateway provided "no evidence that at the time of the sales transaction, it informed plaintiff that the transaction was conditioned on plaintiff's acceptance of the Standard Terms," and since "the act of keeping the computer past five days was not sufficient to demonstrate that plaintiff expressly agreed to the Standard terms," Klocek did not surrender his right of jury trial.
In Specht, several Internet users, excepting Specht, had downloaded "SmartDownload" from Netscape's Web site. SmartDownload was freeware that improved the process of downloading software from the Internet. The plaintiffs obtained copies of "SmartDownload" by visiting a page on Netscape's Web site pertaining to the downloading of software. That page contained a tinted box labeled "download" and a reference to the fact that downloading and use of the software constituted acceptance of Netscape's software license agreement. The user did not have to read the license agreement before downloading the software, but had notice of the license's existence and an opportunity to review the license by visiting a linked Web page. The license agreement contained a mandatory arbitration clause governing disputes between the parties.
The plaintiffs filed suit against Netscape in the New York District Court alleging violation of the federal Electronic Communications Privacy Act and the federal computer Fraud and Abuse Act, claiming that the software enabled Netscape to track their Internet surfing activities. Netscape, relying upon the license agreement, moved to force arbitration of the dispute and stay the court proceedings. The place of arbitration was California and the clause made the loser pay the costs of arbitration.
Judge Hellerstein framed the issue as: (1) did the parties enter into a binding contract, and (2) if so, did the arbitration clause apply to the dispute? To determine the first question the court resorted to ancient history using the following standard, "Promises become binding when there is a meeting of the minds and consideration is exchanged. So it was at the King's Bench in common law England; so it was through more than two centuries of jurisprudence in this country; and so it is today."[293] Judge Hellerstein found that the parties did not enter into a binding contract because the plaintiffs were not forced to assent to the license agreement, such as by clicking the mouse over an icon, prior to downloading and using the software. He also found that the reference to the license agreement was too obscure, the electronic equivalent of buried fine print. He therefore concluded that the parties were not bound by the terms of the license agreement because there was no meeting of the minds. The court stated, "Netscape's failure to require users of SmartDownload to indicate assent to its license as a precondition to downloading and using its software is fatal to its argument that a contract has been formed."[294] Consequently, Netscape was ordered to appear in New York to defend the lawsuit against it. Plaintiffs were spared the requirement of submitting to arbitration in California and risking paying Netscape's legal fees.
The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit affirmed the district court judgment in Specht v. Netscape Communications Corp. [295] However, the Second Circuit's reasoning as to whether the Internet users were bound by the license terms was decided within the artificial framework of consent. The major difference between downloading Netscape Communicator versus SmartDownload was posited on the fact that Communicator forced users to consent to terms whereas SmartDownload referred users to documents published on separate Web pages, similar to airline tickets that refer purchasers to documents retained at airline offices. This is a remarkable exercise in nonsense. Had Netscape coerced users into clicking "I agree" to the terms of SmartDownload, users neither would have read the terms, nor would they have refused the license had they read them. Users wanted the product. The Second Circuit distinguished ProCD and Mortensen.
4. I.Lan Systems Inc. v. Netscout Service Level Corp.[296]
The decision in I.Lan is important because it was decided subsequent to Klocek and Specht, rejected those views and adopted the ProCD rationale. I.LAN helped companies monitor their networks. Netscout (hereafter, and formerly known as, Nextpoint) sold software that monitored networks. In 1998, the parties entered into a Value Added Reseller (VAR) agreement under which i.Lan agreed to resell Nextpoint's software to customers. Each software package also contained a click wrap license requiring the user to click "I agree" to its terms before the software could be installed on the computer. The 1998 agreement contained warranty disclaimers and limitations of liability, virtually identical to those contained in the click wrap agreements, and incorporated the click wrap licenses by reference.
In 1999, i.Lan purchased Nextpoint software for $85,231.42 evidenced by a purchase order. I.Lan claimed that it purchased the unlimited right to Nextpoint's software including perpetual upgrades and support whereby it could rent rather than sell Nextpoint's software to its customers. Nextpoint disagreed with i.Lan's interpretation of the 1999 transaction. In addition, Nextpoint noted that the 1998 VAR agreement and its license agreements limited its liability to the license fee paid for the licensed product.
I.Lan filed a complaint in the federal district court based mainly on breach of contract and violations of Massachusetts General Laws Chapter 93A. The District Court denied i.Lan's motion for summary judgment seeking specific performance of the 1999 transaction, specifically perpetual upgrades and unlimited support. The District Court granted Nextpoint's motion for summary judgment limiting its liability to $85,231.42, were i.Lan to prevail on claims other than its action for specific performance.
There were three agreements in this case: (1) the 1998 VAR, the 1999 purchase order, and the click wrap license agreements. The click wrap license agreement stated that it did not affect existing or subsequent written agreements or purchase orders. Rather than finding that the click wrap license agreements did not legally exist if other written contracts already existed, the Court found that the terms of the click wrap license agreements were meant to fill the gaps of the purchase order and VAR agreement.
According to the Court, Article 2 of the Uniform Commercial Code was the best law to govern click wrap licenses, even though technically Article 2 does not govern software licenses. The Court observed that the latter exist in a legislative void. However, because software licenses are entered into every day, and business persons reasonably expect that some law will govern them, for the time being, Article 2's familiar provisions better fulfill the expectations of the parties than the common law.
The Court rejected i.Lan's argument for specific performance because under 2- 217 the goods must be unique to justify that remedy. The software in this case was not unique. Nextpoint's software was one of several competing software packages in the market. Hence, the court found i.Lan could purchase another product in the market and re-configure its systems to use it. The Court found that the click wrap license agreements did not foreclose an equitable remedy.
To determine whether the click wrap license agreement was enforceable under Article 2, the Court looked to two provisions: 2-204 (contract formation) and 2-217 (additional terms/battle of the forms). The license was enforceable under either provision. I.Lan explicitly agreed to the terms of the license agreement when it clicked on the box stating, "I agree." The court embraced the theory of ProCD holding that terms inside a box of software bind a consumer who uses the software after having had an opportunity to thread the terms and reject them.[297] "If ProCD was correct to enforce a shrink wrap license agreement, where any assent is implicit, it must also be correct to enforce a click wrap license agreement, where the assent is explicit." "Money now, terms later" is a practical way to form contracts and Article 1 of the UCC provides that its provisions shall be interpreted to reflect custom, usage and agreement of the parties.
The Court further found that the license agreement would be enforceable under 2- 207 because it did not materially alter the terms of the 1998 VAR agreement. That agreement, like the click wrap agreements, limited liability to the price paid for the licensed product. "It would be absurd to allow the silence of the [1999 purchase order] to destroy the detailed private ordering created by the 1998 VAR and click wrap license agreements." The Court found that the "only sensible interpretation of the 1999 purchase order is that it did not affect the limitations of liability found in the parties' prior or subsequent agreements."
The Klocek decision rests heavily upon the decision and reasoning of Step-Saver.[298]However, the facts of Step-Saver are materially different from the facts of Klocek. Gateway and Klocek did not have an ongoing business relationship. Gateway offered its products to any buyer having the money to purchase them. Gateway and Klocek did not know each other and transfer contracts back and forth, thus creating a question of which document contained the full agreement of the parties. Klocek did not tell Gateway that he objected to the terms of the STCA. In fact, by his silence and failure to return the product, he accepted the terms of the STCA according to Gateway's "clear as day" written contract terms. The Klocek transaction was a faceless, one-time retail transaction that lacks any similarity to the commercial relationship between the Step-Saver parties where Step- Saver said "no" to the "box top" license directly to TSL.
Since the facts of Step-Saver and the facts of Klocek are sufficiently different to make the holding and reasoning of Step-Saver inapposite to the problem in Klocek, the Klocek opinion stands on shaky ground. Pulling the rule of law out of Step-Saver and applying it to Klocek is an unjustified extension of the Step-Saver holding. Likewise faulty is the District Court's reliance on Arizona Retail Systems, Inc. v. Software Link, Inc.[299] The only other case, the Klocek court cited in support of its position, U.S. Surgical Corp. v. Orris, Inc., a trademark/patent infringement case involving an antitrust counterclaim, consists of a one-page memorandum stating, without any explanation, "the labels included on plaintiff's instruments did not create a valid restriction on the implied license to use the instruments."[300] Orris cannot be cited for the proposition that shrink wrap licenses, not specifically consented to, are unenforceable contracts.
The practical consequences of Klocek also are troubling. Taken to its logical conclusion, Klocek would invalidate practically every standard form contract used in commerce today. In most transactions - the scholars tell us more than 90% of all transactions - the buyer is not alerted to the terms of the standard form contract and does not give his explicit consent to them prior to buying the product. For example, are insurance contracts to be unenforceable under contract law because the sales person did not comb through every single provision of the policy with the insured? Are terms set on airline tickets unenforceable because the airline sales representative did not go through a litany of disclosure prior to taking payment from the customer?
These rhetorical questions emphasize a major point: contemporary commerce does not and cannot operate under the contract model of bargaining embodied in the common law and the Uniform Commercial Code. Judge Easterbrook got it right when he said "On Zeidenberg's arguments ... if taken seriously would drive prices through the ceiling or return transactions to the horse-and-buggy age."[301] In addition, the downside of enforcing the STCA is insignificant. Klocek, a lawyer, had the right to return the computer system for a full refund had he exercised that right within five days of delivery. That was not an undue burden placed on him. By failing to enforce the STCA, the District Court has effectively rewarded his deliberate ignorance or his sly cunning. Finally, determining the legal effect of license agreements under UCC §2-207 is tautological. Since the original contract usually consists of a purchase order and invoice that do not speak to the legal rules governing the parties' relationship, the license agreement -- the subsequent embattled form -- materially alters the terms of the original contract and is unenforceable. The legal methodology pre-determines the outcome of the dispute.
Similarly, in Specht, Judge Hellerstein's notion of assent embodies an ideal, without any real historical counterpart, where equal parties through a give-and-take process reach agreement on each and every term of their contract. The contract principles of the King's bench have no place in twenty-first century mass market transactions. Judge Hellerstein's starting point of analysis is regressive and disregards commercial realities that the law of contract is intended to reflect. The Appellate decision in Specht likewise fails to break through the walls of contract law and turned on distinctions between the placement of text on separate Web pages and the technology of coercing users to agree to terms prior to installation of the product.
I.Lan is an important step in the process of looking to custom in the trade to determine the enforceability of click wrap license agreements. The court rejected the Step-Saver and Klocek decisions that run contrary to the way everyone does business and buys products. Rather, the i.Lan Court accepted the practical theory of ProCD and made the important distinction between the validity of a contract based on how it is formed and the enforceability of any of its terms, a distinction overlooked by courts that persist in using outmoded contract law to analyze standard form contracts.
The European Union Commission opposes the use of most producer-developed standardized terms in consumer contracts: they are patently unfair. The starting premise precludes any inquiry into whether there is an appropriate role in the market for the development of standardized terms by firms. The Commission has stated, "General contractual terms and conditions aim to replace the legal solutions drawn up by the legislator and at the same time to replace the legal rules in force in the Community by unilaterally designed solutions with a view to maximizing the particular interests of one of the parties."[247] Market studies "have not only demonstrated the ubiquity of unfair terms in standard-form contracts but also the enormous difficulty of getting hold of the contractual terms before concluding a contract or independently of such a contract."[248] Based on economic reasoning, the Commission has declared that sellers should not externalize the cost of risks, but raise the prices of products since sellers, as opposed to consumers, are in the best position to obtain insurance.[249] The only question is the method by which to eradicate producer developed standardized terms from the internal market.
Council Directive 93/13/EEC of 5 April 1993 on Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts is the principal directive governing standard form contracts in consumer transactions.[250] It is considered the milestone in consumer policy at the Community level. The EU Directive requires replacement of case law with legislation addressing specific problems posed by standardized terms.[251] The EU Directive, and most member state legislation, is a mix of litigation-based remedies and regulatory controls on standardized terms.[252] The European Union and member states often authorize public officials to police the use of standardized terms. More important, the EU Directive contains an Annex of illustrative terms that presumptively are unfair contract terms. The list deals directly with recurring and troublesome terms and guides the implementation of the general rule in specific cases by telling decision-makers which type of terms to watch out for. In addition, the EU Directive and its national counterparts generally contain restrictions on choice of law, penalties, unilateral change of contract terms and compulsory arbitration.
In his compelling article, "Standard-terms Contracting in the Global Electronic Age: European Alternatives", James R. Maxeiner analyzes the Unfair Terms Directive, its historical precedents and its method of controlling the content terms of standard form contracts. His article also undertakes a comparative study of German law and its particular implementation of the EU Directive. Mr. Maxeiner, who received his Ph.D. from Munich and is fluent in German, has based his description of German law on original sources. Without reproducing the depth of his work, the Unfair Terms Directive and its implementation in Germany and France are examined as are the relevant provisions of the Principles of European Contract Law.
The EU Directive provides a general rule to govern the enforcement of terms found in "pre-formulated standard contracts" involving the sale of goods and services.[253] It also contains a mandate for member states to prevent the use of unlawful consumer contracts. Thus, the directive is preemptive, intended to prevent injury resulting from unfair contracts, and intended to give sellers the certainty of knowing beforehand that their contracts satisfy the law. However, the EU Directive and many national implementations still maintain the artificial distinction between commercial and consumer transactions when the empirical evidence indicates that contracts between businesses often are based on non-negotiable standardized terms shifting risk to the buyer just as they would do in transactions between businesses and consumers.
Article 1 defines unenforceable terms: "A contractual term which has not been individually negotiated shall be regarded as unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations arising under the contract, to the detriment of the consumer." To determine whether any term in a contract is unfair, courts are directed to examine the nature of the good, the circumstances under which the contract was made and the other terms of the contract.[254] Significantly, Article 4(2) excludes the contract's main subject matter and adequacy of price. The Directive hence does not apply to negotiated terms and to the exchange of product against payment of price.[255] Equally significant is the presumption that terms drafted in advance and over which the consumer could have had no influence are non-negotiated terms and enforceable only if they are deemed not unfair under the Directive.[256] Merchants seeking to enforce pre-formulated standard terms bear the burden of proof to show that the term was the product of negotiation and enforceable under ordinary contract law.
Article 6 explicitly limits the ability of merchants to circumvent the application of the Directive by choice of law. That Article provides:
Member States shall take the necessary measures to ensure that the consumer does not lose the protection granted by this Directive by virtue of the choice of the law of a non-Member country as the law applicable to the contract if the latter has a close connection with the territory of the Member States.
Since consumer contracts have ipso facto close connections to the territory of member states, Article 6 effectively prohibits the use of the law of non-Member states to govern consumer transactions. Combined with the consumer protections built into Treaty of Rome (1980) and Council Regulation (EC) No. 44/2001 of 22 December 2000, incorporating the jurisdictional rules of the Brussels Convention, merchants are likely to be bound by the contract law of the consumer's jurisdiction and the consumer has the right to sue the merchant in the place of the consumer's domicile. As Maxeiner notes, with particular reference to license agreements used by American firms, standard terms deviating from European private international law are unenforceable against European consumers.
Importantly, and a departure from American practice, Article 7 requires member states to establish a preventive program for standard form contracts used in consumer transactions. Article 7(2) requires member states to delegate authority to consumer groups to bring enforcement actions. These actions may be brought against sellers collectively, and not just against a single seller.[257] Administrative agencies charged with consumer protection also have the authority to challenge the legality of widely used pre-formulated standard contracts. This mechanism may act as a prior restraint on terms, preventing them from inflicting damage on consumers. It also gives vendors assurance that their contracts are valid.
A term found to contradict the Directive is invalid but the remaining terms survive if valid. Article 6 (1) provides, "Member States shall lay down that unfair terms used in a contract concluded with a consumer by a seller or supplier shall, as provided for under their national law, not be binding on the consumer and that the contract shall continue to bind the parties upon those terms if it is capable of continuing in existence without the unfair terms."
The general rule of the EU Directive is vague. The Directive fails to clarify whether both procedural and substantive unfairness is required to trigger its application. The terms "unfair," "good faith" and "significant imbalance," the key terms used in the Directive, are not defined leading to uncertainty in the rule's application. The direction to evaluate the circumstances surrounding the contract to determine whether to apply the Directive invites protracted and expensive litigation. Arguably, for comparative purposes, the most substantial benefit of the Directive is the list of presumptively invalid terms contained in the Directive. However, with few exceptions, the list does not contain terms frequently found in standard form contracts used in the United States. Nevertheless, while the list has limited incorporation value, the approach of identifying specific terms is useful as a model for American law.[258]
The Annex contains a list of 17 terms that may be considered unfair. The list is indicative only and serves as a reference point in determining whether a disputed term is unfair. Many terms contained in the Annex deal with penalties imposed upon consumers, the leverage of merchants to change terms unilaterally or to extend contract terms automatically. Legislation in the United States prohibits the use of some terms in the list. However, four terms deserve mention since the EU Directive indicates they are unfair and their use in standard form contracts in the U.S. is widespread. Item (a) of the Annex permits finding a term unfair if it has the effect of "excluding or limiting the legal liability of a seller or supplier in the event of the death of a consumer or personal injury to the latter resulting from an act or omission of that seller or supplier." Item (b), the most frequently litigated class of term, permits finding a term unfair if it has the effect of "inappropriately excluding or limiting the legal rights of the consumer vis-à-vis the seller or supplier or another party in the event of total or partial non-performance or inadequate performance by the seller or supplier if any of the contractual obligations, including the option of off-setting a debt owed to the seller or supplier against any claim which the consumer may have against him." Item (i) permits finding a term unfair if it has the effect of "irrevocably binding the consumer to terms with which he had no real opportunity of becoming acquainted before the conclusion of the contract." Item (q) permits finding a term unfair if it excludes or hinders "the consumer's right to take legal action or exercise any other legal remedy, particularly by requiring the consumer to take disputes exclusively to arbitration not covered by legal provisions." If these presumptions were incorporated into American law, they would likely invalidate the following terms in consumer contracts: (1) arbitration clauses, (2) most waivers of tort liability, (3) any term found in a "pay now terms later" transaction and (4) exclusions of all warranties, if item (b) is applied to "guarantees."[259]
Notwithstanding the landmark status of the Directive, the Commission has deemed it a failure. The Report from the Commission has stated that the traditional approach embodied in the Directive -obtaining an injunction against the use of unfair terms-- is a "negative" system. Once a term is deemed unfair, the professional normally will replace it with a new one. "As a result the new term may also be unfair and the only way to remove it is to start all over again. Unfair terms are like the Hydra: cut off one head and others grow in its place."[260] Although the Commission set a deadline for implementation of 31 December 1994, it was not until 1998 that all member states had transposed the Directive into national law. Even then, several transpositions contained errors leading the Commission to institute infringement actions against certain member states such as Denmark and the United Kingdom to name only two. The list also has triggered problems. States refusing to transpose the list have argued that it militates against consumer protection because domestic law already prohibits certain listed terms. Case law has shown that ambiguous terms in the list have weakened its practical impact. Many terms are vaguely worded producing problems of interpretation.
The Report from the Commission sets forth several suggestions for eradicating unfair terms from standardized contracts under what it calls a "positive system for eliminating unfair terms."[261] The Commission has proposed expanding a pilot program instituted in Portugal whereby representatives from professional bodies and consumer associations negotiate terms through collective bargaining agreements. In conjunction with the European Parliament, the Commission also has proposed the creation of a Community mediator to establish a community level system to improve the practical enforcement of the Directive. In this regard, the Commission has proposed harmonizing the supplementary national legislation often relied upon to give content to the general terms of the Directive. Differences of national law have produced disparate results on identical terms as is predictable in any multi-jurisdictional legal system. Hence, given the increase of cross-border transactions in the internal market, often involving consumers entering into contracts with foreign or internal firms where the contracts are printed in a foreign language, the Commission is particularly concerned about uniformity of legislation. The Directive itself is open for reform including expanding its scope to cover professional transactions.
While the European Union is not monolithic, individual state law disfavors the general use of standardized terms. The German Civil Code, enacted in 2002 and repealing "The Standard Contract Terms Act (Gesetz zur Regelung des Rechts der Allgemeinen Geschäftsbedingungen, AGB-Gesetz)," illustrates this trend.[262] Section 305 defines standard business terms: "Standard business terms are all contractual terms pre-established for a multitude of contracts which one party to the contract (the user) presents to the other party upon the conclusion of the contract." Standardized terms do not become part of the contract unless two conditions are met as specified by sections 305(2) and (3): the user must expressly draw the other party's attention to the terms, and give the other party a meaningful opportunity to ascertain their content. However, deferring to freedom of contract and commercial practice, the general rule applies only to consumers. The criteria of sections 305(2) and (3) "do not apply to standard business terms which are proffered to a business person, a legal person governed by public law or a special fund governed by public law." When the general rule applies and the criteria of incorporation are not met, the remainder of the standard form contract is valid and interpreted against statutory rules, provided no party would suffer unreasonable hardship by being bound to the contract.
Section 307, which implements the Directive, applies to all standardized contracts including commercial contracts. This section invalidates any term that, contrary to good faith, places the contractual partner at an unreasonable disadvantage. Significantly, an unreasonable advantage is presumed if it "cannot be reconciled with essential basic principles of the statutory rule from which it deviates." Sections 308 and 309 then specify terms invalid subject to appraisal in standard form contracts and terms invalid without appraisal. Terms invalid per se include price increases within the first four months of the contract's term, terms excluding liability for damage caused by the user's grossly negligent breach of the contract, liquidated damages and penalty clauses.[263] Presumptively invalid terms include a provision giving the user of the contract an "unreasonably long or inadequately specified period for acceptance or rejection of an offer or for performance," and a right of termination "without an objectively justified reason specified in the contract." Standardized terms are subject to further review. Surprising terms, that is, terms the contractual partner would not have expected, do not become part of the contract. Ambiguous terms are interpreted against the user of the contract.
According to Maxeiner, the German approach, which he calls the "contract model," controls standard terms without throwing freedom of contract overboard. He states: "In German theory, the contract model does not limit freedom of contract. The parties may agree to the term they like. What the contract model does is to prevent one party from using the drafting device of standard terms to introduce terms that unreasonably disadvantage the other party. The contract model does not ask whether the deal or a particular term between the parties is fair; it asks whether the standard terms provided by the user are a good faith basis for the parties' contractual relationship."[264]
France recently has transposed the Directive into its national law.[265] Article L 132-1 of the consumer code contains a variation of the general rule of the Directive. French law prohibits "abusive clauses" used in consumer contracts that cause a significant imbalance between the rights and obligations of the contract parties. The French implementation does not explicitly refer to good faith. The balance of the contract remains valid if it survives the excise of the abusive terms. Article L 132-1 also codifies the Annex of the Directive including the presumptive invalidity of any standardized term that limits the consumer's access to the legal system to pursue a remedy against the seller. Complying with the mandate to enforce the Directive, Article L 132-2 creates the Commission of Unfair Terms within the Ministry of Consumer Protection. That public institution is responsible for the review of standard form contracts used in consumer transactions and the identification of potentially abusive clauses. Article R 132-3 identifies the composition of the Commission and identifies the public authorities having the power to enforce the Commission's recommendations.
The Principles of European Contract Law, published in 1999, are the product of the self-appointed Commission on European Contract Law.[266] The ultimate ambition of the PECL is incorporation into a future European Civil Code that would contain the law of contract, tort and other obligations. The PECL is drafted in broad principles that do not go into details. Rather, like the CISG, the Principles "should be interpreted and developed in accordance with their purposes," and that "issues within the scope of the Principles but not expressly settled by them are as far as possible to be settled in accordance with the ideas underlying the Principles."[267] Consequently, the salient features of the PECL are critical to their interpretation and development.
In his article, "The Structure and Salient Features of the Principles of European Contract Law", Professor Lando, the principal architect of the PECL, sets forth eight salient features. Three are germane: (1) pacta sunt servanda, (2) good faith and fair dealing, and (3) unfair contract terms. The foundation of the PECL is the mandate: "you shall keep your bargain." Consistent with that moral imperative, the preferred remedy for breach is specific performance, though the PECL recognizes exceptions for changed circumstances and waste. The first salient feature hence sets the PECL firmly on the foundation of freedom of contract and mutual exchange of promise. To dispel any doubt that contract is a matter of morality, Professor Lando stresses that good faith and fair dealing derive from Kant's categorical imperative: "Your behavior shall be governed by such principles as if you were a legislator in a society of reasonable beings obeying common laws." Therefore, good faith is the king of the PECL. "It supplements the provisions of the Principles and it may take precedence over other Principles when strict adherence to them would lead to a manifestly unjust result."[268] The unfair contract term provision closely follows the EU Directive, but the PECL also contains provisions on "procedural unfairness" to help "a disadvantaged party." Because the PECL apply to consumers and businesses alike, the unfair contract term provision applies to any non-negotiated term. "Even the big and powerful enterprise is protected. Experience shows that such a party may also inadvertently subject itself to unfair terms."[269] With respect to standardized terms, the PECL is not innovative. However, the strong infusion of morality would give courts expansive powers to strike standardized terms not only that run afoul of specific Principles but also that produce a manifestly unjust result, no matter what the Principles say.
Larry Bates, in the Administrative Regulation of Terms in Form Contracts: A Comparative Analysis of Consumer Protection, provides an overview of the European model and argues for the adoption of a regulatory approach in the United States to be implemented by the Federal Trade Commission.[270] His argument follows from his criticism of litigation-based techniques used in the United States. He notes accurately, "Because the protection realized by a consumer in litigation-based programs works to the benefit of the individual consumer only, litigation is an inefficient means by which to make protection generally available." The previously discussed case of Gonzales v. A-1 Storage bears out his argument. A-1 Storage likely had used the standard form contract challenged by Ms. Gonzales in the usual course of its business prior to the time it was deemed unconscionable as a matter of law. Hence, customers who sustained damage to their property, but did not litigate the contract terms, probably abided by the contract and swallowed their losses. In addition, A-1 Storage may continue to use the standardized form in future dealings. Other firms in the same industry may use contracts containing the term removed in the private litigation. The net effect is random protection against unfair terms based on a party's decision to go to court.
The "after the fact" application of litigation-based techniques provides additional support for his argument. Limitations on the "freedom of contract" principle, being vague and unsusceptible to definition, invite lawyers to write, and businesses to use, standardized terms that test the limits of the free ordering of private affairs, because, as Meyerson has shown, there are no market incentives to restrain firms from shifting all risk to customers. The market hence may be flooded with standardized terms running afoul of the law and controlling the outcome of any particular dispute, unless the customer files a lawsuit and obtains a judgment against the firm. The EU Directive, in theory though not in practice, rejects this approach appointing an ombudsman authorized to review widely used standard forms and to file suit based on their violation of statutory regulation without waiting for any particular person to suffer an injury. In Bates' words, "the most important protection provided for consumers is the collective action procedure through which consumer organizations can act to compel the users of form contracts which contain terms illegal under the Act, to stop using the offensive terms."
However, the European model raises the question of whether the cure is worse than the disease. In the form of the PECL, the European approach is objectionable. The moral tone and conviction are inappropriate to a scientific solution to contract problems. The PECL is two steps backward, relying on metaphysics to regulate commercial affairs. In the form of the EU Directive, the European approach is an acknowledged failure, leading to the obvious question: why import a broken system. Nevertheless, the European experience has value for American jurisprudence as to its list of suspect terms. The specific identification of terms attempts to define indirectly vague expressions like "unfair." But it does not go far enough. Second, the European approach of authorizing public authorities to bring actions against sellers collectively could be instituted within the Federal Trade Commission or organized consumer groups.[271] However, wide scale monitoring of this sort would entail a change of American legal culture. That approach also assumes that officials bringing the actions and courts deciding cases are qualified to assess the economic effects of their actions on markets. That assumption is highly debatable. In addition, the European solution: raise prices, is an oversimplified solution to the problem of standardized terms. It fails to distinguish between legitimate terms benefiting the market and allowing for developing business models from abusive terms tantamount to fraud or deceit.
Even with substantial regulation of standard form contracts, the use of covert tools does not prevent a firm's use of sharp practices in the market. The decision in Gonzales v. A-1 Self Storage, Inc. illustrates the limits of term invalidation where the judgment is effective only against parties to the litigation, resulting in continued use of the same term by other firms, and demonstrates the tendency of "unconscionability" contained in sales law to be imported into other departments of law.211 In May 1999, Ms. Gonzales rented storage space from defendant to hold her personal property worth approximately $5000. The rent was $126 per month. She signed defendant's rental contract, paid the first month's rent, an additional pro-rated amount and bought a lock. The rented area consisted of an eight foot by ten foot space. The ceiling consisted of "a fence like grate." In July 1999, about two months later, Ms. Gonzales returned to the storage facility to retrieve some items and discovered that her property had been either entirely or partially destroyed by the entry of water from the top of the storage space. She sued based on negligence. A-I Storage stipulated to the water damage, denied negligence and relied upon the contract limiting its liability to $50.
The contract consisted of more than 30 paragraphs. The defendant relied principally on paragraphs 10 and 11 that provided:
10. Non-Liability of the Owner and Insurance Obligations of Occupant.
Occupant, at occupant's expense, shall maintain a policy of fire and extended coverage insurance with burglary, vandalism and malicious mischief endorsement for at least 100% of actual cash value of such stored property.
Occupant expressly agrees that the carrier of such insurance shall not be subrogated to any claim of occupant against owner, owner's agents or employees.
The Owner shall not be liable for personal injury or property damage ....
The Occupant hereby agrees to indemnify and hold the owner harmless from and against any and all claims for damages to property or personal injury, including attorney's fees or costs ....
11. Release of Owner's Liability.
Any and all personal property stored within or on the leased premises by Occupant shall be at Occupant's sole risk and no bailment is created hereunder. Owner shall have no liability for loss or damage to any property of Occupant stored in the space, or otherwise, arising from any cause whatsoever .... Owner shall not be liable to Occupant for any loss or damage that may be occasioned by or through Owner's acts, omissions to act, or negligence, or by acts of negligence of Owner's or other Occupants on the premises ....
The Occupant does hereby waive and release any rights of recovery against owner that it may have hereunder.
Owner's liability shall not exceed the sum of $50 and Occupant's sole remedy at law or in equity shall be the right to recover a sum within such limit."[212]
However, to clarify the defendant's virtual lack of any responsibility, paragraph 30 provided, "The implied warranties of merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose and all other warranties expressed or implied are excluded from this transaction and shall not apply to the space and facilities. In addition, paragraph 30 stated that Ms. Gonzales agreed to indemnify the defendant against all claims, including attorney's fees and costs of litigation.
The court did not consider whether the contract formed a barrier insulating defendant from liability. Rather, "the issue before the court is whether these paragraphs, together with the rest of then contract, so pervert the ideals of good faith and fair dealing that the contract as a whole is rendered unconscionable."[213] Based on the remarkable language of the contract and defendant's failure to propose any plausible explanation of how the property was water damaged, the court found the defendant was negligent, the contract did not operate to mitigate defendant's liability and that the contract was unconscionable as a matter of law. Parsing the decision reveals the background law that would have applied in the absence of contract, how the contract displaced that law and why the court reached its conclusion that the contract was unenforceable.
The parties entered into a bailment for hire. Ms. Gonzales was the bailor and defendant the bailee. Black's Law Dictionary defines bailment for hire as:
A contract in which the bailor agrees to pay an adequate recompense for the safekeeping of the thing intrusted to the custody of the bailee, and the bailee agrees to keep it and restore it on the request of the bailor, in the same condition substantially as he received it, excepting injury or loss from causes for which he is not responsible. <
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