What's the eBay response to 60 minutes segment on harassing journalists for trying to do their jobs?

[peszar-0]

This is SICK tactics by eBay to try and bring down a journalist who is trying to bring to light a crackdown on 2nd Amendment rights. And the CEO exits with a golden parachute. **bleep**!!!!!!

[postcardcountry]

DH used to teach new adjusters......."never go to court on damages, settle.  Only when liability is in question should you go to court".    I imagine eBay's legal dept are saying something similar and it will probably be settled out of court.  We may never know the details of the settlement.  If wise, eBay will ask for a nondisclosure agreement - at least one that will allow the Steiners to say "we settled.  it's over" in their own publication and no further information.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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@coolections wrote:

I would love to see Ebay countersue them for defamation and as many other reasons for hurting Ebay's business and reputation. Maybe that can offset the amount Ebay will be forced to hand over to them.

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@collections If there was anything for that to stand on, I imagine it would have already been done.

There are multiple court documents in the various cases involved that show multiple emails from eBay's legal department (including Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber) stating that there was nothing legal could do about the perceived "problems"....that should have been a good indication to everyone involved that taking action outside of that would be ill-advised to say the least, but here we are.

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@valueaddedresource   you mistagged  I think.  I believe you were trying to tag @coolections 

[valueaddedresource]

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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@coolections wrote:

I would love to see Ebay countersue them for defamation and as many other reasons for hurting Ebay's business and reputation. Maybe that can offset the amount Ebay will be forced to hand over to them.

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@collections If there was anything for that to stand on, I imagine it would have already been done.

There are multiple court documents in the various cases involved that show multiple emails from eBay's legal department (including Chief Legal Officer Marie Oh Huber) stating that there was nothing legal could do about the perceived "problems"....that should have been a good indication to everyone involved that taking action outside of that would be ill-advised to say the least, but here we are.

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@valueaddedresource   you mistagged  I think.  I believe you were trying to tag @coolections 

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Thanks @simply-the-best-for-you  - that's what I get for trying to multi-task and type while talking on the phone.  😂

[gurlcat]

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@vintagecraze50 wrote:

Just as a side note about what big corps do to each other. The people who tried to take control of ebay during Wenigs tenure have a host of death threat tactic and other really wild ways they try to take down other companies especially terrorizing CEO’s to make them quit. Elliot Management was after ebay at the time.  I believe they have done quite ridiculous things as well with their money and power.

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Oh I totally get that, ridiculous things indeed, but what I said was what corporations do "to people" (not to each other), and what I meant was how so many of them will do literally anything for the slightest raise in profits for shareholders.  The examples we could look at are endless, but recent U.S. railroad commerce news is a perfect case study in the effects on people at all levels.  We saw how they don't want to hire enough rail workers to enable them to take sick days when they need to ...and if you're not familiar with that story you might be thinking I'm angling how a Covid disaster occurred ...no, that was primarily the meat packing and nursing home industries .... what happened with Big Rail was a whole other kind of disaster that occurs when you don't have enough workers to carry out safety protocols for hazardous materials, a chemical-carrying train blows up in a town and the hazardous waste pollutes the place to where people get sick, and who knows what kinds of cancers they'll present over time, but anyone who wants to escape by moving can't sell their house, because who wants to buy a house in Contaminationville?  

But that's nothing compared to what American and other 'Western' corporations do to people in 3rd world countries, where "people who don't matter" do all the suffering (and the lands where it happens and all the other organisms that live there), and it doesn't make the evening news ....because the evening news relies on the revenues from those very companies who buy air time for commercials, so the news corporations avoid biting the hands that feed them ..... so most of us don't even know about it.  And note that I'm not mentioning 'this' or 'that' news channel, because it's the same with all of them.  Just for sh's and giggles sometime, watch a couple hours of any random cable news, particularly in evening primetime, and during the commercials count how many fall into the few categories of: finance/banking, automotives, insurance, pharmaceuticals, and fuel (where's all the commercials for food, household products, never mind "Mom n' Pop businesses? --they can't afford to pay as much as the Big's). 

But it would be shortsighted to think we're unaffected as long as the 'thing' doesn't blow up or whatever, in our own towns, or if we're not the employees getting the shaft in wages, safety and dignity.  -We're affected ALL THE TIME.  Just think how much cumulative time you have spent waiting on hold to get help with ...whatever.... only to finally speak to someone whose English is horrible and they don't give the help you need, possibly because they were trained NOT to tell you something, but more often because they're just not trained enough to help, and/or the language barrier is too much.  Think how often all of the "Press ___" menu commands only route you to something automated, where you can't even ASK your question.  And the more monopolized a company is (the less options you have when you get fed up and want to show your frustration by switching to a competitor ...but there isn't one) the worse that customer service will be, because what are you going to do about it?    

[simply-the-best-for-you]

I've never felt the blog had a personal point of view or that there was any "hatred", etc.  Yes, some of the articles & coverage are negative b/c some people's experiences with Ebay are negative.  Honestly I have seen much more hatred towards Ebay on the boards here.  

Let's keep in mind that one of the people was a former Police Captain, he's the one who's trying to blame eBay for his alcoholism.   Even his wife is in on blaming Ebay for the corporate culture that celebrated alcohol.  

https://www.svvoice.com/former-santa-clara-cop-phil-cooke-pleads-for-leniency-in-ebay-harassment-con...

Another one of the ringleaders manipulated another defendant, a young, married woman into a sexual relationship with him, as part of all of this & also subsequently gave her a sizeable "bonus".  I would love to know who paid for that bonus.  

Also yet another (or maybe one of these, the names are starting to confuse me) is basically filing a counterclaim against Ebay, saying that he was hired to do this job & did exactly what he was hired to do, so he should not be held liable b/c he was simply doing what the employer ordered him to do.  

Make no mistake, when all of this happens on company time, using company resources, both financial & physical, the company is liable.  It should be pretty simple to prove.  Most of this occurred in company meetings, conference rooms, using company resources to fly to MA, renting cars using company money.  The whole "White Knight" strategy made it very clear, how well thought out & planned this was.   I mean, there just is no question - when employees do bad things on company time, using company money, as part of a huge orchestrated campaign, companies are liable.   There's a reason $60M was set aside for this in the latest 10K (I think that's where it was published). 

And I still want to know why these employees were staying at the Ritz Carlton?   I traveled for a Fortune 100 company every week for over a decade.  Ritz Carltons are NOT the norm in Corporate travel.  I lucked out 3x & got to stay in one, each time b/c the Fortune 100 company I was doing business at had a negotiated rate there due to location proximity.   If the Ritz Carlton is the norm at Ebay, then I should look into a job there.  It would have been SO MUCH more comfortable than the Marriott 😄

[chapeau-noir]

I have junkets at the Motel 6.  😒

The White Knight strategy was an interesting one, and I wonder how much of eBay's revenue was spent on this nonsense - probably still a drop in the bucket compared to, say, Walkers West.  IMHO they were really out to uncover and probably doxx Fidomaster (Unsuck eBay on Twitter) - that's who was painted on the Steiners' fence, and who provides the real sting in the tail. Fido was too smart for them and one texting string in the evidence shows a neatly deflected attempt on the part of one of the participants in this scheme who had been tasked with discovering him. He also regularly posted in the blog's chat section.  He's still on the Twitter dumpster fire.

And as @retro_entertainment_collectibles  says - the actual through-put on that blog is probably not extremely high. I think people don't realise how huge the interwebz is and how many thousands and thousands of blogs are out there, only that this particular one looms large.  Same mistake certain individuals at eBay made.

[vintagecraze50]

Typical of alcoholics to blame everybody but themselves for their addiction. 

[vintagecraze50]

When I used to read it there were a choice few who commented on it regularly and had nothing positive to say about ebay. How many just read it and not comment not sure. Folks that sell on Ebay and are ultra successful do not have the time for such nonsense.

[policequilts]

I don't know if it applies to the civil suits but, I wonder if eBay can "claw back" Weinig bonus to offset this suit if found guilty or causing the problem?

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@policequilts wrote:

I don't know if it applies to the civil suits but, I wonder if eBay can "claw back" Weinig bonus to offset this suit if found guilty or causing the problem?

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No way.   If they had any way to not pay it out, I'm sure they wouldn't have.  

@chapeau-noir   Yeah, Fidomaster was def a big piece of it.  I have never bought that the little piece on Wenig's salary was what started all this.  Wenig's salary was available to anyone who can read an annual report or type a sentence into Google.  

ITA that the money spent on this was piddly compared to Walkers West.   I read that text exchange from the 
"ex-employee" who had the 'incriminating information', more evidence of how well thought out it was.   Fido was brilliant in the way he or she handled it.  

[valueaddedresource]

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@policequilts wrote:

I don't know if it applies to the civil suits but, I wonder if eBay can "claw back" Weinig bonus to offset this suit if found guilty or causing the problem?

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@policequilts potentially yes - especially if eBay (the company) faces criminal liability.

 I read something interesting recently from the DOJ (not specifically related to this case) about giving corporations incentive to clawback compensation (like severance packages) from bad executives in order to avoid paying fines.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/deputy-attorney-general-lisa-monaco-delivers-remarks-american-bar...

Wenig got $57M, SVP Global Ops Wendy Jones got $11M and I haven't seen an exact figure for Wymer anywhere but have seen he apparently got some severance too.

An opportunity to fill that $64M hole *and* deduct ~$70M from any potential fines? If I were eBay I'd certainly at least be considering it.

$64M may seem like chump change to eBay and on balance it probably is, but sometimes it's more about where the money comes from than the exact amount and if they can avoid having to actually take that loss...that could be worth a lot more than the dollar amount in investor relations.

[vintagecraze50]

People who post blog info about corporations  like this should be monitoring their user base and their comment suggestion and be especially careful when the comment sections gets overloaded with extremely negative content. If you are going to be presenting just factual info about what is happening  and you get tons of negative comments you need something like Khoros here to monitor it remove inappropriate comments and certainly NOT let some posters continue on a negative rant continuously.

[simply-the-best-for-you]

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@valueaddedresource wrote:

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@policequilts wrote:

I don't know if it applies to the civil suits but, I wonder if eBay can "claw back" Weinig bonus to offset this suit if found guilty or causing the problem?

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@policequilts potentially yes - especially if eBay (the company) faces criminal liability.

 I read something interesting recently from the DOJ (not specifically related to this case) about giving corporations incentive to clawback compensation (like severance packages) from bad executives in order to avoid paying fines.

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/deputy-attorney-general-lisa-monaco-delivers-remarks-american-bar...

Wenig got $57M, SVP Global Ops Wendy Jones got $11M and I haven't seen an exact figure for Wymer anywhere but have seen he apparently got some severance too.

An opportunity to fill that $64M hole *and* deduct ~$70M from any potential fines? If I were eBay I'd certainly at least be considering it.

$64M may seem like chump change to eBay and on balance it probably is, but sometimes it's more about where the money comes from than the exact amount and if they can avoid having to actually take that loss...that could be worth a lot more than the dollar amount in investor relations.

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Oh, very interesting.  I stand corrected.   I still think it's a real long shot though.  

[vintagecraze50]

In addition to what I just posted letting the negative comments get out of control is a form of perhaps knowingly or unknowingly harassing the organization that you are blogging about.

[coolections]

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@simply-the-best-for-you wrote:

I've never felt the blog had a personal point of view or that there was any "hatred", etc. 

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Have you ever attempted to post there. If not, I can tell you that every post gets screened and you must be permitted by those two to even have a post shown. If it does not meet their mantra then forget about it.