posted on November 4, 2000 08:41:40 AM
No fan of Meg here folk's. I think she's a vampire that sucked the life blood out of ebay and can now move on.... Would someone simply keep the door open for her when her bags are packed. She was only in the right place at the right time. Much like too many other CEO's that jumped aboard while the wave was high enough to surf.. Bye Meg, now please retire and buy all that Martha Stewart stuff to fill your house...
posted on November 6, 2000 12:04:23 AM
No bash here, but before you get too delerious, publicly held co's aren't really out to change the world.
Just cash in on it. Just a thought.
Capriole (only cashiole here)
Meg Whitman came to CEO eBay, when NO ONE wanted to risk their entire career and reputation on us, and indeed, most of them and all the vulture capitalists and financial analysts still consider us to be an online garage sale.
During the year when one eBiz after another after another went bankrupt, and of what's left another 98% of them are expected to be defunct next year at this time --- Meg Whitman and her staff led the most successful, only profitable e-commerce website.
Meg Whitman has been publically bashed and lambasted again and again and again, and the financial analysts do not even recognize what this woman did.
While Mr. Bezos was made Time's Man of the Year, Meg did NOT make repetitive PR statements about how eBay had become the world's premier online corporation, and that eBay would change the course of ALL future retail transactions.
While Jeff Bezos was busy being interviewed again and again and again as the Poster Child of e-commerce, whilst he proscelytized a business model which has not turned a profit, Meg Whitman with no fanfare went forward and built the world's LARGEST personal trading marketplace.
Meg Whitman is FULLY aware that these co-brands with American worldclass corporations like Disney are simply a serious method to PROTECT EBAY from all the eBay wannabees. Meg Whitman's strategy prevented eBay from going dot.gone like the rest of so-called eBiz.
Meg Whitmn is NOT guilty for history placing herself in the right place at the right time.
Meg Whitman is NOT responsible for the bloating of sellers vs. bidders.
Meg Whitman is NOT guilty for deflationary marketplace -- this is an historical result, due to economic laws which are not controllable by mere mortals.
eBay, Inc. is LIGHT YEARS ahead of their wannabee-"""competition""" and eBay is similarly LIGHT YEARS ahead of the security measures which would ensure safety and privacy and successfully completed auctions.
It is only a matter of time before the rest of technology catches up with us & eBay, and thankfully Meg Whitman ran this baby company with the brilliance of General Guderian coupled with the cunning of Rommel, and History will judge her tactics and strategy very favorably, and be puzzled that none of her contemporary "experts" noticed her expertise, nor commented on the ability of eBay to remain under~the~radar.
The future of eBay is now assured.
eBay is UNSTOPPABLE, and it will cover our globe, used by persons everywhere, and it will be found that eBay changes the course of History for all Humanity.
posted on November 8, 2000 09:56:03 AM
As the leading CEO, she should be responsible for better policy with regards to downtime, and the charges to customers during that period, not simply chasing down fresh blood aka Disney. She is not holy!
posted on November 8, 2000 12:18:08 PM
Meg Whitman IS responsible for the crappy hardware and software that is unable to handle the load of the users. Despite years of lip service to site stability-nothing has been done to improve it.
Meg Whitman IS responsible for her flunkies lying about lengths of outages and denying credits due to her company's inabilty to stay up resulting in Ebay's well deserved reputation for being cheats,chiselers, and outright liars.
Meg Whitman IS responsible for the unending new features that add nothing while keeping the site end unstable. *(Snowflakes for God sakes-the site can't stay up for 12 hours at a time but they have time to put snowflakes on the logos.)
Meg Whitman IS responsible for her company's refusal to deal with shill bidders or fraud in any meaningful way. Security measures??? What security measures- fraud and shillers still abound and it's still incredibly easy to reregister if you're turfed.
Meg Whitman IS responsible for the combination of the above driving both buyers and sellers to greener pastures.
Meg Whitman is responsible for obsessing over co-branding at the expense of the small seller. The small seller no longer matters.
(and Radh if you actually used Ebay instead of ranting about it and waving Pom Poms for Whitman you'd actually know that. (Better hope she doesn't stop short-you'll wind up with a broken nose.)
NOT Vorlon4 on Ebay.
[ edited by vorlon4 on Nov 8, 2000 12:19 PM ]
posted on November 8, 2000 12:28:42 PM
*** Important Letter from Meg and Pierre ***
June 11, 1999
To our valued community members:
We are sorry. We know that you expect uninterrupted service from eBay. We believe that this is reasonable, and we know we haven’t lived up to your expectations. We want to earn back your trust that we’ll provide you with this level of service.
At about 19:50 PDT last night, June 10, 1999, we began experiencing site problems that resulted in a hard outage that lasted nearly 24 hours. This was the second time in two days that we experienced this problem.
We want to assure you that our highest priority today – as always – is your trading success. We also understand that keeping the site up and running is crucial to your achievement of this success. We cannot apologize enough for this disruption in our service and in your ability to participate in online commerce.
When the outage began last night, we immediately mobilized to fix the problem as quickly as possible. It took everyone in engineering, customer support, operations and even external vendors working all night and all day to get the site back up and running. We believe we isolated the problem, and we will keep a vigilant watch.
Here is what we did…
First, we have taken a serious look at our priorities because of this outage. We hope you will give us the chance to show you our commitment to your success and to keeping eBay up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our goal: Uninterrupted service. No fancy bells and whistles. We just want to make it work.
To help ensure this, we are working diligently on a hot backup system that should automatically limit the length of potential outages to less than an hour or so. We have been working on this system for many months, and it is almost ready. Sadly, if we had this system in place a few days ago, we might have avoided this outage.
Second, we are extending by 48 hours all auctions ending between 19:50 PDT on Thursday, June 10 and 09:00 PDT on Saturday, June 12. (Of course, you may end your auction at any time at: http://pages.ebay.com/services/buyandsell/end-auction.html)
Third, we are refunding ALL fees for ALL ACTIVE auctions on eBay between 00:01 PDT on Thursday, June 9 and 24:00 PDT on Friday, June 11. This includes Insertion Fees, Final Value Fees and Optional Fees (such as Bold, Icon, Featured and Gallery). These refunds will be automatically generated, and you will not be required to submit a written request. (Please note that these refunds will not appear immediately on your eBay account status but will appear on your June or July invoice.)
Fourth, we are implementing a new Outage Policy. Our new Outage Policy is as follows:
1. Extensions – For any hard outage over two hours, eBay will automatically extend by 24 hours all auctions scheduled to end during that outage and all auctions scheduled to end in the hour following that outage.
2. Refunds – For any hard outage over two hours, eBay will automatically refund ALL fees for auctions ending during that outage. This includes Insertion Fees, Final Value Fees and Optional Fees (such as Bold, Icon, Featured and Gallery).
Finally, we will offer a free listing event some time in July as a token of our appreciation of your continued support and understanding. Please keep an eye on the Announcements Board in the next few weeks for more information.
We know that extending your auctions and refunding your money will never be enough. We truly believe, as you do, that eBay is only as successful as you are. We promise to do everything we possibly can to help you succeed at online trading at eBay. And we promise to redouble our efforts to make sure that another outage like this one will never happen again.
Our sincere apologies,
Meg and Pierre
Meg Whitman may not be guilty of a lot of things, but one thing she surely is guilty of is not living up to a promise:
...our commitment to keeping eBay up and running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Our goal: Uninterrupted service. No fancy bells and whistles. We just want to make it work.
She's had a year and a half to accomplish this goal, and to date, has failed.
posted on November 8, 2000 03:14:25 PM
"Our goal: Uninterrupted service. No fancy bells and whistles. We just want to make it work. "
I don't think I need to explain the irony of this to anyone , do I????
It's not a matter of Whitman failing to achieve site stability- site stability just doesn't seem to be a high priority- it seems like the attitude is "Who cares if it actually works- it LOOKS nice. We getmoney whether it's up or down"
NOT Vorlon4 on Ebay
[ edited by vorlon4 on Nov 8, 2000 08:42 PM ]
But wait there's this lovely sympathy note from ebay about how sad it is in the UK. Meg, stand up and send them a million or so...geezuz...
***SEVERE WEATHER IN UNITED KINGDOM***
Due to severe weather, a large part of the UK has been put under flood alert. Last week, parts of the country experienced floods which
impacted a number of businesses and homes. Disruption was caused to a number of services including transport and postal services.
This may delay delivery of items or payments being sent to overseas buyers or sellers.
The flood alerts have again been given to the UK for the next 48 hrs
and they anticipate a similar disruption to services this week. If you are transacting business with eBay members who are located in the UK, you might want to be aware of these circumstances which could produce delays beyond the control of your transaction partner.
Our thoughts are with eBay members in the UK who are coping with these severe conditions, and we hope that things will be back to normal for you soon.
Regards,
eBay
From the Announcements board...how warm and fuzzy...
[ edited by Empires on Nov 9, 2000 06:20 AM ]
posted on November 10, 2000 02:04:49 PM
OK I know she (meg)sold some major stock but is it really true?? IS she leaving her "community" to go elsewhere with her "passion"?
Just kidding radh, don't take offense.
)sold some major stock but is it really true?? IS she leaving her "community" to go elsewhere with her "passion"?