Another eBay exec pleads guilty after couple stalked, harassed for daring to criticize the internet tat bazaar The Feds have secured another guilty plea in the eBay cyberstalking case where former employees of the online auction house targeted and harassed a couple who were critical of the company in their ecommerce newsletter. Philip Cooke, 55, oversaw eBay’s security operations in Europe and Asia and was a former police captain in …
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You don't like eBay's decisions on customer support policy tradeoffs. Fine, I can understand that.
And I am sure that if I said "so don't trade on eBay then" you would moan that you have to be on eBay to get the customers so have no option but to accept them.
However, you seem to have missed, completely, that those tradeoffs are exactly the reason that eBay has all those customers available for you! If you want access to all those eBay users, you need to buy into eBay's policies. Those policies may be heavily biased towards the customers but that is the reason the customers are there in the marketplace!
Sure, eBay could tighten up the policies and make them "fairer". Then a significant number of possible customers would no longer be comfortable using the platform and you would have a smaller market and lower auction prices.
If you say that the problem is there is no alternative, that is clearly not the case. Amazon Marketplace is hardly a small competitor. Of course, it has a similar bias towards the customers for exactly the same reason.
Don't want to pay for your item? Threaten negative feedback...
They can't contact you except by ebay message. If they threaten negative feedback in a message if you don't refund, then you send it to eBay and ask them to investigate. If you have evidence in writing of their wrongdoing, it's going to be hard for them to follow it through in a meaningful manner.
I've sold items on eBay for years. I've never had a single person threaten me with negative feedback if I don't refund.
I misread the article so I have withdrawn my comment.
You sell a few items or 4000+ items a month like me? You need to remember that eBay has Service Metrics and when a dispute is opened your sales tank so that is why the seller is always obliged to suck up the loss from scammers.
eBay do not investigate anything.
"While I agree with the sentiment you get a downvote for the tedious cliché of including a joke about sourcing something from ebay in a story related to ebay."
It's a shame really, of all the things that are available on eBay, you were unable to find a sense of humour on there.
I actually find the corporate malfeasance...disturbing. Corporations writing their own rules has become so prevalent that the execs now do it with the expectation of complete impunity. From Kenneth Lay to Dick Fuld, from Zuckerburg to this guy Cooke, they all think they get to do whatever they please and society will just sit and swallow it. And our society pretty much does, like one set of rule for the poor (Rockefeller laws) yet different for the rich (community service).
Moral corruption to a T.
Hasn't it always been thus? Today it's corporations, before them it was the monarchs and aristocrats. I'm sure someone once said something apposite about power corrupting and absolute power...etc etc
A timely reminder of why we need independent press, regulators, judiciary, separation of powers, etc. And for every watchman, someone to watch them.
"A timely reminder of why we need independent press, regulators, judiciary, separation of powers, etc. And for every watchman, someone to watch them."
Exactly, 100% right! Somehow, to the laissez-faire capitalists that we now must endure, government and laws are an 'impediment' to 'advancement'. Because in their world, somehow, everyone only acts well. I guess criminals never exist in the fantasy land of the neu economy...and I've grown sick of hearing that belief foisted on us by those who will benefit, to the detriment of everyone else.
Somehow, to the laissez-faire capitalists that we now must endure, government and laws are an 'impediment' to 'advancement'
Far too many people are misunderstanding proper "laissez-faire". It's supposed to work in BOTH directions; a company is supposed to be able to run their company as they see fit, but they **ALSO** are not guaranteed a profit, or laws/regulations favouring them. If they can't survive on their own, tough luck, step aside and let someone ELSE do the job.
FFS you worked for a huge company. The nature of huge companies is that some people won't like your huge company. And they will say so on the interwebz. So I guess you have two options when you see this happening :
1. Shrug, think "that's life" and forget about it.
2. Organise a deranged, creepy campaign of harassment like a pyschopathic serial killer and get rightly jailed for many years.
It's just a job folks. Get some damn perspective on life.
"Maybe years of believing to be above the law, or being the law has something to do with it"
Leaving aside the fact that being ex could be significant they might have hoped that their oppos in another force might have been - shall we say - sympathetic. If so that didn't work Being ex-police isn't going to be in their favour if they get sent down.
I know, right? It's one thing getting angry and making a shouty, all-caps forum post, but going from that to sending someone (amongst other things) a fetal pig and funeral wreath in the mail? I'd have thought that - at SOME point along the way - one of the seven(!) people involved would have said something like "Hang on guys, what the hell are we doing?".
in addition there could be:
3: maybe the complaints have something to say that could be USEFUL to learn from, and maybe you could make a better company that would attract MORE customers.
But implementing #3 usually takes more work than a lot of corporate execs want to do, or are even capable of doing.
In my experience they are long term professionals who haven't had contact with day-to-day work in a long time. They tend to be politically astute within the confines of their department. Few of them are introspective - although there are exceptions, of course.
Many of them were good cops in the beginning of their careers, which is why they got a chance to use their political skills to advance. After awhile they view citizens like many of us view users (true of most cops I deal with).
I'm still holding out hope that one of the guilty makes a deal and agrees to fess up to the CEO being behind the whole thing.
It's not enough of a smack down for the evil corporation to loose a few low lying executives.
A CEO being arrested and charged, kind of makes them start thinking there may be personal consequences for their actions.
"serious time...a sentence of up to five years in prison"
Considering the sorts of sentences often written about in these hallowed pages, 5 years sounds like being let off lightly. Isn't 125 years per offence, served consecutively more the going rate in the USA?
Yes thanks, the white one with the long arms and leather straps.
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