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From the skepticism here, it's clear Mr. Marcus has his work cut out for him. Even with far fewer people ever reporting to me (directly and indirectly) than him
by dmbaggett 14y ago
From the skepticism here, it's clear Mr. Marcus has his work cut out for him. Even with far fewer people ever reporting to me (directly and indirectly) than him, I sympathize with his inability to get the unvarnished truth from his own people. "We're routinely screwing people out of hard cash" is probably a scary message to relay up.
His email sounded sincere, and he's new to the job. I'd be inclined to give him the benefit of the doubt. He must know that the technorati hating his company is bad for business.
- rhizome 14y agoIt's not hard to make an email sound sincere, especially when vetted by a PR agency.
- lancewiggs 14y agoI suspect no PR involved here - that email is repetitive, not polished, and feels like a new CEO trying to do the right thing and light a fire.
- ivanstojic 14y agoIn this case, I'd suspect that lighting the fire should be the first step to burning most of the customer relations department. I'll trust Paypal when I feel the smell of burning corpses from their offices.
- protomyth 14y agoI would rather they fire anyone who thinks the profit they have made off interest from frozen accounts is a good thing. It is just as despicable as car companies making money off their service center. I would really like them to make a policy change that any money collected in interest off frozen accounts is given to the account holder after the freeze.
- pbreit 14y agoEarning interst has ZERO to do with account freezes. It's all about protecting funds from theft.
- protomyth 14y agoYes, I realize that is the reason it is done, but I will bet someone in PayPal has a nice spreadsheet of how much money they have earned on money that is sitting in an account without being accessible.
- pp_throwaway 14y agoI work at Paypal and can confirm this is definitely David Marcus. He really shoots from the hip with communications, internally as well as externally. (He has sent the internal version of this message to the public: "guys, we are getting our asses kicked, we need to rally and change the way we do things".) I pretty much agree with him. There is a lot of fresh blood trickling in from the top over the past year or so. Time will tell if the new leadership can empower the marginalized, scattered, and demoralized minority of good engineers at Paypal.
- chris_wot 14y agoThey have their work cut out for them indeed, but it's of there own making. They should have been looking at systemic issues when the Minecraft founder couldn't get access to his account for months, when their customer service advised someone to destroy a perfectly good violin due to "fraud", apparently mass payment doesn't exist even when it does [1], numerous reviews in magazines such as PC World [2] and Kernel Magazine [3], and an entire website devoted to how bad they are was established from pissed off customers [4]. PayPal are in big trouble. It's going to take more than platitudes to get them out of it! 1. http://christianowens.com/post/15771850658/my-recent-experience-with-paypal-customer-service http://christianowens.com/post/15771850658/my-recent-experie... 2. http://www.pcworld.com/article/101525/consumer_alert_paypals_problems.html http://www.pcworld.com/article/101525/consumer_alert_paypals... 3. http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/column/2978/paypal-still-sucks/ http://www.kernelmag.com/comment/column/2978/paypal-still-su... 4. http://www.paypalsucks.com/ http://www.paypalsucks.com/
- tobyjsullivan 14y agoIn all fairness, they have a new CEO. Maybe that is their way of looking into systematic issues...
- stcredzero 14y ago> Maybe that is their way of looking into systematic issues... If true, they are doomed! New leadership is the Hail Mary toss, not the way you solve problems.
- fragsworth 14y agoIt worked for Apple
- stcredzero 14y agoYes, that was a Hail Mary toss that worked. The question is, is the new guy of Steve Jobs caliber, or is it a shyster who can only sell himself as such? (I hope he is.) The new guy is the desperation move, not the way an organization should solve problems on a regular basis.