Yahoo Hires Scott Thompson from PayPal; Bad Idea

PayPal President Scott Thompson has been hired to lead Yahoo Inc. as its chief executive. As of Jan. 9, Thompson will take over a lead role that has been occupied by Yahoo! chief financial officer Tim Morse.

While many analysts have hailed this as great, I must scream out at what a terrible idea this is!!

Both Yahoo and PayPal are once great companies that have taken paths to lower either their financial standing or in the case of PayPal their moral standing (& likely as many merchants bail on PayPal their financial standing as well).

Here is a Yahoo, a company that still maintains a strong base with just email users alone that has allowed their email to go stagnant and constantly crash (which for business can be catastrophic).
Yahoo has not added features such as analytics, canned responses, easy to categorize labels and many of the other features that have made GMail the place to go for serious mail users (business in particular). BTW, I should note that I am no fan of Google, but when they do something right as they have here it should be acknowledged.

Also Yahoo has “missed the boat” as to social media and even though I am not a fan here either, it is very popular and it has been successful for a few as a business tool (although I and a few other business friends I know have admitted that Facebook has done little for their business when the time factor is considered). While Facebook may be a questionable business tool its popularity among everyday users is unquestioned and Yahoo has totally missed out with their lame attempt here, even Google Plus has stepped up to the plate and done a much better job.

As to PayPal, here is a company with the most easily integrated website payment systems that has developed generally excellent trust among buyers (not always though due to their poor customer service) that has followed a rather similar path to Yahoo.
While PayPal admittedly has remained profitable, I would certainly not consider their policies good for long term success.
PayPal has ignored 100s of requests for better tools (just as Yahoo has), such as blocking of countries, blocking fraudulent buyers, more shipping tiers, and most importantly better fraud protection.
Sadly PayPal has allowed many fraudulent buyers through and then when fraud is committed charges the merchant for any and all looses.
Worse PayPal will be condescending in questions about all of the above and then give advice that even PayPal will not follow, as well PayPal will override written contracts which in a court of law would not be allowed, but who has the time to take PayPal to small claims over $25?
I know personally as a PayPal merchant and while PayPal has so many positives that attracted me, however over recent years under Scott Thompson this company has shown utter contempt for integrity and honesty and simply helping their merchants be more profitable which in turn would help PayPal be more profitable.

Anyone who thinks this hand off of Yahoo to Scott Thompson is a Good idea either must not be forward thinking or believes that morality and lack of support of their merchants (that make PayPal’s business) will not someday affect their business. However I may be wrong as we do live in a world where looking the other way when corruption rears its ugly head is often the norm.

I only wished now that I had a crystal ball, as the cost to unintegrate PayPal from our website would cost in the $1000s, so admittedly while I was initially impressed with PayPal (their integration and as a buyer prior to being a merchant, their ease of use), I wish in never used PayPal in the first place and it is this fact that a “GOOD” CEO could make a difference and TRULY build on PayPal’s captive users such as me.

See also:
PayPal

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*Fissh; Aquarium Resources, Blogs

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PayPal Shipping Label Changes; new format via eBay

As of November 15, 2011, PayPal has required ALL businesses shipping via PayPal to login and out of eBay, worse ANY business with more than one employee must use the same administrative login.
This means any business MUST give out administrative passwords to all employees, thus providing critical access employees that might be new or simply not to a level of trust for such information.

In speaking with an arrogant PayPal Supervisor, I received the usual condescending Obamanite rhetoric.
Worse they informed me if we took our USPS shipping elsewhere we would not be fully covered under their already terrible and fraud ridden seller protection program.

Why PayPal made such a decision without polling their merchants has got to be one of the biggest corporate blunders I can think of.
Of coarse this is typical of eBay/PayPal to roll out changes without testing for bugs or asking their merchants for input; this of coarse has much to do with the contempt PayPal has for their merchants.

It has also been put forth by many merchants “in the know”, that the main reasons for this change is to provide the illusion of growth for the eBay sector (which has been struggling) for their stockholders; this is obviously corporate malfeasance.
As well this shifts all shipping for PayPal/eBay to one sector providing larger postal & UPS discounts for eBay, of which they only pass this along to a their select few “Top Sellers” and pocket the rest, including us poor shlubs that are only PayPal customers!!!

This said, while we already ship our larger packages via FedEx, our company is now moving all our USPS shipping to PB Smart Postage.
Although it should be noted that Stamps.com is not a very good alternative, with long hold times, poor customer service, and constant server and printing issues.

See Also:
PayPal Dishonesty; Fraud, Customer Service; Review, Positives and Negatives

Verdict: It SUCKS Sorry for the crudeness, but when one considers what an arrogant bunch PayPal/eBay are, this simply needs to be said.
If you own stock in eBay, pull it out as this company is obviously on their way out (not just due to this but in many of their business practices that often result in financial loss for merchants due to fraud).

Google, PayPal, FedEx & Other Business Articles

This post is more of a referral of what I think are articles anyone in business should read.
In the case of Google, PayPal, or Pet Mtn, these are must reads for anyone who places morals above business.

(1) Google Panda Update
This article proves that Google’s Panda update of 2011 is nothing more than a sham.
The company line is that Google is attempting to get rid of content farms (hence the nickname “Farmer Update”; however this article proves otherwise.
This article puts forth that this is basically a cover for “Content Scrapers” that plagiarize excellent original content websites then post this content on their websites for Google Adsense.
IMO, from what I have seen this may not be always the case, but certainly spammy content sites have jumped over good content web sites.

This article also has links to further Google information as well

(2) Google Apps, Enterprise, Adwords, & Wallet Review
This article reviews Google’s total lack of customer service with their extremely misguided Google Apps transition that resulted in lost accounts, lost paid site search and much more.
The canned, circular responses from India never solve any problems.

Combined with the dishonest or non responses by Google Adwords & Adsense, this article shows that Google is NOT a company small business person would want to be in a business relationship with

(3)PayPal
This article is both positive and negative; providing an opinion on PayPals excellent and simple website integration, simplicity of sales, and more.
As well the unfortunate negatives are also explored such as poor fraud protection and a technical department with absolutely no interest in whether their clients succeed or not.

(4)Tom Paterson Process for Productivity in Business
This is 100% positive business post/article dealing with Tom Paterson and his life accomplishments in business productivity.

(5)FedEx Claims, Technical Support
This article is from this website/Blog, but I though I would include it too.
This article deals with an otherwise excellent shipping company, that has absolutely no understanding of customer service or honesty when they do make a mistake and damage others property (their technical support could get some “Schooling” in customer service/respect as well).

(5) Pet Mountain; Alleged Parasite Retailer, (TruAqua section of article disabled, although comments still available)

See this article for more about a LED Aquarium Light:
Aquarium LED Lights; Poor Emitter Example