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- From: Kyle Giarratano
- Sent: Monday, March 03, 2014 5:48 PM
- To:
- Subject: A resignation from web.com
- To Whom it May Concern,
- The following is my resignation letter from Web.com. I felt compelled to write it because of the changes
- that I have seen take place here over the last year and a half and because I believe I have the right to express my opinions.
- first I want to say that I used to love this company and I used to have great pride when I came to work.
- That all changed when the company decided that it values stock share price over everything else including our
- customers, our company's reputation, and the happiness and success of our employees.
- It all started 16 months ago when I came back from honeymoon to learn that the inbound call Queues had been
- changed specifically to route sales calls away from the night shift and to either Canada or the sales team.
- Okay I said to myself, not happy about it but there must've been a valid reason for it. Overnight my paychecks
- declined by almost 30 percent through no fault of my own. I was still just as good a salesman, but the opportunities
- I now had access to were a far cry from the old ones and I had to work twice as hard just for the luxury of making 30 percent less.
- All was quiet for a few months until they announced they were changing our health insurance plan, and I like many employees here
- was very worried about what was going to happen. But I was put at ease by an email from our great CEO David Brown who said
- TO ALL EMPLOYEES not to worry because web.com had worked EXTRA hard to ensure that they avoided a double digit increase in health
- insurance premiums company wide. So of course imagine my surprise when the new plan numbers are revealed and my health insurance
- goes up by 44 percent. Which if you do the math IS a bit more then "avoiding the double digit increase other companies are facing".
- So I sent an email to HR to clarify, and I got a blithe, empty response back that basically said "Oh that was for the company as a
- whole we didn't mean it for individuals sorry for the misunderstanding" if that were the case why have the CEO tout it in an email
- as a statistic we should all be proud of. It seems to me the only logical answer was they were trying to put us at ease over the new costs
- using what I found to be tantamount to a lie. So now I’ve got to work a job that pays me 30 percent less AND takes out 44 percent MORE
- in health costs then they had in the past. Okay I said to myself its tough but the potential to earn is still there, you are good at it,
- and really unless you are moving to a different state what other choices do you have?
- Of course we all now that it didn't end there, to bring our stock price up further they had to get facilities costs down. In order to do that
- they had to cut anything they could get away with. So there goes our forks, spoons, knives, there goes our paper plates and of course this week
- they took away our discounted soft drinks and OUR MEDICINE CABINETS. Great so now when someone is screaming in my ear for twenty minutes,
- over some shady thing web.com did to them I can't even get some ibuprofen to take the edge off! At this point I said to myself "that's it
- I'm not putting up with this anymore one more ridiculous thing they do that makes our jobs harder or makes it so we take home less money every two weeks
- and I am done.
- Of course we already know what happens here. The new sales plan, the elimination of daily pay outs and of a fairly attainable bonus multiplier.
- replaced with 3 different hoops to jump through AND still having to hit 80 percent to get anything. I won’t go over the specifics here as we are all
- aware of what the real end game is. It doesn't take a genius to say that under the new plan they will be able to use all the different requirements
- to reduce the overall amount of payroll, which will make things harder for us and will help their stock price. If you don't think so remember this,
- under the current plan we have a daily AND period goal and all we have to hit is AHT and Quality to maximize our payout. Under the new plan, we have
- to hit sales goal, and quality goal, sell a difm, sell a my time, kill SA, AHT, AND First call resolution (which we can’t control!) all to get a capped payout
- that has no daily goal benefits.
- So now we've finally reached the point where I can't do it anymore. I can't in good conscience continue to work for a company that exploits its
- customers and its employees all for the betterment of stock price. I've seen this before in a publicly traded company. I'd advise everyone
- to look for a new job now because this isn't the end of the changes it's merely the beginning. Don't be the one left holding the bag.
- As an added bonus below I have listed every borderline unethical/shady/illegal thing I have ever caught web.com engaging in, that way if anyone
- else here is having a crisis of conscience maybe this letter will help them make the decision that’s best for them and their family.
- 1.Selling web forwarding with premium dns in a monthly bundle cost when premium dns includes 301 and 302 redirects.
- 2.Customers once again can't disable auto renew within their own accounts.
- 3.We charge credit cards that have been expired for YEARS with unwanted auto renew.
- 4.We send a mass email to update their mailbox passwords that actually enrolls them into a monthly charge that’s free for one month so they don't notice.
- 5.We charge 299 for a domain redemption the registry charges 70.
- 6.We back order our customers own domains and resell them back to them for 125 or we callously sell them on the open domain market for thousands.
- 7.Made up domain reinstatement fees of 25.99 on top of 37.99 domain renewals well above the industry standard of 12.99.
- 8.Safelock being opt OUT before it was OPT in originally (only took multiple news stories and bad press to change it)
- 9.Tons of monthly reoccurring charges designed to be small to avoid detection and churn to drive monthly rev for stock price.
- 10..50 cent domains that morph into 34.99 AFTER the customer pays.
- 11.Account banners for ads designed to look like important action items which trick customers to sign up for deceptive reoccurring services.
- 12.Giving our customers a "free" .biz domain which instantly exposed their contact information without proactively giving them Private Reg.
- 13.Auto Grouping Value Added Services for renewal even when YOU SPECIFICALLY remove those services or uncheck them before renewing.
- 14.Turning on auto renew via an opt OUT link in an email instead of a via an opt IN and then charging the card 3 months before expiration.
- 15.No consistent auto renew rate. I’ve seen 37.99, 19.99, 15.99 and 24.99.
- 16.Top down selling and pricing designed to get the customer to spend the most they are willing to spend. "Won't pay 30 for a name how bout 15, no how bout 10?"
- 17.Manipulating our stock price using the NOGAAP accounting (which is where the monthly costs come in, book a ton of rev but hide the churn boom stock manipulation)
- 18.Renewal notices sent years in advance to trick customers into piling on years or adding services.
- 19.Not sending out ANY renewal notices and the customer having to pay reinstatement fees after their site goes down which is usually how they find out its expired.
- 20.Customer changes ADNS and is enrolled in site lock basic free or private registration free for one month and then charging every month after that.
- 21.Addign .biz and free web forwarding to a cx account for one year hoping cx will blindly pay for it next year.
- 22.After resetting a mailbox password they were force to reset, you can't decline the "free" email upgrade either you accept it and get charged next month
- or you have to x out the whole window.
- Thanks for reading I hope some of this was informative to some of you.
- Regards,
- Kyle Giarratano
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