| Originally Posted by FailingEnterpriseAdmin Well, I'm pretty sure they're losing money over it. Here's what I'm thinking:
1. Direct monitoring costs, including that $100/hour paralegal who has to read everything and forward posts to the various groups or the attorneys for possible action. This also includes the phone calls from managers to lawyers, saying "Shut it down!", and the lawyers replying "We don't know how!".
2. Diverted customers, who search for them on the Internet and find us and come have a look. You could call this "look, don't book" activity.
3. Diverted recruits. Fresh college graduates know to trust their peers and aren't going to make it through three interviews without checking on the Internet. Those candidacies end quickly.
4. The costs of having their internal secrets spilled to competitors, like HLE.
5. Increased turnover, as current employees realize they've been lied to something serious.
6. The costs incurred in the relationships with insurance companies once they read all that's going on. The server logs show the insurance companies are very active visitors on the board.
7. The outright daily distraction of having Failing Enterprise pounding on them and shaming them in public.
8. The morale costs of having to try to suppress employees coming here to read the truth.
9. The reputational costs of having us telling the truth here.
10. The lost productivity of having employees talking about the site.
These costs are real, are large, and are growing. However, since they are distributed and hard to quantify, and don't appear as a single line item, and especially not on anyone's commission check, it's easy for everyone responsible to pretend these costs are zero. Why rock the boat when you've got a monster mortgage on a McMansion eating you alive every month?
Oh, and they're making money, so, as they say to placate themselves, they
"must be doing something right!!".
Again, it's hard to quantify these costs, but given their $8.2 B annual revenue, it's easy see how they might be in the $1 million - $10 million / month range.
My only goal for Failing Enterprise is to persuade them to stop ripping off their customers and return to their founding values. I wish it hadn't come as far as it has, but they're bound and determined to pretend they don't hear us, and these costs are still small in comparison to the estimated $1 B per year in extra profits their unethical practices bring.
We need to continue to grow Failing Enterprise (it doubles every five months already). Perhaps if we were ten times larger, that internal spreadsheet they're running on how much it's costing them to ignore us might tip to a different conclusion.
We had 111,000 web visits last month, a new record, so we're right on track. |
2006-03-01 
Re: Excuses Why Enterprise Can Continue To Justify Ignoring Failing Enterprise 
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