Filed under: Car Buying , Sedan , Videos , Mazda , Canada Canadian Mazda dealer responds to overpriced car sale – Click above to watch the video after the jump Over the weekend, we brought you the story of Madeline Leonard, a Canadian woman on disability who was pressured into the sale of a 2010 Mazda6 sedan when she came in to have some work done on her 2004 model year vehicle. Not only did she drive off of the lot in a new car she didn’t really want (a demo car with around 3,700 miles, no less), she was ridiculously overcharged. The dealer sold her the car at a $45,846 CAD list price with an eight-year loan at 7.4 percent interest, bringing the grand total of the transaction to $66,000 CAD. Now, the Orangeville, Ontario Mazda dealership has responded, saying that the two employees mainly responsible for this sale have been fired
An ongoing investigation has made headlines in South Korean media over the past few days, thanks to an alarming scandal involving StarCraft . Overseas, Blizzard’s RTS is played professionally and broadcast on national television. And, like most sports leagues, the competitions have drawn a following from the illegal gambling market. The growing controversy surrounds a number of professional gamers, including some famous and top-ranked players, accused of intentionally throwing matches to exploit the illegal gambling operations.
Late last week, tech biz bloggers were shocked — and a few were cruelly happy — to read that TechCrunch founder Mike Arrington had fired 17-year-old intern, entrepreneur and Internet fameball Daniel Brusilovsky . Arrington said the teenage overachiever had accepted a computer from a company in exchange for coverage on TechCrunch. Brusilovsky also admitted, Arrington said, to asking a different startup for a MacBook Air, which led that company to complain to Arrington. Not only did Big Mike cut Brusilovsky from staff, he removed all of Daniel’s posts — I counted 70 of them in Google’s cache — and posted a candid and legally-vetted description of the events, titled “ An Apology to Our Readers .” So of course the hot topic of discussion among local journalists over the weekend was, is TechCrunch’s reputation shot now? TechCrunch isn’t a newspaper, so its staff aren’t bound by the well-established and very strict boundaries given to print news writers.
In the chronicles of Silicon Valley, it doesn’t get weirder than this. Just as the European Union finally gave its blessing to Oracle’s acquisition of Sun Microsystem’s, Oracle’s co-president found details of his 8.5-year extramarital affair splashed on billboards around the country . Oracle executive Charles Phillips acknowledged that he had the long affair with YaVaughnie Wilkins and that he began divorce proceedings with his wife, Karen Phillips, in 2008. But he says that his relationship with Wilkins has ended and “we both wish each other well.” Wilkins apparently didn’t take the ending of the relationship very well, and reports suggest that Phillips was trying to make amends with his wife as the billboards featuring Phillips and Wilkins together began to appear. The business question here is whether or not this scandal could impair Phillips ability to do his job.
Here’s the latest from VentureBeat’s Entrepreneur Corner: There’s no medal for first to market – While there’s a sense of pride in introducing a new category, there’s rarely a competitive advantage. Serial entrepreneur Scott Olson runs down the threats that come with being first – and the advantages latecomers have that can put them in a leadership position. Three ways to prevent executive fraud – Amid the scandal at Canopy Financial, there has been a lot of discussion about fraud in the executive suite. Jeff Bussgang, general partner at Flybridge Capital Partners, is surprised there hasn’t been more, and offers three easy ways to put safeguards in place to ensure it doesn’t happen at more firms. Keeping hackers away from your customers’ data – If you think your startup is too small to attract the attention of hackers, think again.
