Saw your recent posts in the forums… was not aware you were employed by the “Evil Greedy Overlord.”

I think I remember Sal’s bestfriend’s wife when I did work for him, and was ultimately screwed out of $500. Seems to me the whole group has issues – the mosts by datazen and maestro are obvious examples. I had a Skype conversation between David, Sal and his “billing rep” a few years ago regarding the money they owed me. That billing rep was nasty to say the least. She did more of the talking which made me wonder who was actually in charge then.

What is unfortunate about the whole situation is all of the end users who have no idea what to do now. Most don’t have coding abilities. Using such a buggy application without the ability to fix the bugs or any security issues leaves most having to find another cart.

Good luck with the lawsuit… I would be interested to know how it turns out. I hope you put out a press release if it ends up in your favor!

I am going forward with a defamation of character lawsuit.

I could not run an entire division when Sal’s best friend is the support manager with no managerial experience, no drive to accomplish the goals I set out for him. Sal’s bestfriend’s wife is the billing representative with a sharp tongue and power thirst for supreme power and relented at almost any task I gave her. A part time Linux Administrator who was under paid that I could not count on to “create” and “organize” an entire IT department. The requirement to hire a low paid sales person and depend upon to also “create” and “organize” an entire Sales department. All of this and still be a direct line phone support member taking anywhere from 30-50 calls per day, answer support tickets, motivate all departments and keep them busy, backup the software support team on $40k/year salary with no formal linux administration experience or training/certificaton.

I spent $2,500 of my own money to go to a tech school to learn and become certified with basic linux administration, help desk, phone etiquett, ecommerce concepts. I worked countless weekends and late nights.

It truely is a circus tent to work for Sal Iozzia. When I expressed strong opinions that unpatched applications be required to fix/patch security vulnerabilities that allowed the entire shared server to be compromised, DENIED! Sal’s answer to the solution was they should clump all of the old unsecure carts together on one shared server which to this very day, ALL shared hosting servers are VERY vulnerable.

The Federal Trade Commission requires all companies to report breach of security where sensative information is stolen to the public and FTC. Of which, Sal will never report. Because of the level of credit card exchanges going back and fourth, I am almost certain they are required to meet a PCI-DSS Level and HOLD a certification from the Payment Card Industry Organization or face fines from Visa/MC, Discover, AMEX.

There are other reasons I suspect my employment was terminated along with 5 other individuals. HIPAA law was violated when the CEO directed all salary employees to snail mail a medical history form similar to ones used by an insurance agency to Sal’s best friend’s wife, Sabrina Hogan. To her house mind you! And, this was only to determine the cost/feasability to partially pay for employee health benefits. Several did send, but I flat out refused stating my rights to privacy under HIPAA law. Upper management was annoyed, but eventually sent out a fax number to the insurance agency.

They claim the insurance agent told them to gather all the forms, first and then fax them all together. I have medical B rating issues but costly pre-existing medical problems. My employment ended without notice soon, thereafter. Out of the five, I was the only one to recieve one full month severance pay because of my work ethic and dedication.

CRELance’s beginnings were shadey. Escrow account payments were bundled with general operations funds to pay for payroll and expendatures. Every day, while I was asked to head up and manage the buggy software we had in the beginning, Sal would have to tell me if it was OK to release funds sometimes two and three months behind. There were many occasions that staff was asked to accept late or partial payroll while Sal himself with his wife both deposited around $5k for a total of $11k per month.

This is the leader. Do not have a dissenting opinion. You will be targeted and discredited.

As I mentioned in my blog recently, Sal [and CRE] should not have charged anything for the application. What he should have done was to provide Value-added Services [support/maintenance contracts, custom plugins, templates, etc]. Instead, he wanted his cake and needed to eat every last crumb. A gluten he is… a business man he is not.

I may not be a Golden Coder but I am able to work comfortably with the code. Apparently enough that Sal hired me, and then screwed me out of $500. Being the inconsequential person that he is, he had the nerve to then publicly ask me in the forum to support him and CRE. Obviously, knowing what he was capable of, not to mention that he was about to start charging for an open source application, I could not bend over for him and taunted him to ban me.

Laura, what is dreadfully wrong is that Sal Iozzia is still running CRE, still hiring boobs and still screwing people out of their hard earned $$. Nothing will change, no matter what he does, no matter who his “CEO” is, no matter how much venture capital he obtains. CRE is drift wood that is being battered along the shores of time… and time is something Sal and CRE are out of.

Best regards and just wanted to post an update,

-Jody aka discounttools

I am hopeful that the project can be rescued… More than that, revitalized and turned into something that comes near to realizing the potential many of us have always felt was there.

I feel it is precipitous, and perhaps not my place, to say more than that at this time.