I just got banned from Investors Village within a few hours of posting the following post. The title: "Since This is "Where Serious Investors Connect." Text follows:



let's have some serious discussion of this Sam Antar blog post:



Overstock.com's $1,250,000 contract termination payment to former Board member James Joyce is over five times the sum of $225,000 in consulting services "authorized to be paid to Mr. Joyce for services rendered to the Company during 2007." The company has not disclosed additional amounts in consulting services paid to Mr. Joyce in 2008 or 2009 to-date, aside from the termination fee.

See Overstock.com 8-K SEC filing dated January 14, 2008 below:

On January 14, 2008 the Board of Directors of Overstock.com, Inc. (the “Company”) appointed James V. Joyce to the Board of Directors. Mr. Joyce has served as a consultant to the Company since September 2005. The aggregate amount the Company has paid to Mr. Joyce since January 1, 2007 is $615,000 (including $225,000 authorized to be paid to Mr. Joyce for services rendered to the Company during 2007). The Company has previously granted Mr. Joyce options to acquire 40,000 shares of the Company’s common stock at a weighted average exercise price of $30.38 per share. In connection with the restricted stock unit grants described below, on January 14, 2008 the Company also granted Mr. Joyce restricted stock units to acquire 15,000 shares of the Company’s common stock under the Company’s 2005 Equity Incentive Plan and entered into or will enter into a Restricted Stock Unit Grant Notice and Restricted Stock Agreement with Mr. Joyce in substantially the form filed herewith as Exhibit 10.1. A copy of the press release issued by the Company on January 14, 2008 is attached hereto as Exhibit 99.1 and is incorporated by reference.

A shrewd person posting on the Yahoo message board noted:

And another thing - why does a retailer that's been in business a decade need "management" consulting services (rhetorical question, I know the answer)? What aspect of "management" was Mr. Joyce consulting on? How many FTE's were consulting under Joyce's banner that would require a contractual payout of a whopping 1.25 million? How many man hours does that payout represent?

Let's see, the avg cost of a non top-tier name "management consultant" has gotta be billed at around $150/hr or so these days.

Sooooooo, that's a payoff of over 8,000 man hours.

Ok hec, let's say Joyce was worth every penny of $500/hr - that's a payout of 2,500 man hours. Under most standard per-diem consulting contracts, the contracting company only has to provide 2-weeks termination warning or forfeit 2 weeks of billings. Let's see...80 hours of billable hours at the fantastic rate of $500/hr = $40,000.

Ok longs - speak up - is THIS the kind of shareholder equity stewardship you are expecting from Patrick Byrne?

Stinky, stinky

Why has Overstock.com paid James Joyce such a huge sum to terminate his consulting agreement?

Let's have a discussion of this on the merits, please, us being serious investors etc. I mean, we can continue to discuss Merrill bonuses and other things irrelevant to Overstock, or we can discuss things that actually have to do with this company. What will it be?

(end post)

I was immediately flamed by blackpartp08, I responded politely. Both this original post and my response were deleted, but not blackpartp08's attack. I have screen captures of everything as I anticipated this.