Dear Mr. Berko: I’m a financial adviser with lots of money under management, and I and two others in our office need your help. Here’s the problem, and then perhaps a personal letter from you to Oath, which is the name Verizon gave to its newly merged AOL-Yahoo organization, would help.
For two decades, we used the stock platform made available by Yahoo. It had all the data we needed to analyze thousands of companies. Yahoo’s platform was easy to use; the information was easy to understand, and the presentation was clear. We didn’t need other stock platforms, because the content was enormous. But 10 months before Verizon bought Yahoo, the platform was abruptly changed to its current format, which is disgustingly inferior to the old platform.
We wrote to Oath and its president, Tim Armstrong, twice. We offered to pay a fee for the return of the original platform and told him that dozens of other brokers we know in Miami, Tampa, Orlando, etc., would gladly pay an annual or monthly fee for the return of the old platform. And we know brokers in Cleveland, Pittsburgh and Cincinnati who would also pay to have access to the old Yahoo platform again. None of us realized how good the old Yahoo stock platform was until it was taken from us. We have tried to call Mr. Armstrong, but we’ve had no luck reaching him. Do you know him? Could you help us? We would gladly pay $1,000 a year for access to the old Yahoo stock platform.
— 3 Guys in Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Dear 3 Guys: Two more guys and you’d have a hamburger franchise.
Don’t feel bad that Timmy hasn’t responded. He doesn’t give a hoot. He won’t respond to my letters, either. I wrote to him in September because dozens of readers/investors asked me to write to Oath on their behalf. Timmy is too busy to care.
