Important News March 15 2008

A Message from Stormbringer

Over the past few weeks you have likely noticed that quite a lot of our writers suddenly lost the ability to take credit card payments. Probably you wondered why and what was happening. Well up until now I've been rather slow to keep all of our community here informed, mainly because the situation was uncertain until the last few days.

What happened is easy enough. As a result of an extremely biased campaign being run by a British newspaper read by the chattering-classes, pressure was put onto the two credit card companies to stop doing business with a couple of payment processors who handled credit card billing for some fantasy necro sites. It's not something that was aimed at us specifically but, as has happened a number of times over the past few years, we got caught up peripherally in the attempts of middle-class morality-mongers to make the world safe for 'decent' folk everywhere. Instead of contenting themselves with knitting respectable coverings for the obscenely-naked legs of chairs and tables, these people invaded the Internet a couple of years back and somehow learned how to access porn and write e-mails.

Anyway, setting aside indignation and futile attacks against those intolerant groups with too many prejudices and too much spare time, we got caught up in the backlash, as I said. The card processor we used for about half of our sites stopped doing business completely as a result of that action, so we lost the ability to take new memberships, or renew existing ones, for those sites. That processing company was Webstream.

I should stress immediately that sites you may have joined via Verotel, or sites you are contemplating joining via Verotel, are not involved in this at all. They continue to remain safe and solid.

So what does this mean to you, and what is happening now? Those are the questions I wanted to be able to answer definitely before writing this piece.

• Firstly, as I said, if you make any transactions with Verotel (lexxx on your card statements) you will find life continues as normal, with uninterrupted access to those sites for which you have a subscription.
• If you joined any site via Webstream (websteam or securenet on your card statements) you should not have seen any renewal charges for subscriptions since about February 10th.
• For weeks, neither the SBE admin, nor the writers have seen one penny of the money you paid to Webstream. We could have blown you off, blocked your access and told you to apply to Webstream or your card company for a refund, but that's not how we work here. We look after those members of our community who support our writers by subscribing to their paysites. So we have kept that access open to you for about five or six weeks while we were not getting paid. Everyone who took out a one month subscription or paid for a one month renewal via Webstream should have had more than just 30 days. Instead of turning on our supporters, we gave more, not less.
• Meanwhile we have been working hard to enable writers and their fans to re-establish the relationship to which they should be entitled as supposedly rational adults. Affected writers have all now made the move to Verotel and are able to take credit card payments with that company.
• So, if you made a subscription or a renewal via Webstream, we have honored the spirit of our commitment to you and made sure you got at least what you paid for in good faith. Just as we always will. But having done that, we now need to expire those passwords. Over the next couple of days, any sites to which you paid a subscription via Webstream in early February or before, will no longer be accessible to you with your old password.
• To regain access to any site paid via Webstream (not Verotel), you will need to join up new again. I realize this is a nuisance for you but I'm sure you will want to continue to show faith with those writers who showed faith with you, even while they were not receiving the money you intended for them to receive.
• Important: If you paid for a longer access, three or six months, please contact Customer Service so we can arrange an extension for you.

So basically, if you paid any money via Verotel, you are unaffected. If you paid any money via Webstream, we didn't get it but we've shown our dedication to this community by giving you more than what you purchased. And when you pay for subscriptions in the future, you can rely on us to keep showing that same commitment to you.

Stormbringer