Rough Week

I know some of the folks who read my journal have memberships in GothicSluts.com and/or BarelyEvil.com. The short story is that one of the main banks which dealt with credit card sales for membership sites just decided not to transfer the pay people like me had earned to their accounts as agreed and they stopped payment on all outstanding checks. They may or may not pay what they owe now and for the next few weeks in October. This has had an impact on thousands of sites and basically, with no warning, thousands of people lost two months pay in an already bad economy. Our sites already have lots of hot updates scheduled and we will pull through and things may even be improved in the long run. But, put this on top of the publisher who owed us a check on July 15 and didn’t pay, and it may put a damper on my birthday August 19.

If you have a current paid membership in GothicSluts.com and/or BarelyEvil.com, you will receive a personal announcement about this shortly, but your membership will continue uninterrupted, although your subscription will run out instead of rebilling. If you receive any correspondance about this from the bank, it would be helpful if you could forward it to info@gothicsluts.com Whether or not we ever see a thin dime of what you paid, you will receive what you paid for and we will eat the costs. Some cool folks, outraged on our behalf, have offered to dispute the charges. I appreciate the loyalty, but doing that can put you on blacklists which can prevent you from ever buying anything online again, no matter that you are totally in the right. So, thanks, but don’t do that.

If you have repeatedly tried to buy a paid membership in GothicSluts.com and/or BarelyEvil.com and been unable to, this black cloud may have a sort of silver lining for you: If our previous banking people kept rejecting your MasterCard, JCB, or Discover card, then you might try to sign up again now, as the new banking people may have different criteria.

If you are a model or photographer or press person or rock star with a complimentary membership in GothicSluts.com and/or BarelyEvil.com, your username will most likely expire in the next thirty days. If I was going to set up a new comp membership this week, I will not be able to do that now. I hope to address this by September and most comps should be active until just a few days before then.

If you are my friend, now would be a great time to say something sympathetic.

;-p