Expansioncomics = rip off

[Xtrem]

VincentJ, I'm no belittling anyone. When we are talking about business, I couldn't care less if my client/provider is a douchebag or the nicest person on Earth : money has no flavor, you learn that from life after some time. Also the reason why I don't insult the staff : bad publicity is the worst blow they'll get from me, and it's what has taken down many shops, even before Internet.

No proxy. Never. I always use direct access. And it always worked for my former memberships.

It's sad, but problem was way before Xmas. Maybe I shouldn't have been nice and gone straight to the forums. I believed they would read their mails... I'll remember it isn't a safe mean.

Like I said, VincentJ, I couldn't care less if they have a primary job : the second you accept to have several jobs, you accept the responsibilities. Meaning you must do BOTH of them with equal quality. One of the reasons I often vent against some artists who get a lot of commissions without taking their normal life into account.

-->News : CCBill took action, like last time. Account was reactivated.

Seriously, it isn't acceptable problems are only solved when you get in touch with the money transfer system.

[Hugo Prosperio]

Not going to lie, suing a fetish website for 20 bucks is the goddamn silliest thing I've ever heard.

[fredzor]

Originally Posted by VincentJ

You know, I've been a mod over at the Expansion Mansion forums for several years now. People don't get banned for asking about the Expansion Comics/BDSM Expansion Comics. The only time I've seen people get time out banned over posting a complaint about one of the sister sites is when they can't be bothered to be civil about it. You may not have access to the members area- it's understandable that you may be annoyed, there's no need to vent on other people unrelated to it. The EM staff (with the exception of a few admins) have nothing to do with the sister sites so people creating posts that are essentially flamebait that insult staff will be dealt with as such. However, the poster's issue has always been dealt with- regardless of their conduct on the EM forum.

And why would someone get banned for that? It's well known the core people behind EM are also the core people behind said website(s). Complaints aren't brought to the forum for fun or to incite flame wars. Complaints are brought to the forum because the people who run said website do not answer their e-mails. They have made that forum the only point of recourse for people with issues. I've seen people banned from EM for being civil.

It's absurd that they put more effort into keeping people quiet and enforcing DNPs than they do running their own websites.

About the website itself, though. Paying 20 bucks for 2 days worth of member's access and then the site goes down? Tough luck. It's only 20 bucks. Does that suck? Yeah. Is it worth more of your time? Probably not.

In addition, I had a subscription with the actual EM itself through paywide. I lost my membership info and sent 2 emails to which I received no response. Did I post on the EM forums and complain? Nope, not worth the hassle, and why get banned?

Just cancel your subscription, and don't subscribe to any of those sites again, pretty much all you can do.

[DiablosMX]

I don't know. I've been a loyal customer (off and on, for my own financial reasons) for years. I had an access issue once with another site owned by the same people, and it was an issue on CCBill's end. They (CCBill) fixed it right away once I contacted them. My issue happened in like..April that year, so we didn't have the holidays holding people up, too, when I got my e-mail response.

It sounds like that's all that happened, was CCBill had a glitch. It's not happened since, and this was like..5 or 6 years ago.

[SeekerSean]

Originally Posted by darthspielberg

Not going to lie, suing a fetish website for 20 bucks is the goddamn silliest thing I've ever heard.

Okay, I wasn't going to come right out and say it, but yeah that's essentially what I've been getting at with my posts.

Sean

[VincentJ]

Originally Posted by Xtrem

VincentJ, I'm no belittling anyone. When we are talking about business, I couldn't care less if my client/provider is a douchebag or the nicest person on Earth : money has no flavor, you learn that from life after some time. Also the reason why I don't insult the staff : bad publicity is the worst blow they'll get from me, and it's what has taken down many shops, even before Internet.

No proxy. Never. I always use direct access. And it always worked for my former memberships.

It's sad, but problem was way before Xmas. Maybe I shouldn't have been nice and gone straight to the forums. I believed they would read their mails... I'll remember it isn't a safe mean.

Like I said, VincentJ, I couldn't care less if they have a primary job : the second you accept to have several jobs, you accept the responsibilities. Meaning you must do BOTH of them with equal quality. One of the reasons I often vent against some artists who get a lot of commissions without taking their normal life into account.

-->News : CCBill took action, like last time. Account was reactivated.

Seriously, it isn't acceptable problems are only solved when you get in touch with the money transfer system.

Yes, there is some staff that overlap between all the sister sites. However, they're some of the admins- not all of the staff.

The third rule of the EM forums-
"3.) No Baiting:
Insults, personal attacks, racism, baiting, etc... will not be tolerated. If a thread escalates into a "flame war" it will be edited to remove the offending posts and/or closed. If you have a problem with another member, private message a moderator or administrator or use the "Report to moderator" link that is located in the lower right corner of each post."

You'd be surprised at how rude some people can be. You can post an issue without being rude about it. The same way that you can go into a shop and make a complaint without throwing a temper tantrum or being hostile/rude to the staff.

Here's a link to your post over at EM forums.
http://expansionmansion.com/board/in...ew__getnewpost

For instance, you inferred that the staff at EC are thieves that stole from you. That was uncalled for, unnecessary to your issue and wildly inaccurate. I'm letting it slide though. Some people have made highly abusive complaint posts that personally assault staff, including some death threats- if people did that in real life, they'd get told to come back later when they've calmed down, or get security/police to toss them if they continue to be harass staff with death threats. The temp bans are handed out to force members to cool down. The perma bans are for ones that don't. Why should we tolerate that on the forum? In either case, their complaint is still dealt with.

I can guarantee you that every single person that was banned over there had a good reason behind it. We've a public list of banned members, along with the reason they got banned and their ban duration (a temp ban or permaban, depending on their infraction/repeat offender). Check out the list- any member you thought was "civil" that got permabanned was definitely someone caught circumventing an existing ban or had two accounts, one for lurking and one for causing trouble under. We don't ban randomly for no reason. We never have, and never will. As for "keeping people quiet", that's never happened. Hell, there's a forum board dedicated to helping people with problems with their account with posts dating back from 2006. We've several volunteer mods that actively stop people from breaking rules- the only people kept quiet are the ones that break them, especially Rule 3 which I've quoted above.

Since CCBill were able to restore your access, it does sound like the problem was at CCBill's end, not at the site. If it wasn't, CCBill would simply have tossed your complaint and directed you to take it up with EC's support. Either way, I'm glad you got sorted in the end.

Fredzor, why didn't you post on the forum? All you have to do is post that you've an issue and await a response. Once again, the only people that get banned are ones that can't post in a civil manner.

[fredzor]

Originally Posted by VincentJ

Fredzor, why didn't you post on the forum? All you have to do is post that you've an issue and await a response. Once again, the only people that get banned are ones that can't post in a civil manner.

Occasionally there is content there and I didn't want to go through the trouble of circumventing a ban. You're telling me no one has ever been banned before for just asking for help with one of those sites? I've seen it happen with the ban reason being "This is the forum for the EM, not that site, etc.". I get the fact that you're saying no, that's not the case, everyone has been banned for breaking a rule or acting like an asshole. I'm saying that's not my experience. I recall it happening twice back in 2009 or so, but I don't remember any names, perhaps the threads I could locate.

I was a member of all the sites at one point or another. There just isn't enough content to warrant a current membership. When I lost my info and didn't get a response it just made sense to cancel and not waste any more time.

[VincentJ]

Originally Posted by fredzor

You're telling me no one has ever been banned before for just asking for help with one of those sites? I've seen it happen with the ban reason being "This is the forum for the EM, not that site, etc.". I get the fact that you're saying no, that's not the case, everyone has been banned for breaking a rule or acting like an asshole. I'm saying that's not my experience. I recall it happening twice back in 2009 or so, but I don't remember any names, perhaps the threads I could locate.

Some people may have had temp bans, but for simply requesting help we'd never ban. Redirect, yes. Temp bans are always the first action too if someone is hotheaded when posting about a complaint- they were given between 3 days and two week timeouts depending on how offensive they decided to be. Nowadays with the newer forum software we usually just stick them into read-only mode for a few days, saving the temp bans for when people don't learn after read-only mode and the perma bans for when they REALLY don't learn. Even at that, their issues were always redirected and to the best of my knowledge were resolved.

The only accounts that were banned without infractions were for users that were under 18 (based on the DOB they used when registering or profile info from another source such as deviantArt) due to advice given by a law firm- but they were also told that their accounts would be automatically reactivated on their 18th birthday.

On the story of redirecting, back in the day the video sites had their own separate forums which were basically their dedicated support boards and more closely monitored by the admins who could address any issues. While those were active, EM mods would always redirect people there. We started a policy of locking those threads since a few people felt obligated to complain that they'd got to repost their issue and that we (the mods who don't have any control over anything outside of the EM forums) weren't helping them (in spite of informing them where they could receive help). There were a few bans issued over that before we started locking the threads- once again, some people were unable to voice their issues in a civil manner and were quite hostile towards the mods (who are volunteers). The dedicated video forums got closed due to hackers causing damage on the server through them. It's also why there's no dedicated forums for either of the comic sites- after the hassle with the video forums it was decided not to implement ones to avoid a repeat scenario.

[fredzor]

Well, I appreciate the time you put into addressing this. It seems to me that it lies to admins like you to do all the work and pick up all the slack left by the people in charge of these sites. I hope you are getting paid.

[VincentJ]

Originally Posted by fredzor

Well, I appreciate the time you put into addressing this. It seems to me that it lies to admins like you to do all the work and pick up all the slack left by the people in charge of these sites. I hope you are getting paid.

I'm not an admin, I'm a mod. I'm not doing all the work- there's a decent group of mods over at EM that help keep the community a nice place to visit. The people that run EM and the sister sites are all hard working. I've seen a lot of the behind the scenes work and what they do to keep everything running- they work their asses off. During the hacker attack I mentioned above, I know that the admins were working for 12 hours straight fixing the mess... right after they came home from their day jobs. I don't envy them.

[Xtrem]

The good thing about your intervention, VincentJ, is that you are putting back some faith in EM.

Lots of people are unhappy of EM, and I know about it from the mouth of the artists who left EM, not the customers. At least, you show us a "human side" about it.

I still consider that both CCBill and Expansioncomics staff are at fault here. Since no offers are made, I hope I'll at least get apologies. It's the least you do for a customer.

[HiKewne]

See, I would put this off as a someone being butthurt...

But this kind of thing happens all the time with EM. They give no support on their issues, they just take, take, take. It's about time someone throws something back...