Daytrading? Not last time I checked. Playing poker? Ha, people think I still play poker?

Yep standard outcome. You are out of touch for weeks, not doing the job you were paid for with sparse excuses for your lack of work. The guy raises a fuss on a discussion board that you are a moderator of and conveniently have been participating on for the duration of the whole fiasco. Not to mention you accept a currenct for your services that you say neither you nor the other party knew the actual value of.This is how all legitimate businesses operate right?

This happens all the time. Just this last weekend I returned something to Walmart that I had purchased with a credit card. They asked me whether I wanted cash or it put back on my card. I only had a few dollars on me, so I took the cash. Money is money to legitimate companies. They have the money from the credit card company. It's in their account, so it doesn't make any difference to them if they give you cash or simply put it back on the card. $1 = $1.

O/U % chance that people get money back? after this post I'll take 2:1 in favor that less than 50% is paid back in the next 6 months

Bro we arent on his level. We won't get it. It's to lofty for our understanding.

This is what you said in your initial post responding to the situation, making it clear that you thought you should only have to refund him if/when FT ever gets unfrozen (emphasis is mine):

You can't say that you were going to refund him all along when your first post on the issue made it clear that you didn't plan to until FT came back. You say stuff like "I was always going to give him a refund" like we can't look through your post history and see that you yourself stated that you weren't.

in a scalable way?

wat

art - ive actually always liked your posts and thought you were a good mod, plus dont think that you really intentionally would scam anyone, so here is my advice from a pretty neutral perspective:

your argument about ftp $ that you chose to accept as real payment is pure insanity and the damage it could do to your reputation if you intend to continue to do business in the poker community will imo far surpass the $800 its about (in fact even the posts you have made so far on the topic have likely done irreparable harm). you implicitly stated you were happy to call it real currency the second you said you would offer that as a payment method. just my 2 cents.

Yeah, that's some socrates level depth there.

Uhhh, paying back money after multiple threads have been created about you and when you've lost your mod status is quite different. Did you not read the parts about how people were blown off repeatedly when asking for refunds? How they were ignored while he continued posting away on 2p2, his blog, and twitter? Of course someone is going to pay up at that point when they feel that salvaging a reputation has more value than continuing to stubbornly blow people off.

Also, as others mentioned, the very thing that he accused WSP of is what he did. WSP didn't outright "scam" anyone. He provided services which were very vanilla and also had "happy customers" too, remember? He was re-packaging basic info supposedly and giving it back to people in a different form. So in that sense, he didn't scam either. As far as the difference between him not following through on refunds, if he were a mod with 19,000 posts and wanting to maintain his platform for starting self-promotional threads for every business idea he had, I'm sure he would have too.

Lol @ this, every time I return something it goes back to the method paid. If they return it you via cash what is to stop you from credit card payment??? Just puts added risk on the company. Will Wallmart do it? That I do not know, wouldnt personally shop @ WallyWorlld - however what I do know is that most wont, especially those smaller companies with more to lose.

someone is paying this guy for resume help? jesus.

None of these business's were about the money.

There's a certain seriousness to the business that I never had, that I should of.

So you think it would be OK to refuse refunds to a customer who used a bank transfer because the bank failed or the company bank account got hacked into? I understand why companies make you take the refund way you got it, but in the event that isn't possible, I'm sure an ethical company would figure out a way to get you your money, especially in a situation where there isn't a chance of reversed charges or anything along those lines.

wow, what an epic meltdown. It's like he's angling for anything to grasp, any way to justify his current situation, that he was responsible for creating.

Do I have this right, your money on FTP, but not your account on FTP. That could be considered fraudulent activity. Of course that's if this latest story is to be believed.

And if poker is not what you do anymore, why dick around with a poker site for money exchange, again a fraudulent activity. Whole lotta fraud going on here it appears.

This.

LOL at thinking he somehow carries the risk for you until you have time to verify your account and make a withdraw. Totally your fault, not his.

This seems to have been your only direct expense so I'm curious what you spent here. Also how many hours were spent for each client at each package level.

As for the rest of the thread, this could have been real simple - Lead with strong apology. Provide basic info on personal issue to mitigate offense. Alert everyone to the fact youve closed the business. Offer to make everyone whole in a method of their choosing. Don't post again and wait a week for it to stop being fun to bash you.

Instead youve sent a ton of mixed signals even though anyone with basic analytical abilities knows exactly what you did.

The company doesn't really care, but the credit card company does. If people were allowed to buy on plastic, then return for cash, the collateral is no longer there. In essence its a cash advance without the fees. Its a specific violation of the merchant agreement.

I met Colin a few times and he's a decent guy, but like many people in the BsAs community I think he hits the booze too often (go to 'Sugar' in Palermo if you want to settle this mano-a-mano... I bet he'll be there). I'd assume he fell behind the poker curve and used alcohol as a way of forgetting his lack of purpose. Ironically enough, that was probably the motivation behind creating this business as well.

My suggestion: go back to your homeland, clean yourself up, get a normal job. The economy is good there and you could probably nail an interview... even with your resume gap.

and im sure there would be an army of airline miles/reward points whores if you could do that

The only way to fix this is to actually refund the money. The rationalizations and excuses just make it worse. I wouldn't post anything else until I had refunded the money. Any other post will just be ridiculed and lampooned.

This is true. I handled this poorly. The fact that I had to emphasise repeatedly that I intend to fix this through a refund, and this was never in doubt, is a sign of this.

I guess I feel terrible at how I'm being called out as a scammer, when I intend to give everyone who requested in, no question asked refunds. I just don't see how that can be considered a scam, just business services not rendered to the satisfaction of the clients, resulting in a refund. Both of these clients were outside the businesses core market, which isn't a coincidence and something to think about. I shouldn't be surprised at the reaction, but reasonable people will see the context.

To this date, there's only one refund, and one partial refund. I'm annoyed that I'm being taken out of context. I'm also annoyed that people see this as some 'under the table' operation, when it was far from it. It was public.

But it all doesn't matter. This is the final post made on the matter, since I foresee everyone involved coming out of this satisfied with the result.

Fact Chart:

- Created business to help coach and assist players into finance careers
- Helped some players within the prop firm/trading market
- Took on some clients from outside this market.
- Business went on hiatus, missed communication with 2 guys. One was complicated by us waiting for a later date, and that payment was made earlier using FTP.
- In any case, I'm coming to a positive agreement with both parties. One wants the services, the other a refund. A third thinks he should have had more for his money, I agree, and was happy with everything as a partial refund.
- Guilty of complete unprofessionalism. Feel free to blast me here about this. Explained badly how I felt, was taken out, but wanted to emphasise that this isn't a 'transfer the money back you scammer' simple situation, that the money isn't there waiting on a poker account. Agreed in principle to a refund, thus I'm negotiating for that to happen.
- I joined the **** full tilt bandwagon even though I don't play poker any more.
- No one now has a complaint, everyone takes a deep breath. Regular programming resumes.


Btw Don, way ahead of you, I'm actually in Australia right now for a visit.

A) Refunding money does not mean it wasn't a scam. Whether or not you were scamming is beside the point.

B) It's pretty ridiculous to be concerned about a so-called misnomer. It doesn't really matter what title is put on it. Everyone knows what actions are being referred to.

C) You only started talking about refunds after several threads were made about the situation--one of which you deleted.

D) "...just business services not rendered to the satisfaction of the clients..." is a gross understatement.

E) Your attitude and responses about all of this are trumped only by the original wrongdoing.

Negotiating a refund, that's generally what the person who wants their cash back does. Or someone who is trying to get more for less does. When a business does that to a dissatisfied customer, the correct term is sleazeball. That is a fact.

Once you sober up, and pull your head from the ether, read all your posts since your bender started. Regular programming is far far away, if ever. Reputations take a lifetime to build, and 30 seconds to destroy. You're pretty good at destruction to others, now you destroyed yourself.

I don't get it :S This sort of thing seems to happen every now and then but why does the person involved never just come flat out apologising profusely and bending over backwards to help all those affected? That's the only play you have at that stage and it seems like an really obvious one.

If that course of action was taken you would have come out of this relatively unscathed.

Articus, why did you delete the other 2 threads in bfi?

Look at your timeline of responses from your clients view. Would you agree that it looks an awful lot like a scam?

Also, if I paid for service with FTP $, and then FTP goes bust, does that mean you now don't have to provide the services? Because that seems to be the refund argument