Fan Club Member Banned

[wetcamelfood]

I don't know much about what would be important for the legal stuff some of you wish to persue on this but I wonder if it would be "worthwhile" to go there (if you still can) and retype all your stuff there and then after you post it, print out the thread so at least you could prove that it was there at some point (since it would most likely be re-deleted) so you wouldn't have to worry about anyone "not believing you" on your word that your posts were there before, just a thought.

John

[seteca]

The only reason I didn't join the "Fan Club" was that I couldn't afford it. Or to be precise, I couldn't afford to pay that much for what they were selling. I've been sitting back reading what's happened over the past week or so and I now thank God that I didn't join, because if I had, I would no doubt be amongst the 1000s of people who have been, to put it bluntly, robbed. That's what it basically comes down to doesn't it? I think 1000s, if not 10s of 1000s of people across the USA (and the world to some extent) have joined this "fan club", to get, and ONLY to get, the promised "best 20%" seats. It now appears that these 1000s of people have not received what was promised, and are now being banned from the site or ignored. In my opinion that's worse than street robbery, because then at least you have the chance to possibly fight back and beat the living **** out of the thief who's robbed you; whereas in this situation, they have the "luxury" of ignoring your calls, ignoring your emails/PMs, and even banning you from the official Fan Club site if you voice your thoughts on the matter via that channel. I think it's disgusting that a group of people have taken such ridiculous, evil, advantage of the biggest fans of Fleetwood Mac, who are willing to do and pay anything they can (in so many cases take out loans and withdrawals from savings accounts) in order to be that much closer to the band, because of our love for the band and their wonderful music.

I think that "Knight" and all his fellow employees who are "in" on this scam (and there really is NO other word to use other than SCAM) should be stopped immediately and that site should either be temporarily closed down and set-up by a totally different administration, or else ALL fan club members should get a complete refund for breach of contract. Even if their adverts and emails have been cleverly worded with the help of a legal team to avoid officially breaching any contract, the 3 departments below deal with both legal breaches and also SCAMS, where the law has been fulfilled, but the person(s) has simply taken unfair advantage of the public. Just in case anyone is wondering, emails are now accepted with the same vailidity as written letters in court, as long as there is a hard copy of the email on the hard-drive.

This is not a question of a couple of hundred dollars; lets say 10,000 people have joined the fan club. That's $600,000 this company has taken. This is no small issue. It might be appropriate to contact any (or all) of those listed below via their online complaint forms:

The Department Of Consumer Affairs For California
http://www.dca.ca.gov/complainthelp/...complaint.html

The Office Of The Attorney General For California
http://caag.state.ca.us/consumers/mailform.htm

The Better Business Bureau serving Agoura Hills (which is where the Fan Club is based according to their "sign up" form).
http://www.bbbsouthland.org/

If the Knight is reading this I bet he wishes he could just reach into his monitor and rip this post out of cyber space....

[jwys_soapbox]

Originally posted by seteca
If the Knight is reading this I bet he wishes he could just reach into his monitor and rip this post out of cyber space.

I love that! I wouldn't be a bit surprised if he does frequent this board as a part of his effort to get FM news first!

John

[FiercestCalmSea]

Guess who got her username deleted also??? Moi I suppose i asked for it..i was banned earlier but that was a glitch...i posted earlier and it went through so i went ahead and posted that fraud link from SaraRhiannon's site in ALL the forums...and i also left a very thoughtful post in the news sections...half and hour later...CarbonSparkle is not a known member...darn...i might just have to go jump off a bridge...

[FiercestCalmSea]

I talked to Jonathan Todd (The Knight) this morning on the phone.

Not to be nosy..but how the heck did you get ahold of him???

[gldstwmn]

How about this one? Since we all paid via credit card then there must be a paper trail as to where that money went and how it has been disbursed. What do you think?

[Cristian]

So, what's left there? A board with The Knight posting news about how good the seats for the people from the fan club are and a couple of other members (probably himself with other identity) cheering at him? And Mick reading it and thinking how good the idea of having that whole fan club stuff was? Please.

What they did is called scam (yes, I agree, Seteca, that's the right word) and I hope this is solved in the correspondant legal instances for the states or countries involved.


Song of the moment - Do You Know

[jwys_soapbox]

Originally posted by FiercestCalmSea
Not to be nosy..but how the heck did you get ahold of him???

I just called the number listed in one of the MickFraudwood e-mails and got through to his voicemail. I don't think it's a good idea to post the number here even though it's the number for his marketing company, SabreMark, of which he is CEO. He picked up while I was leaving a message. No one was more surprised than me. We talked for like 1/2 hour. We did not come to any understanding. He would not let me hang up until I let him have the last word, and I wasn't going to be "that guy" who hung up on him. It was a very civil conversation--much like my posts were very civil.

John

[FiercestCalmSea]

I agree...posting it would be a bad idea...i was totally civil on that board until an hour ago...and BAM..and i mean..i don't think i was out of line..i think i spoke in a somewhat mature way...but whatever..

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by jwys_soapbox
I just called the number listed in one of the MickFraudwood e-mails and got through to his voicemail. I don't think it's a good idea to post the number here even though it's the number for his marketing company, SabreMark, of which he is CEO. He picked up while I was leaving a message. No one was more surprised than me. We talked for like 1/2 hour. We did not come to any understanding. He would not let me hang up until I let him have the last word, and I wasn't going to be "that guy" who hung up on him. It was a very civil conversation--much like my posts were very civil.

John

Were you offered a refund?

[mbr33]

I don't think that refunds will be offered to anyone. I think that the only way funds will be refunded is if charges are disputed on your credit card and the club then cannot proove they gave you something of value for your $60 or $80.

Did anyone get banned from the board who DID join the fanclub? I was reading some posts earlier and think that most of the "first round" of bannings were people who HAD NOT joined the club. I could be wrong, but am still somewhat curious.

[estranged4life]

Originally posted by FiercestCalmSea
Guess who got her username deleted also??? Moi I suppose i asked for it..i was banned earlier but that was a glitch...i posted earlier and it went through so i went ahead and posted that fraud link from SaraRhiannon's site in ALL the forums...and i also left a very thoughtful post in the news sections...half and hour later...CarbonSparkle is not a known member...darn...i might just have to go jump off a bridge...

I saw those and the "See you on the Ledge" line cracked me up!!! Hehehehehehe!!!!!!!!

[jwys_soapbox]

Well, let's see...

No, I did not get a refund, just a rehash of things he's already said.

And yes, I AM a fan club member, only now I have no voice about how the club is run.

John

PS: Why don't we informally start calling The Penguin the un-official Fleetwood Mac fan club. No frills for joining, but it is free and your posts are not tailored to sell a product.

[gldstwmn]

Originally posted by mbr33
I don't think that refunds will be offered to anyone. I think that the only way funds will be refunded is if charges are disputed on your credit card and the club then cannot proove they gave you something of value for your $60 or $80.

Did anyone get banned from the board who DID join the fanclub? I was reading some posts earlier and think that most of the "first round" of bannings were people who HAD NOT joined the club. I could be wrong, but am still somewhat curious.

Oh no. Call me joined and banned.

[glitter-fades]

Originally posted by estranged4life
one statement "the Knight" made that I posted earlier:

"We've traced numerous eBay offers to Season Ticket holders. We see some from the FAN CLUB too."

So I'm "almost" sure that statement confirms that some of the "fanclub" members may indeed have been "brokers/scalpers/etc"...

So that seems to indicate that their "presale fanclub member" system was flawed from the very beginning.

Brian J.

Hey, Brian. Guess what? Some of us tried to get the Knight's attention early on about how breechable the ticket system was for fan club members. He wouldn't listen. He set up a complaint thread and several people tried to tell him that constantly posting messages on the board saying to the world "your username is your password" was a major breech of the system from the get-go. Anyone who lurked on the board in the weeks before the pre-sale could find out anybody's password and use it because it was posted all over the place that your username is your password. Only people smart enough to have a different fan club username from their message board user name were safe. Like the venue pre-sales where the "dreams" password was out there for everyone to see, it was only one of many on the day of the fan club pre-sale. Everyone in the world had a chance to buy fan club tickets as long as they didn't exceed the total of 20. Most fan club memebers only wanted 2-4 so they'd never know if someone else bought seats using their password.