[Prince-4ever] prince.org Makes the On-Line News (again) ...

Monday, March 29, 2010

[Prince-4ever] prince.org Makes the On-Line News (again) ...

Purple Rage: Prince Fans Automatically Charged For Another Year of Dormant Fanclub...

Prince.org | Read Full Story >

To Prince, His Purple Majesty, His Royal Badness, The Dick Formerly Known As Prince:

Today, a year after opening your LotusFlow3r club, you charged fans who had requested to cancel their annual memberships another $77. How do I know? Because I am one of them.

Prince, you've gotta cut this shit out. I'm a big fan, I drove 15 hours to see you last year. I own all of your albums, movies, and lots of other memorabilia. Yeah, I'm a fan. But would it kill you to treat your fans correctly for once? When you first announced your new LotusFlower club, many more experienced fans said "don't do it, Prince has a baaaaad history in the online marketplace." I went ahead and signed up anyway, gladly paying the $77 because of all the things you and your team mentioned would eventually be coming to the site. Exclusive content, rare material, possibly even long-awaited releases from your vault. Instead we got a spinning orb of videos, three albums (which were available at Target for less than $12), four "new" streaming tracks and if fans were lucky, they actually received the t-shirt you promised. Luckily I got my shirt, but from reading what's available on the internet, I'd say anywhere from 30–40% did NOT get their shirts.

The worst part is, several months ago I sent a request to your support/sales group at LotusFlow3r requesting to cancel my membership. I never received a reply, so I went into the site and changed my credit card information. I figured that surely that would be enough. I knew that the site auto-charged every year, but the terms stated that you had to email support@lotusflower.com, which many, many fans did. Instead of a reply, we all woke up with nice little $77 charges this morning. The best part? As of the time of this writing — your website is actually down, and completely inaccessible.

Part of me wants to hope that you have something bigger planned. But that makes it sound like I'm drinking the purple Kool-Aid, which I'm not. I just want my $77 back, please. If you can show me that you have better things coming, I would even possibly consider rejoining the site, but I don't want to pay $77 for a black page.

Sincerely Please stop being a giant purple dick,

-Steven Anthony Hammock

UPDATE: And just like that, here's the official message from the support team:

Dear LotusFlow3r.com members,

We were saddened to hear today that the earliest adopters of LotusFlow3r.com were charged $77 for a repeat subscription to the website. We did not expect this action to occur automatically as we had not set up a recurring billing script in our code. After getting on the phone with the payment gateway Authorize.net, we found that the subscriptions were being renewed on their end. We immediately discontinued the recurring billing for all further subscriptions and we will be refunding those who have been charged. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and are working quickly to refund anyone who was charged for a second year. Please be aware that Prince himself had no hand in this and that the error was due to lack of thoroughness on our part.

Sincerely,
LotusFlow3r development team

From the Prince.org Message Board:

asideorderofham: Seriously??!
Prince, I swear, if $77 gets charged to my card, you and me are through.
I emailed last June to insist that I did not want to be charged for a second year and I'm still waiting for a reply.

souls1999: That little punk charged me. I changed my credit card info months ago and I didnt check re-new in a year. WHAT A ASS MR.PIMP has gone to far this time!!! looks like he will have another court case!!!!!

Efan: Wow. What a lying, thieving douchebag he is.

IstenSzek: kinda like the original crystal ball fiasco, but magnified times 10.

jone70: I would like to say I cannot believe they really did this; but sadly I'm not surprised. It's totally unacceptable, and that, along with the lack of follow through on the website as a whole should be grounds for a class action lawsuit or something.

rstokey2: I'd like to give an additional suggestion. It's time to make your voices heard. After you've settled your credit card situations and voiced your complaints to the BBB, call your local radio stations and make this travesty known. Believe me, Prince will come out of hiding.
Everyone that disagreed with the the way Tom Joyner voiced his issues with Prince, give him a call. Call Steve Harvey, Warren Ballentine, Michael Baisden or any Nationally Syndicated Radio/Talk Show. Drop an e-mail to TMZ, CJ, and any other media outlet that has the balls to broadcast this type of stuff. Believe me, Prince will come out of hiding.

Gohi: Thanks for this thread. Fucking midget piece of shit.

Negs: I'd always been disappointed that LotusFlow3r.CON had been such a damp squib, but never got sucked into the vitriol online… However, this is just all kinds of bollocks. With my family being hit by the recession/unemployment, I can't afford Prince's camp to go dicking about with my card details.

GetAwayFromMe: Personally, I'm not surprised at all. This is straight up FRAUD.