um - it's called good PR dude! someone with a decent reputation floating around suddenly isn't allowed on the playground - it helps keep order when you give a little heads up. i think your logic is pretty weak but it's a humorous attempt at sounding intelligent. i agree that there are aspects that aren't anyone's business, but it definitely shows good form for IB to issue some kind of statement. let's say you went to you favorite store and suddenly the item you purchase regularly was not there, but in it's place you found a label reading "banned". but in the front of the store were ads for the product. are you telling me that you wouldn't inquire of the management what was happening? furthermore, are you suggesting that if and when the management said, "it's really none of your business, but please keep shopping here" you'd accept that and just go on?

consider, daflake, that the point of this thread isn't that IB or the NAM admin needs to tell us about every ban etc, but when it's someone who is both well respected, a regular contributor and/or a vendor - it's better to be proactive and issue a post or statement giving the public (it's customer) information - especially, when being banned prevents RW from commenting on the issue.

 

I have, but I have also seen what happens when what you call "good PR" is released. The outburst was even larger and uglier.

Good PR has nothing to do with it. It is much like people slowing down to see the accident on the side of the road. You don't want to see what happened as much as you really want to see if anyone died.

If we mind our business Randy may release what happened when he gets back.

Sorry but in my experience, that is best way that it works. Right now you are really the only one making a fuss but if they made a statement more than just you might be making a fuss. Most bans go down poorly and openly discussing them is a huge mistake.

Good PR does not mean airing dirty laundry to incite gossip.

 

Here's my 2
IB needs to recognize that Randy is more then just a vendor. He is a MINI enthusiast, MINI racing champion, MINI innovator and pioneer. This is probably expecting too much from a dumb corporate entity, but they bought the site and if they want to see it flourish in the future they need to respect it's history.
Why would anyone become a vendor on this site if they would be banned from ever posting again should they stop being a vendor or fail to pay for the advertising?
A lot of people in the MINI community have learned from Randy and Randy is still a trusted adviser and true MINI enthusiast so lighten up IB and get your head out of your corporate ****.

 

good point

 

I agree with you MINIMaybee. I'll say this, when Randy Webb is back on the site, he really doesn't need Vendor status anyway. Sometimes word of mouth and reputation trump that.

 

He does if he plans on using NAM to sell anything. That will never change... let's face it, vendor fees are what keep NAM running.

Note: NONE of those fees end up in my pocket. I just wanted to point out where your statement is false.And that is the reason that there's a site guideline against discussing bans. It usually leads to no good. We're allowing it here for now, but with posts like MiniMaybee's, it's going downhill fast.

Guys, as Gnatster asked, please tone down the rhetoric. If you can't do that, then this thread will have to be closed.

Please let us admins handle it. We like Randy, and so we're doing what we can to find common ground and sort things out. We don't make the final call, but you're sure not helping things by coming on here and ranting.

 

I didn't mean if he came back on here to sell stuff. I meant if he came back as a regular old humble MINI enthusist.

 

I think you hit it right on. We are allowed to use this site for free because someone else (who hoped to make money off the venture) decided to set it up and offer it free to the public. Think of it like a restaurant. Any restaurant owner should have the right to police his/her establishment so that the rest of the patrons can enjoy themselves while they're there. And if the owner is too harsh, or the food is bad or the service is lousy, then over time people will stop patronizing the place. I know that as long as I play by the rules, I don't expect to ever get banned from NAM. I'm glad NAM is around, so I'm not going to knock it if sometimes something happens that I don't fully understand.

_

 

+1 ^

This is only Randy's business & IB business.

 

Sorry, I didn't read the rest of the threads before I posted and missed the part about letting the mods deal with it. In order to comply with the request of the mods I removed my comment. I'm certain the mods will get it sorted.

 

hmmm - it seems like there's more gossip floating around right now b/c of speculation and opinion.

IB posting a statement that reads something like, we apologize for any inconvenience but "XYZ" vendor will be unavailable but we are working to get them back up and running on our site - We appreciate your understanding... blah blah blah. Not sure how that would be construed as dirty laundry or promoting gossip Seriously, do some people just write or say ridiculous things just to have a presence somewhere???? I know it's a forum and opinions will be different - but come on,to suggest that the public on a public forum shouldn't receive the courtesy to basic information is absurd - it helps the public, it helps the forum and and it helps the public image.

as it has been pointed out previously, banning a vendor from promoting products after failure to pay (no one seems to disagree) is one thing. banning the vendor from participating in the forum is different. obviously, the term ban carries a huge connotation and as such, when you see that a forum member or vendor has been banned the natural assumption is that it's negative. when i started this thread it wasn't that i was looking for specific information - it surprised me though to stumble across such a familiar name/vendor with the tag banned and since there was no information publicly describing that the vendor's products or services would no longer be promoted, i inquired. IB does have an obligation to it's public - b/c it's the lifeblood - it needs people on this forum who see the ads and buy the products to that the vendors continue to post ads and participate. even if they don't welcome a vendor back, it's good business to keep your public informed. beside, how difficult is it to post a thread or a banner that reads, "we're working to get "xyz" back up on the site...?

and, i don't recall that anyone has condemned the moderators here - so why people keep making dumb comments about bashing moderators or i wouldn't want their job, etc etc, is unclear. the mods have made it clear that they were just as much in the dark - in fact, it looks like some of them learned about this ban with RW after the thread was started. again, opinion and commentary is great, but it's silly commentary when it isn't really relevant - then it just sounds like ranting or more like you're that person trying to sound intelligent by saying things like "irregardless..."

 

I am not sure what sort of privacy laws exist in the USA, but what Mach Schnell is asking (PR and warning of banned users) could come very close to violating the Canadian Privacy Act.

I am just tossing ideas out there. Again, I have no idea what the USA has in the means of this, and know that Canadian Law does no apply, was just using that as a basis for my brainstorming.

I have received a warning or two on content that I have posted on here, that is on prime time TV in Canada. But was deemed inappropiate in this forum. Some things you will just never have the pleasure of being privy too. That can be a hard thing to accept sometimes.

 

Xiek - you must've posted this at same time I posted. at any rate, i'll try to clarify this one more time - i don't think anyone is expecting a detailed explanation. IB to comment that the vendor is off site and may be back later or some derivative goes a long way and in no way, shape or form (unless you live in an Orwell parallel universe) violates any privacy laws/acts nor is it an unusally enormous expectation.

let me relate it this way - physicians make mistakes - no matter how good we think we are. data proves that physicians who apologize to patients, no matter how small or large the mistake is, have fewer law suits and overall, have more satisfied patients. even walking in and apologizing for keeping a patient waiting 5 minutes (even if i just finished an hour of cpr on another patient) goes a long way. i don't have to say i'm sorry that i've made you wait 2 more minutes (because i had to save intubate a 4yr) - not that i would explain the details of why, but just apologizing for being tied up with another patient etc. however, this simple technique of effective communication makes my experience with the next patient better and actually makes them happier. little bit goes a long way - it's amazing how it works!

 

yes it was posted at virtually the same time.

and you'd be surprised what is actually against the law in our privacy act.

Now there is a new owner here, and well there will be some growing pains. They do not necessarily have the same relationship that Mark shared with a lot of the vendors.

All they see is board, and member behind in fees.

and to play a bit of devils advocate. as someone stated before, the own the board now, and can do whatever they pretty well want to do. If they choose to not communciate 100% or even 50% of the info pertaining to this, then that is their perogative.

If people don't like it, they will leave, and find some other forums, and I am sure they will figure it out soon enough that they did something wrong. They did buy it for financial gain, they must have seen the potential in it.

I am from Canada, and thus am used to waiting hours to see my Dr. But it's FREE! :P

 

Don't expect IB to post anything, they are hands off when it comes it content and let the board decide what is or is not appropriate.

In my first post I stated "The reason is for X months they have not paid their bills."

IB feels that if they shut off access then when it gets noticed the party that has been banned will reach out to contact someone to find out why. Being as Mr Webb was last on NAM at 11-22-2008 09:27 AM it's not like he checks this site that often. I've pointed out that fact to IB.

BTW anyone can see when anyone else was last logged in via the profile. If they are also logged in at the same time you can even see the last area they visited. That is not a NAM thing but is consistent across all vBulletin sites.

Is there really anything else to say here?

 

Yes there is - If I fail to pay my Alliance membership when it next comes up is IB going to ban me from the site or can I, unlike vendors, go back to being a regular non-paying member?
And Edge, if you think my previous post was simply rhetoric then excuse me for voicing concern over a site that I frequent and a site that our club utilizes a fair bit and a member of our club.

 

Have no fear you will not get banned if you decide not to renew, your membership will simply revert back to where it was before.

I do not agree with the tactics IB has taken. Other vendors have notified IB they no longer want or can afford to continue. The standard methodology at that point is to change the persons user name to something that is not their business name and they are allowed to continue as members if they desire so long as they don't advertise in posts. If they do they go to Moderated Posting where posts are checked for X number of posts, then revert back once they show they are not advertising.

We can debate this till the cows come home but IB has their way and thats the way it is.

 

Regular, non-paying member. Besides, I don't think the Alliance fees actually go to IB anyway (I might be wrong). They have very little (if anything) to do with the Alliance program itself.The concern I had was not the overall content but by using words like "dumb corporate entity" and "get your head out of your corporate ****" you are only hurting your case, not helping it. If you want any IB representive that reads this thread to pay attention to your points, you would be better served by not resorting to insults at the same time.

I'm not defending IB's decision(s), I'm just pointing out where I feel your post loses its effectiveness.

 

except that most other sites users can make that private to keep others from e-following them around. NAM is the only site I'm on where I can't check that box in my profile. FWIW.

 

Dan,

What does the checkbox say? I'll be happy to look into this, but it might be version-dependent. NAM is not running the latest version of NAM currently... largely because there are so many customizations done here that they would be broken with the upgrade... so upgrading is going to take a lot of careful planning and testing.

 

edit - formatting was lost. uploaded

 

Ah yeah... Invisible mode is disabled for all members. It does more than just not show what you're doing on the site (when you're on), it also doesn't even show that you're on the site at all (regardless of what you're doing). That's probably why the feature was disabled. If there was a way to separate the two features, I imagine it would have been left enabled.

 

Randy has certainly contributed a lot to our Mini community; but, I would have been happier with him if he had disabled the Webbmotoring store if he was not going to respond to orders or email queries. I wish him well and hope nothing bad has happened. I did a search and could not find an active phone number and the last post was on a pilot forum.

I sent him an email cancelling an order for a pulley that I placed in mid-Nov.
There has been no response to that either????

 

I'm surprised his website is still up. He moved to Dubai for his pilot job. I hope you can get your transaction cleared up.

See: https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...give-away.html