On the 18th of February 2007, I got the below message from the President. It looks like a new president who's actually announcing that the company is shut down!

HERE is the BETTERUNIVERSE --We're shutting down message... Folks, it's not a better universe any more!

Presidential Address to all "Member" -- I suppose the Representatives are *already* forgotten!:

To The Members of BetterUniverse.com,

I am sorry to say that I have not been very involved with BetterUniverse.com for some time, only keeping our servers running for our members and being a member of the board of directors of our parent corporation.

Our previous president wanted to control everything else in its entirety, including commissions, cash flow, our programmers, and paying our vendors. He said he needed to do this to keep everything in control. This was how things were operating until late in January 2007 when I emailed our previous president to express my continuing frustration with the way he was running the corporation and several days’ later he sent me a certified letter announcing to me that he "resigned" without any warning or notice of any kind. Our previous president, who always told us "Winners never quit and Quitters never win", had quit each and every one of us without any notice or warning of any kind. But after researching what has happened over the past months, he really left us many months ago.

Our previous president then sent me another certified letter the day after he quit stating that he needed me to pay all our commissions on time and pay our vendors on time or let him know as he is still a shareholder of our parent company MovieClubPlus.com, Inc. Then I find out, the day he quit, he did some very large withdrawals from our corporate bank accounts. Basically removing most of the cash from the corporation, he also had our merchant account company inform me on February 1st that our merchant account was closed. After calling to talk to them, they had been trying to work with our previous president for the last several months, but they saw no improvement in our chargeback ratio's (which were always under 1% when I used to managed them), but had slid up to 7% in January while our previous president looked on, so our corporation’s merchant account company was forced to close our four year old merchant account. February 1st was the first day that I heard that there was a problem with the corporate merchant account.

I have worked diligently over the past two weeks to get a new merchant account, but with the high chargeback's ratios, and very little cash in the bank, no merchant company will approve us. A merchant account is the lifeblood of a company such as BetterUniverse.com. Without a merchant account, very little cash comes into the corporation.

Then I started hearing from our vendors, who stated that they have not been paid in the last five months and were demanding payment. Again, this was our previous president’s responsibility up until the day he "resigned" without any warning or notice of any kind. After our previous president’s resignation I find that the corporation is in debt many ten's of thousand of dollars, many of these debts, our previous president told me were paid, many others, our previous president never even informed me that the debts existed.

At the same time many members have called our new phone number, complaining that their support tickets have not been handled, or they have not been paid commissions. After researching this I find that our previous president’s wife, who was paid a salary to handle support for our corporation, hasn't handled any support tickets in many months. And the fact that December commission checks that our previous president committed to me were paid, were not.

I also find out that our previous president, and our corporate programming staff spent much of their time since September working on a separate site under a different company name, and tied it to BetterUniverse.com back office, all without any benefit to the corporation or our members, all while being paid a salary by BetterUniverse.com. Our previous president also used many of our corporate assets to create his new company without permission or compensation to the corporation. All this while ignoring your support requests, phone calls, commissions, our vendors, and our merchant account.

I have written our previous president a series of letters to try to save the company, and I even gave our previous president one last chance to return the money by 5pm today, I told him without it BetterUniverse.com would be forced to close, from this letter, I received a response from an Lawyer, that our previous president hired with corporate funds, that he does not owe the corporation any funds. So it is due to these actions by our previous president, and with a very heavy heart that I must announce the closure of BetterUniverse.com.

I am sorry for telling you this via email, but I thought it was the right thing to let you know what had happened. No one was charged for their benefits in February. Even if you received a credit card receipt, the merchant company assures me that you were not charged. I thank you in advance for your understanding in this matter.

Sincerely,

Robert T Bowen
Board of Directors
BetterUniverse.com

-------------END of LETTER!

Anyway, the lesson to be learned here --When you join any company and want to market their products --get the product and use it *first*. When the product works, the marketing will work. When the marketing works, you have a winner you can TAKE to the BANK!

Success and Carpe Diem. Sam.

DAY 578, PART 1 | DAY 578, PART 2 | NEXT is DAY 579

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