Last week there was an issue brought up here in the forums and directly to our Customer Service Department which I would like to address. I was out of the office when the issue arose, hence the late reply. Further, this issue is not open to discussion in this forum or any other. If you would like to make a comment you can address your concerns via email to our Customer Service manager: titus@vs.com.

For several weeks now we have been running a special offer to a targeted group of people who used to purchase credits but stopped at some point in the past. This style of marketing is common amongst almost every industry you can imagine. I personally still get letters almost weekly from my former cell phone provider trying to get me back.

During the Manager's Special promotion on April 1st there was some confusion because some users who met the criteria for our "win back" offer were seeing that offer instead of that day's promotion. Compounding the issue was a flaw in the win-back offer which was applying an aggressive discount to promotion packages. Once news of the issue arose several customers were quite upset thinking that they were being treated unfairly, etc.

The win-back offer was removed quickly on Friday and has only be reinstated an hour ago. Further, during the time this bug existed only a few dozen customers took advantage of the offer.

It should go without saying that we value each of our customers very much. The frequency with which we run promotions with free credits (none of which are deducted from performers in any fashion) is evidence of this. On Black Friday last November we gave away over $100,000 in free credits.

Dynamic offers like those designed to get inactive customers engaged with the site again are necessary to ensure the growth of the site. Contrary to some of the conjecture in the forum, simply being inactive for X number of days is not the only criteria used.

It's also worth noting that the special offers often cut the other direction, targeting existing and frequently active customers with even bigger discounts. One large example was last June/July when we ran a special $6 price point with 100% bonus credits at different times of day for customers who were in good standing for a period of time. That was never discussed on the forums though; good news seldom is.

Going forward we will continue to work hard on creating the most aggressive promotions and special offers we can in the months to come. We even have a two-day promotion planned for later this month where up to 3% of sales will go to an AIDS foundation. More details on that to come.

I hope this clears up the confusion regarding what happened last Friday. As I stated earlier, please email us if you have further questions or concerns. Hopefully you can see that there was no unfair treatment or double-standards at work last Friday.

Sincerely,

Brad