This week, we unfortunately had to terminate one of our paid customer service reps, who was also a prominent discussion boards Moderator. It appears, and IP addresses undeniably confirm, that our former customer support rep was also intimately involved with the ChemicalMuscle.com web site. Let me state for the record that I am a big fan of the ChemicalMuscle.com site and I hear only good things about what they have going on over there -- although I have never actually been there myself.
First off, yes I was EF Sam. I took over close to a year ago and ran this board out of the gutter it was in. I will let my actions speak for themselves. Everyone knew how I acted as a mod and as a Admin. I doubt you will here any complaints about either, ever.
I am NOT the owner of CM at all. My link with them is that I do help them run the site. Most people know this including most owners of every other board. I have always been honest and forthcoming that I helped admin there. I do not own the site however, this is a fabrication. I did allow the owner to use my Pay Pal address for CMs affiliate payments for a few months until they got their corporate account up and running.
There is much more to the story then what it seems and most of it goes back to Big Rick Rock and his attempts to take my job. Unlike George, I do not wish to make slanderous remarks on this board. My remarks are the truth and will stand for themselves, I do not need to try and make a post 8 hours later to cover myself.
With this said, Elite Fitness receives a not insignificant number of your Platinum Membership and eBook orders over the telephone. And the generosity of our customers and Platinum members is what keeps us online. Your financial support literally makes this community possible.
Yes it is very insignificant. Maybe 2-3 orders per week at the most. I would say on average 1. Ebooks sales are the money makers here for the site, but I will not disclose the amounts that are made.
A special link had been provided to our support person for use in placing phone orders. Placing the orders through his special link would allow us to calculate and pay a sales commission on your inbound phone orders that were taken by our support rep. Although I would like to believe that this was not intentional, beginning in May and lasting until the present, our support person placed our inbound telephone orders through ChemicalMuscle’s affiliate link. So in effect, Chemical Muscle was getting 50% of the proceeds from your orders.
Yes, I did have an affiliate link of my own to get paid a commission. I told you that I didnt want the commission money and wouldnt take it as I wanted you to have the money to better the site. I was dedicated and hardworking and all I cared about was Elite. I could have made the money myself, but chose to let the site keep it. As for your alligations of me sending the money to Chemical Muscle, that is ludicris. Why would I take money that I could earn and give it to someone else. All of that and for the same amount anyway as I was an affiliate under my name too? This doesnt even make sense.
We finally realized what was happening when we noticed that the IP address, which would logically be different for each order, were all the same for Chemical Muscle’s affiliate orders. We then realized that the email address we were using to make our Chemical Muscle’s commission payments through PayPal belonged to our own customer service rep. Your money that makes this site possible was going into someone else’s pockets.
The PayPal address was the same for a few months but for a long while now it has been a corporate account. You know this. Your other alligationes here and slanderous and liable. The members money that the paid for ebooks was going to you and Elite. You retain your own customers, you are trying to make the members feel like they were suckered which is not true. You are skirting some legal lines here.
Although I like to assume that none of this was intentional, ironically our site was hit with a massive denial of service attack, which you may remember took the site down for several hours last week, shortly after the support staff changes were made. As such, we decided it was prudent to provide customer service from our New York office so accidents like this could not happen again.
Intresting that you again make a slanderous legal accuasation with no proof at all. You are saying that I somehow did this. Why not tell the truth. Your new admin and yourself hide everything from the mods for almost a week. Several of thems started many threads in the mod board that went unanswered. When the site went down, a VERY VET MOD's computer was hacked. I cant say by whom, but nobdy here would want that to happen.
We asked that our customer service rep/moderator leave elitefitness.com gracefully. And we encouraged him to make a farewell post, take some time off, and then return as an Elite Fitness Mentor.
First part true, second is a lie. On Tuesday last week without a call or anything else, I had every password changed on my EF Sam account. Even my elitefitness email account. Mind you, you didnt delete my email, you changed my password and that freaked me out. You told me that you wanted to move customer service to NY, plain and simple. At that point you made me an Elite mentor.
Then we spoke the next day (Wed) and you said you wanted me to continue being a mod, which I did. Always respecting you and the site and never saying anything to anyone on the boards, etc. You didnt ask me to step down at all.
I decided to resign on my own after you refused to give me my final paycheck (which is against the law). I still ecpect it tomorrow as it is scheaduled and is the legal time to pay it.
Unfortunately, the gracious exit that I had hoped for did not take place. And the moderator that we asked to leave decided to make an issue out of the termination, bring with him his fellow Chemical Muscle moderators, and start rumors, which are blatantly untrue.
I made a very gracious exit on my own free will. I never onced slammed the boards or anything else. I was very nice and you even posted on my thread. I did not take my fellow mods, dont treat them so harshley. The mods that left are VERY respected people around here and left on their own accord. They have their own reasons for leaving, its that simple. They know the truth of whats going on, and maybe you pissed them off a little about hiding the fact for a week and not telling them about Rick.
It is a sad story and one I wish I did not have to report to you, but that is all that has happened. When an employee is terminated, he often gets angry with his former employer, and the nature of this site and our popular discussion boards make this an enormous wailing wall.
Its even sader when that employee pulled your site out of the trash. You confided a lot in me George and I worked magic here. I didnt get angry with you until I saw this post, you know that. You called me today and we spoke about it. I dont want to say anything else, becuase I am above this nonsensical argument.
Just to repeat, there is no security concern, no law enforcement involvement, no compromised email accounts – essentially there is nothing more than a popular employee who is disgruntled about being let go and who decided to make this as ugly and scary as possible out of anger towards his employer and coworkers.
Repeat what you like George, nobody ever said anything about security concern. Funny that you would defend something that no mod said. All of the mods here today that left, left with grace and made it a point to say good things about Elite. Security concerns are another issue, but again I will not comment on them here.
