JudyBJ

Try Palistine …. sorry.. You are lucky, I never get reponses from the Admin on RB

Bahamas
Bahrain
Bangladesh
Barbados
Belize
Benin
Bermuda
Bhutan
Bolivia
Botswana
Brazil
Brunei
burkino Faso
Burundi
Cambodia
Cameroon
Cade Verde
Cayman Islands
Central African Republic
Chad
Chile
China
Christmas Island
Cocos (Keeling) Islands
colombia
Democratic Republic of the Congo
Cook Islands
Costa Rica
Ivory Coast
Cuba

All gone!

Wow. That is just crazy. Someone just arbitrarily decided to delete a bunch of countries from the list? How can one open a legitimate account if their country is not listed? Oh this can not end well . . .

And why are these countries also missing, to name just a few more?

Ecuador
Egypt
El Salvador
Fiji
India
Indonesia
Iran
Iraq
Japan
Korea, North
Korea, South
Kuwait
Lebanon
Malaysia
Mexico
Nepal
Pakistan
Paraguay
Peru
Philippines
Singapore
Syria
Thailand
United Arab Emirates
Uruguay
Venezuela
Vietnam

I wonder, if one’s home country is not on the list, do new members from omitted countries just “pick one”? But in doing that how can they have a legitimate postal address on file? If there is no legitimate postal address, how can one collect commission checks? Something is just really wrong with this situation.

I am still perplexed as to why RB would shorten the list by excluding most countries, and, worse, applying no rhyme or reason. I am perplexed as to how RB cannot grasp how offensive that is to someone trying to join us from one of those missing countries. Apparently, if you live on the African continent, or on the South American continent, your country just doesn’t cut the mustard.

If RB expects new members of alien status [ie stateless] to still join us, I’m wondering what country they should select? None? If so, why both asking for the information in the first place?

I seem to recall there are laws in Australia concerning discrimination, ie banning it.

I noticed RB closed off the forum discussion on this issue based on the responses already given by RB admin. None of those responses are answers, so I have raised my own Forum topic asking specific questions, eg WHY?

OMG! I am shocked!

I’ve made mine private – it helps being precise – but I will let you know the responses. these are the questions I asked for answers:

1. Can someone from RB please explain the rationale for only listing a few countries?
2. Can anyone from RB appreciate how offputting it is for a potential new member, if not downright offensive, to find their country is not listed?
3. Can someone explain the criteria used for excluding new members from certain countries?
4. Why is this not a breach of Victoria’s anti-discrimination legislation?

Hi Judy, that is simply rude.I have tried to create another ID, and the list of countries is very short. I also checked the forum and Jo’s answer is nothing short of being arrogant. There must be an explanation – either it is inability to post to those counties, strong australian currency, lack of resources, material, whatever the reason is, there is a reason, and there should be better answer that just “We made a decision and this is final”. I know they run this web site as a business, but still…
Where is that Support area? can you post a link please, I’d like to check what they say over there.

@ Tatiana support is here

Don’t worry about that! I’m already In Trouble! :)

this will cause some members to hyperventilate, without a shadow of a doubt

Can someone point me to the full list please?

Just checked the Support site, thanks Tania and checked Phillip Golan journal. Still in shock.
Counties like Japan and Singapore as well on the fraud list? Hello!!! Don’t we buy all our cameras from Japan????!!!! It is an Inner circle Site now? Big 20 and few close friends?

Darren, just go to your profile and update the country, you will see the list of allowed contries

I raised this issue on the 4th November:
RedBubble Regional Geographic Member Discrimination

and received support:
A matter of concern …

My opinion is however, that RB are waiting for this issue to die down and just naturally go away.

In my journal, I also added my response to Peter Styles (founder of RB):
I’m sorry Peter, but my personal feelings towards your reply to my email can only be related to a “Claytons” answer (The answer you give when you aren’t giving an answer).
You are in the 1% – put up with it!!

here is the full list of country options:
aust
nz
uk
us
albania
andora
austria
belarus
begium
bosnia and herzegovina
bulgaria
canada
croatia
cyprus
czeck republic
denmark
estonia
finland
france
germany
greece
hongkong
hungary
iceland
ireland
isle of man
italy
latvia
liechtenstein
lithuania
luxembourg
Macedonia (former Yugoslavia)
Malta
moldova, Republic of
Monarco
Montenegro
netherlands
norway
portland
portugal
romania
russian federation
san marino
serbia
slovakia
slovenia
south africa
spain
sweden
switzerland
turkey
ukraine

a new forum topic

Hey, Australia and NZ, (apart from US, Canada and Hong Kong) are the only counties outside of Europe that ARE on the list!! We are The Lucky country indead! [Insert Sarcastic smile] Sorry, really hope this will be sorted out

We’ve had more fraud come out of these countries than legitimate sales – so we’ve taken the commercial decision to protect RedBubble from this loss. This decision affects less than 1% of all our sales.

@Peter: how does excluding artists from these countries help prevent fraud?

@Miron: Existing members aren’t excluded. New members are as this was one of the ways in which the fraud was being driven.

I was posting a comment on the New Forum topic (see Tania”s entry above) and it was locked already (!!!) so I lost it all.

My suggestion is – If it is a business, why not to update the business model for payment system like eBay’s PayPall? It works regardless of which county as far as I am aware

@Peter: was posting a comment on the New Forum topic (see Tania”s entry above) and it was locked already (!!!) so I lost it all.
My suggestion is – If it is a business, why not to update the business model for payment system like eBay’s PayPall? It works regardless of which county as far as I am aware

@Tatiana – we will take steps to further reduce our exposure to fraud (which will enable us to take orders from more countries). The changes are competing with all the other changes on the list. See here for the full list. So while this issue is incredibly important for some members it’s not important for all members and we have to weigh that up. Judy – we’re not going to be able to make any changes here in two weeks – we are not looking at any changes until 2010.

here’s some irony

Peter and Judy there’s been heaps of discussion on this – my mate in Israel Philip Golan wrote a very articulate and considered journal after getting a brush-off from RB … he tried to buy a calendar and suddenly found he was blacklisted, along with people in many countries. He feels it is a breach of the Terms of Agreement … EXISTING MEMBERS CAN’T BUY and it seemed there was a question about them being able to sell also.

RB have taken this issue to their Feedback Forum for discussion and vote.
Please add your comment there also.

Peter – how come Philip Golan couldn’t buy when he’s been a member for maybe a year??

@Peter: and why wasn’t this announced if it was a commercial decision? Like you do with your other messages that pop up on the home page, like this new Product Review T-shirt? Or when you do sales promotions?

I understand your reasons as I mentioned in my first entry in this discussion, that it is your business and you need to protect it. But this site grew into community, doesn’t this mean anything to you guys?

@Tatiana: Yes I think we should have made more effort to communicate the decision. The truth was was just wanted to stop the fraud as quickly as possible so we made a fast decision. I don’t think we would have made a public post to the whole community about this change (as it has affected less than 1% of the community) but we should have sent a targeted BubbleMail to all affected members. Our bad.

@Rosalie – because the solution we’ve put in place to stop the fraud is not sophisticated – it just blocks out the countries where we’ve had significant fraud problems. We fully intend to improve our fraud detection and prevention software – but that’s going to take a lot of time and money.

@Peter – I don’t think 1%of sales means 1% of the community… It affects all other conscious members of this worldwide community, very sadly…especialy when your TShirt promotion mentions Israil…

@Tatiana – if there was another solution to this we would have taken it. We didn’t want to stop 1% of our sales and we’re not banning those people from being members of the site (but I do acknowledge they’re not able to buy and for new members sell). It’s also our intention to circle back on this and improve the fraud detection and prevention that we have in place – but that’s going to take a significant amount of time and money.

Yes I think we should have made more effort to communicate the decision

Hmmmm-we seem to have been down this “lack of communication” route before, with Helengate. Not for a minute do I think you guys are stupid, so i’ll just have to tick the box marked “arrogance”....

@Peter
There is another solution. Use only PayPal until you lot get your act together.
This has been in place since June or July, and as you wrote to me :
“It is our intention to allow sales (and selling) back to these countries when we have more robust fraud protection measures – but the development work to implement these better fraud detection procedures is competing with other priorities so it is unlikely that we’ll be able to make any changes in 2009. “
It appears to me that you are in no particular hurr to start working on a solution, let alone resolve the problem.

@Roy – this decision was actually implemented some months before “Helengate” and the lessons learnt (re-learnt) about communication. In general I think our communication failings have more to do with being busy than ‘arrogance’.

@Peter – is RB moving towards a pay for play model in 2010?

@Phillip – we have to weigh up all the things on our list of things to do. The last few months has been almost entirely focused on ‘re-stumping the house’. It’s only now that we’re able to start thinking about more external features that the community can see … and better fraud detection and prevention is a complex challenge to solve. My suspicion is that it will take about a month of work to implement the ‘better’ solution.

@Darren – off topic in Judy’s journal.

I am so sorry to hear this Judy,,,I really dont understand RB anymore,,, but you have my support,,,I totally think admin are going about things in the wrong way,,, What happens if there is a couple of fraudsters from Australia,,,( and I really bet there have been),,, are they going to ban Australia?? Like if that would ever happen,,, more communication is necessary,, and banning whole countries from a few stupid idiots isnt the answer!!

@Peter – I’ll start my RB savings plan just in case. :)

OMG this is so ironic and so sadly funny

From this journal entry:
http://www.redbubble.com/people/redbubble/journal/1284379-where-we-stand

We stand:

• For artists
• For the work they create
• For the audiences they inspire
• For the buyers they move.

We honour them, their work and their passions.

The creative endeavour should be shared joyously with others.

All should feel free to join in the show.

.... well, “All” are certainly not free to join, so it appears…. sad :(

LOOK AT THE BOTTOM where someone is asking about Israel

@Marie – let me say again – this is not something we wanted to do – and it’s not a long term situation for us. But if you had to pay out all the fraud we’ve experienced I suspect your views on this would be a little different and in general you would all cut us a little more slack.

picketty about 2 hours ago
what did you go to Israel for? I am not quite clear
RedBubble replied about 2 hours ago
That would be where our garment printer was invented…

@Judy – we haven’t had the time – we’ve been working on other important things. “Fixing” fraud is going to take a lot of time and money and there are a lot of things that are on our plate at the moment.

I am an existing member of redbubble from Israel.
Why I can’t sell or buy from redbubble?
Why you discriminate me?
There are lot of ways to deal with fraud, and discrimination is not one of them.

@Moshe – please listen – this is not a long term solution. Existing members from Israel can still sell. We know there are a number of ways to prevent fraud. They take time and money to build. In the mean time we need to stop the fraud – so we’ve taken the step to stop shipping to some countries.

@Rosalie – because the solution we’ve put in place to stop the fraud is not sophisticated – it just blocks out the countries where we’ve had significant fraud problems. We fully intend to improve our fraud detection and prevention software – but that’s going to take a lot of time and money.

So if you get significant fraud from lets say, AU, US and UK [and a whole lot of other countries] – are you going to shut up shop?

I remember noticing this a little while back, and it shocked me a little at the time. I knew it wouldn’t be long before it came up to bite RB on the bum at some point, because it raises a few questions.

1. Discrimination?
2 Just how many sales could members be losing because a large proportion of the world cannot buy from them?

my point exactly Portrait Paradise,,,, I am sure there have been people from Australia and other countries engaging in fraudulent activities.. would love redbubble to ban Australia,,, this just reeks of discrimination,,,, to ban a whole country on a few idiots!

@Julie – less than 1% of sales are affected.

@Judy – the way credit card companies (and PayPal) work is that if fraud happens they’ll just take the money back from you automatically – so having the money in the bank actually doesn’t help. Let me put our decision in another way for you – PayPal (our major payment gateway) were going to shut down our ability to receive money via a credit cards in USD, EUR, GBP and CAD because our fraud rates were too high. This represented a serious risk to RedBubble so we needed to respond quickly to reduce fraud. At the time (and even now) we didn’t have the resources to ‘fix’ the problem ‘properly’ so we took a short term decision to stop payments from those countries causing the problems. I don’t like that we had to make this decision. But it was our only option. I don’t like airing this dirty laundry in public – but given the number of people expressing strong feelings on this now I want to let you know that we took this decision in very serious circumstances.

less than 1% of sales are affected.

While I appreciate that from a site wide prepesctive Peter, it has to be looked at individually too.

If I get two US residents thinking of buying a calendar, and two of their Mexican relatives get those Calendars promoted to them via a family Facbook page – which they also like enough to buy, but cannot buy because of where they lve – its 50% of my sales – not 1%

PayPal (our major payment gateway) were going to shut down our ability to receive money via a credit cards in USD, EUR, GBP and CAD because our fraud rates were too high

They were? And you let them get away with that without informing them that should they not want your custom, at all, from any currency, that they should reconsider that choice?

Paypal shouldn’t rule your roost, I would like to see them take that kind of stance with Ebay, or Amazon and get away with it.

At the end of the day, I wonder if Paypal realise what predicament they have put you in by forcing your hand that way. Penalising a whole nation, based on the illegal activity of a few individuals of that nation, is wrong. they shouldn’t have that kind of power over you – I wouldn’t allow them to have it over me.

Perhaps your members from the countries who are risk of having Paypal payment options removed would be ok with it in your support Peter. I would be.

Wow, so much has been disclosed in the few short hours I devoted to my son’s 15th birthday. So much is now clearer. For example, it’s all about fraud. I can dig that. Well, sorry, it’s not all about fraud, but that appears to be the driver from RB’s point of view. I can understand the driver, but to be honest, the execution sucks. Big time.
I am rather annoyed my perception of RB management was allowed to fester in the absence of timely-communicated info.
RB also needs to understand that when someone like Judy, who should be TREASURED as an RB icon, encounters an issue and innocently and reasonably asks for an explanation, your communication process TOTALLY SUCKS and just leaves more to be answered.
Regardless of the veracity of your reasons for discrimination, a little thought given to how this is MANAGED would go a LONG way. Instead, hiding the issue just pisses people off. Bigtime. Can’t you even begin to contemplate how Judy felt when assisting her friend in just joining RB?
And if you want to respond with the old line of “Well go somewhere else if you want to complain” I will just offer this: some of us actually care about this website and the people using it. That is why we want to see things done correctly, or at least with some more thought. That is why we complain when we see crap dressed up as an improvement.

@Portrait Paradise – we’re nothing to PayPal. There are other payment gateways out there but the process of migrating to another payment provider is no small task. So we really were between a rock and a hard place.

@Judy – believe me that we want to ‘fix’ fraud.

@Peter – feedback noted.

I’ve calmed down a measurable iota, mainly because I understand the fraud predicament and, hence, am starting to see the issue from more than one aspect.

This whole debate, for me, started with Judy’s question, which solely related to her friend not being able to select HER country when joining RB. It had nothing to do with fraud prevention, and everything to do with respect, and partnership.

Is there a disconnect between the currencies of concern to PayPal as being too high risk and the country of origin of RB members? [btw, @Portrait Paradise: Ebay owns PayPal.]

Is it really necessary to firewall the risk at the membership stage?

Is it really necessary to exclude SO MANY countries? I mean, EVERY country in South America has been tarred with the Fraud brush. Is that ok?

Is it possible to initiate INSTEAD a formal Warning Page when a “risk” country is nominated, as to whatever special payment arrangements you prescribe as being necessary due to Fraud? [I suggest this because the residents of those places may be aware already of internet trading issues.]

I won’t harp on about the communication issue I have about this, but I will ask this: Why was Judy, an Israeli, not aware of the risk when she was helping her friend, an Israeli, to join RB? It’s because the fraud risk was never an issue with Judy. But the “status” of her currency/country should, I posit, have at least been made aware to her, on a timely basis, not reactively.

PR is becoming a big issue on the site. Members need to be informed of changes which affect them before they stumble upon them by chance. If it takes bucks to get the job done, then so be it. Information is vital to consumers.

In respect to Philip Golan: the guy purchased a drought relief calendar supplied by RB last year due to an initiative in aid of an Aussie charity I was part of. People like Philip should be treasured and not penalised. I can understand his frustration given what I’ve seen on the site.

This issue and the responses from RB show that the RB risk management processes are clumsy. If the fraud hazards had been properly identified early (there should be metrics that would show the trend) then some proper stakeholder consultation could have taken place along with the development of fraud management processes. RB claims to be a community however every time an issue arises of concern to the community RB acts with contempt. I have been through a similar process with RB earlier this year. When I last raised an issue RB censored me by deleting my posts to prevent the membership from seeing them.

Well done Peter Hill for raising the issue – I was not aware of it until now.

It will not take long for RB to burn the accumulated goodwill. It seems the RB management is quite inept when it comes to stakeholder communication and mangement.

It is obvious the country of membership is a different issue to financial transcations. With a bit of thought RB could still be the beneficiary of posted art available for sale and sharing.

The RB community is outstanding – no thanks to RB management. Providing the platform does not ensure a good community.

I’ve just found this post, though I had come across this issue before. I realise fraud is a serious issue and measures to try to counteract it must be implemented. But – I support Peter Hill’s statements – the ongoing “management” of communication from management sucks. This is now starting to become a regular occurrence – someone accidentally, through lack of information, hitting a brick wall re being able to participate in the activities of the site as they are supposed to be able…

@ Peter – I suggested repeatedly some time ago that the difficulties you are encountering are NOT occurring due to a deficiency in the ‘quallity’ of your rules and guidelines, but due to a lack of staff time and expertise in managing the situations they are expected to ‘manage.
Here in this journal thread you have AGAIN stated that your difficulty with communicating clearly to members is due to lack of time and resources…..
SO – FIX THE DAMN CORE PROBLEM – instead of wasting hundreds of hours of your already vastly overstretched manpower hours fiddling with the rules and fine wording of your regulations while “Rome burns”...
Kallena

@Peter – “The changes are competing with all the other changes on the list. See here for the full list.”
I have had a quick look at the list as susggested and there are some excellent ideas in the cooker (although most of them have been delayed due to “distractions” probably like this one!)
I can’t wait for square format cards, post cards or the ability to disable the share function on my account, they will all be a fantastic additions, but in the big picture, perhaps you should be looking at the importance of each in turn. Perhaps this issue is only affecting less than 1% of members, but judging by the responses you have received here and in other forums covering the same topic, it appears to be holding the interest of the other 99% ! Whether or not they have commented in such forums, a large percent of members have read them or discussed them and the major consensus seems to be that a solution from RB should be a priority.

My two cents…
I’ve been up since 5am_{read EVERY comment relating to this subject..
I am only an avid photographer, “rebubble” is a precious site for me.. as was Digital Photo Forum…It I have sold 3 items (sympathy purchases) since N0V 07, So, I personally have no a vested interest in $, the site operates as a business, therefore I’m not much of an asset. I would hate to loose folks who are the great quality artists, because of this error in judgement, Please RB, do whatever it takes to appease those who are your bread and butter clients and keep this community solid and together ~ as said}
” We stand:
• For artists
• For the work they create
• For the audiences they inspire
• For the buyers they move.
We honour them, their work and their passions.
The creative endeavour should be shared joyously with others.
All should feel free to join in the show.”

My two cents….... from Canadian Photographer….

I just found this discussion thread.

“To prevent fraud” ....... how can I put this …...Rubbish!!

I promise you that you can buy fraudulent credit cards from ANY country in the world, sitting anywhere you want in the world and all too easily!! So if it’s credit-card fraud you hope to avoid – I suggest you stop accepting cards alltogether – from EVERY country. Solve YOUR fraud issue – and don’t penalise members such as Judy and myself by painting the world with a very broad brush stroke to cover up your lack of business knowledge!

In the meanwhile … I have a $30 voucher I won in a challenge that I apparently can’t use because of the country I am from. Any takers?

Fraud notwithstanding, it is terrible to exlclude membership to the site from such a long list of countries! Ridiculous in this day and age! Certainly a method could have been developed to prohibit sales for members of this country and ensure that people could still join. I concur completely with Peter Hill that the communication is at an all time low. Judy asks a simple question and gets a very short unclarified answer on such an important issue! No wonder she was insulted, I would be too! So in addition to the lack of proper communication with members you can add poor customer service.Having a degree in marketing let me assure you that word-of-mouth can be lethal. A simple communication with members could have went a long way towards understanding the situaion and maybe even finding better solutions to the problem. Quoting 1% of our membership involvement is a cop out. Really only 1% are affected, in an artisitic community that prides itself on support and encouragement, 1% is important. I truly beleive that there has to be a better way of proceeding…

@Vikram – I think it’s easy to lambast people when you’re not interacting face to face – to say that our decision is rubbish is insulting – and the comment about being able to buy stolen credit cards is off the mark. People use these stolen credit cards to ship to particular locations – we identified the major sources of such fraud and took steps to stop the fraud. Why else would we make such a decision? From the list of countries we’ve stopped shipping to the combined fraud rate about 30%. We used all the fraud detection and prevention tools provided by PayPal – and frankly these tools were inadequate. PayPal leaves a lot to be desired – it’s not their problem so they’re not incented to solve it. They just close down accounts when there’s a problem with fraud. We worked with PayPal for about six months to try to resolve this – and only after all attempts failed did we take the drastic step of shutting down shipping to certain countries – and it’s largely solved the fraud problem.

For those who would like us to improve communication – I’ll take this on board. This decision affected less than 1% of our orders from last year (and of these orders about 30% were fraud) so the raw number of people affected was not large (for example, from Jul 08 – June 09 we shipped some 146,000 works of art and t-shirts – 130 items went to Israel). On this basis we didn’t want to send out a broadcast communication. Previously we’ve sent out targeted BubbleMails when we’ve made decisions like this – but at the time we made the decision (in the middle of the year) we didn’t have the ability to send out bulk BubbleMails. So we posted a FAQ in the support section of the site and worked directly one-on-one with many of the people directly affected.

Finally – can I encourage anyone who feels passionately about this to vote in the feedback forum right now my sense is that there’s a lot of passion about this from a set of people – but the suggestion to rectify this doesn’t seem to have broad support.

@Peter – it is I who am insulted by your action. I feel discriminated against and cheated. I stand by the “rubbish” comment. The entire business of card fraud can be handled differently and there are a whole bunch of ways:

1. Do you have the same issues with all your merchant accounts – or is it just with Paypal? Disable paypal for these countries.
2. AVS (Address Verification System) – Amex offers AVS for ALL it’s cards around the world – use it and disable Paypal for these countries. Visa, Mastercard and Discover will also allow you to use AVS but you need to contact them
3. BIN (Bank Identification Number) – the first 6 digits identify the issuing bank. A simple code-check will ensure that you can check if the issuing bank and the delivery country are from the same country.
4. Disable different bill-to-ship-to addresses. THAT is what I meant by buying CC information for any country from any country.

There are many, many ways to lessen the impact of fraud. Blindly blocking entire countries is NOT a solution and as you can see from the comments, smacks of discrimination.

@Vikram – we’re using PayPal payment processing and they don’t offer these services. We have a plan for improving our fraud detection that involves most of the things you’ve listed about (and more) but as I’ve said elsewhere it will take a considerable amount of time. Probably a month. We haven’t had the time and we’re unlikely to have the time in 2009 to make these updates. We had to make a short term decision to protect RedBubble from a level of fraud that was posing a serious threat.

I find this very discriminatory also. Really!! You have no right to block anyone from any country. I can understand if you don’t want them selling at this time, but do they not have a right to have a bubblesite and have buyers contact them directly?? I agree with many of the above! Blocking certain countries is blatant discrimination.

@Peter and everyone, really… Situations like this is no fun for anyone. All things considered I feel they did the right thing… for the short term. Give them some time to fix the problem. RB is still growing and it takes time to work out all the kinks. I ask everyone to take a step back, take a breath and offer constructive comments and ideas. Being angry and negative doesn’t help solve any problems. Take Peter’s advice and go vote in the feedback forum. This is a good way to start constructively working on this problem. Have a great day everyone… and breathe…

I’m not personally affected, and I don’t under-estimate the difficulties in running this site. However, it seems that there is a serious communication problem, and that a ham-fisted approach has been taken to solving the problem on an interim basis. Those two things compound one another. It feels ironic given the happy-clappy one worldism the administrators so often use to drum up trade. Surely a hugely more sensible approach would’ve been to flag up the issue for members of the site, well in advance, and then ask for preferred solutions. If the chosen solution really was necessary, people would at least have been prepared. Beyond that, I don’t think you’ve engaged with Judy’s apt point that all this policy does is encourage dishonesty. Would it not make more sense to ban purchases from those countries, without banning membership? I know you can’t fail to appreciate how insulting it is to find that your country can no longer speak its name. At the very least an apology to all would’ve helped, and would seem to be appropriate now.

PB

I write to direct attention to those who perpetuate fraud. Their damage is not just in what they steal, just as a terrorist’s damage is not just those they kill. Look what angst these fraudsters have created just with this issue here on RB. The digital world has empowered the immoral by giving them a huge playground. I think that there should be a higher level of horror about their insidiousness. I am here to place blame on them for what is happening here now. For what that’s worth. Seemed imperative to make statement.

Red Bubble seems to be in the midst of attempting to fight this mounting threat in our world. They are a small player. I have no idea of their numbers or their resources. I do know that they made an error perhaps on the side of profit. They did not consider the psychological damage of exclusion that is more important than the loss of money to those blackballed. It would have been the kinder, wiser thing to eat the fraud until they could come up with a solution that would not sacrifice their members. BUT who knows if the frauding was enough to sink the ship? Perhaps theirs was a panic solution. I would not expect it motivated by greed.

Ineffective communication has added fuel to this fire. We need to talk of fraud straight up!
Those who fraud steal trust and create emotional damage. Here we have a case in point.

Spent some time on reading all this… a summary of how I understand it:

Problem: I understand that RB doesn’t want to sell to certain countries because of high fraud rates (due to misuse of stolen credit cards)

RB solution: prevent people from some countries to become members, and existing members from these countries, to buy.

Well, there may be some better ideas, thinking about the following:
1. I don’t understand why artists from the countries on the list (see 1. above) couldn’t join RB and show their art. Sellers and buyers are not the same.
2. Wouldn’t it be possible to assign sort of status to people (kind of stars as members of e-bay have, based on their credibility)? People from listed countries that do sell a lot could get a star extra, and those who have bought previously, and paid without problems, too. Than it would be individual, no group prejudice. People with no stars: only ship after money came in order.

@ Peter:
>we’re not banning those people from being members of the site (but I do acknowledge they’re not able to buy and for new members sell)

But how can they become members if their country is not on the list? Do you want them to lie and point another country? :(

And, what if a group of bad people moves to another country and start to do their ‘business’ from there? For example to the Netherlands where I live? Or to Australia? Will you ban these countries too? Now that’s also an issue for me, and for everybody here, I believe, because you don’t know really which country will be the next one.

I understand that solving it can take some time; your guess was one month? OK, I’d be happy to see it solved, say, before February (it’s two and half months). For me (and I’m not the only one), this is a serious problem even if it doesn’t affect me directly, and if you don’t pay enough attention to it, you may loose more than you want…

@ Vikram: I use a credit card from another country, where I lived and worked before. Never thought I’d be suspicious because of that!

Peter this is just not good enough. 1% or 100% of your Sales, Fraud prevention methods should be your FIRST priority, before connecting to facebook etc. and the reference to cost in money your cost will be so much more if the current members decide to pull out because of the now ABUNDANTLY clear message that their transactions are in fact unprotected.

if you spoke to your bank, they would be able to put you in touch with fraud prevention software, the benefit and security far outways the cost.

this is ludicrous if you feel you are at risk to fraud all sales should stop, the little countries that you have banned only stand out for their fraudulent activities because they are the minority, if you do a search on the big countries that you’ve kept in i can bet that the % of fraudulent activites found amongst them are equal to if not more… they simply get swallowed up in the majority of transactions due to the shear size of the transactions from these contries…

@ Peter: the feedback voting link is not relevant; the question here is not about shipping to more countries, but about possibility to become a member!

I’ve  known about this issue for some time and still angry about it. Peter, you wanted some constructive critique and you got a lot. For one, the same statement of .01% only emphasizes to the current and potential members in these countries that they are insignificant, therefore we can eliminate them w/o a problem. Hiding the facts about it for months contributed to members leaving rb and losing revenues from them and future members. You shot yourselves in the foot by encouraging  stormy debates that with the borderless world of the Internet, only damages your pr and new membership. You keep giving the same answer of time and money but to my knowledge any business can transfer into a different cc system in a matter of days but not months, it only shows where the priorities are. Being forced to give answered due to this uproar yields slightly better answers, yet still evasive.  There is the issue of not respecting or abiding by the membership rulles and using a cannon method to kill a fly. The way matters are now, it is a recepie for a business disaster and not growth. 
There is also the issue of breeching trust with your members and ignoring the fire when it can still be controlled. 

@Peter I agree with Lenka – the feedback voting question is not relevant to the issue at hand.
RedBubble should increase the number of countries that it ships products to.
The link provided is entitled “end-the-redbubble-regional-geographic-member-discrimination” yet the voting topic is “RedBubble should increase the number of countries that it ships products to.” It’s not the same thing! If RB is going to base any action on the response to feedback to this vote, nothing will be achieved. People aren’t voting on this topic because it is not relevant!
Lack of communication is a common complaint at RB – perhaps we can add missing the point to that too.
I believe that RB acted quickly and in the only way it believed it could to protect itself from damage due to fraud. Fraud will never go away (sadly) but steps need to be taken to lessen it’s impact on RB. Other businesses transact with the so-called “black-listed” countries everday – perhaps RB could investigate what methods these companies have in place to protect themselves.
Keep us informed with your progress RB :-))

doesnt make sense at all…confused?!?

I am Bosnian and I support idea that Israel need to be on list. Israel is recognized like official country in UN and I think that we dont need to discuss about politics so much. RB need just to follow list of official countries and much more members will be here.

i’m on your side here judy!!!!! i’m confused on why rb would do that….

I left my first comment as “Judy” called me to comment this. But I just saw that many other countries missing – its really strange. I think that official RB people will do something about this. RB want to be recognized like a WORLD ART PORTAL so world cant be defined on this way. In a case that some shipping and trading problems exist in that case member need to be able to register like member from some specific country without possibility to sell or buy art (but RB need to write some reasonable explanation of course).
I am sorry in a case that I missed some other info. I really cant read every comment here.
Nedim

Wow I’m so stunned that a beautiful site like this one is being used by some country’s for fraud. I’m saddened that this has to eliminate well intentioned members and now doesn’t seem like an equal opportunity place to demonstrate our art abilities. I hope something is worked out so all concerned can once again be artistic and happy here. Sorry Judy, Hugs, Linda

This whole thing is discriminatory – do you mean to tell me that the countries on the banned list are full of criminals and that the countries on the “good” list are all perfectly honest? Also, Puerto Rico is part of the United States, how come it is on the list and the rest of the country isn’t. This is totally ridiculous and I hope RB finds a better solution than the one that has caused all this uproar

@Linda
It’s not being used by countries for fraud.It has been used by individuals for fraud ,like fraud exists in the etire world,but instead of taking steps to stop that,they punished 50+ countries

I totally agree with you:-)

@We have a plan for improving our fraud detection that involves most of the things you’ve listed about (and more) but as I’ve said elsewhere it will take a considerable amount of time. Probably a month
*Sorry Peter but this response sounds like SMOKE AND MIRROR to me! another month? what happened to the last month these people have been waiting on you?

wow … shocked !!! In this day and age I really believe there to be more eloquent / nimbler ways of dealing with business problems as they arise … ‘cause what RB encountered is a business problem when you set up an online business. Simple. Now, I’ve worked in banking, insurance and financial failure protection … I understand a few things about fraud and the impacts, so please don’t think I’m being dismissive of the problem. The handling of the matter is appalling though. Nowhere have I seen an outline of how any aspect of this matter is to be resolved. I mean, the fraud issue is an issue, and the offense caused to members of the community is another issue … interlinked, but another issue. Now, we are a community, it is organic and if anyone thinks that “1% of sales are affected by the decision”, then very little is understood about the nature of communities … !!! Saddening really think, that we can still treat each other so off-handedly. When you cut off your little finger, it might just be 1% of your total body that you’ve just severed, but your whole body will feel the profound pain.
Anyway – far be it for me to explain the offense caused, that has already been more than eloquently done. I also understand that heated discussions, raised blood pressure and general anger are not conducive to anything whatsoever. The voting thread that has been suggested, I am sorry, makes little sense to me … maybe because it’s gone past midnight here and I should be sleeping, or maybe it doesn’t make sense ‘cause nothing’s really been said in it.

Can someone please advise what the proposed action steps are and what time scales we’re looking at with regards to the different aspects / facets of the problem we have? I think that would go a long way to facilitate a bit of constructive communication, commitment, a show of good will …
Don’t say “it takes a lot of time” and “nothing will be done ‘till 2010” ... 2010 has 12 months in it … so a general outline of a plan of action would be good please?
Thanks
Tina

Thanks Tina…..well proposed and I’m certainly glad “you” understand SMOKE & MIRRORS speak!

Thanks Judy for sending me this link.
I am shocked that this is happening but at the same time I am wondering if all this is really about fraud? If this is RB’s decision than I am truly shocked but do we know if it was their decision?
I work in the Timeshare business and we have about 50 countries on the list that we can not sell to no Idea why and nobody can answer that question so I am just wondering. I understand that this has nothing to do with Timeshare but who makes these rules?
This site is about displaying our Art and I myself are not even here to sell since the profit will not make me or anyone else rich it is about sharing, learning, sometimes selling and meeting great people so I really do not understand what the problem is in banning those countries. I am quite upset with this whole thing. Now I have the feeling that we are all not created equal in someones eyes and it saddens me. I will check back every day to see if there is an answer to this.

Never mind my comment above…just read that it is about fraud…..well I am really amazed that ther is only fraud in the banned 50+countries and not anywhere else…whatever, I live in the United States and I am surrounded by fraud they just didnt get their hands on RB yet. Discremination that is all I can say. So insted of handeling the problems they just going to lock the doors to them? that is sad

I just got up this morning and I had an email regarding this issue, thank you Judy. First and most of all I am angry that we as members from these countries where not notified that we where banned. RB should remember that artists like us make this community and in the long run RB will lose more then just 1% of its sales, it will lose its reputation and that is a shame because this is a nice community. I know the internet business my son is a Merchant service provider and I know about fraud and chargeback problems very well and there are ways to protect yourself from this, my son deals with it everyday. Maybe they should contact my son’s company “I’m Global”:http://www.imglobalpayments.com/ he has seen businesses fall from one day to another, because they did not have their system set up the right way. And you should also remember money isn’t everything it comes and it goes but when you betray a trust that is hard to regain again. RB should think about the people that where not banned why should they trust them, maybe if they don’t resolve there problem suddenly they are being banned. Fraud is everywhere so that is a poor excuse; something tells me that RB does not have enough funds to protect its system or lack of knowledge how to deal with fraud and chargeback issues. RB is causing me personally a lot of problems and work because on my personal website I linked a lot of my works separately back to my work on RB, thanks a lot guys. Now I have to go to all the work again and link my work to zazzle which seems to have a much more sophisticated system. If RB does not have a positive solution for us, they give me no choice but to look for another community.

This is ridiculous. Art should be free from politics and discrimination. I hope this gets resolved asap. It’s very sad.

I just found out about this today. I have many friends from Israel on RB, including Ilunia. I hope this situation can be resolved quickly and that political correctness is not involved. I am so disappointed right now with RB.
@Peter-When Helengate (no disrespect to Helen) happened, many of us said that this is a business and should be run as such. You didn’t want to hear that but you are using it now to exclude people because they come from certain countries. I am not judging RB or anyone in the admin because I don’t have the full story. I just hope there can be some resolution to this. I stand with Ilunia and the others excluded.

I just talked to my son and he said the countries that are being listed by RB are high in fraud. What I don’t understand is why is not

Lithuania
Bulgaria
Romania
Ukraine
Macedonia (former Yugoslavia)

So my question is, why are not these countries on the list, because they are on the list in the processing world for high fraud. Israel is not on the list they do have problems with fraud like everywhere else. Is this a political issue from RB?

Judy.
I think we should clear the table a bit, put everything into proportion and return to the crux of this issue.

The issue is not just the lack of RB’s handling of the fraud. One must accept that they have a genuine problem. The country ban has been in place since June or July, so they have had ample time IMO to implement system and application changes, but have left it on the back burners for this calendar year so far.

The real issue here is the fact that they [RB] did not notify the affected members of their decision. This again IMO is an infringement of the user agreement. Unfortunately Peter does not agree with me.

“We may amend the terms of this agreement from time to time, and we will let you know about these changes either by sending you an email to the email address you have registered with RedBubble or by displaying information about the changes on our home page, or both. Either way, your continuing use of the RedBubble website will be taken to be acceptance of the new terms. “

No emails were sent to members residing and / or registered in the blacklisted countries, and no notice was posted on any front page.

IMO, RB forget that they are OUR agents, and that WE butter their bread.

“1.1 You appoint RedBubble as your agent to market to and obtain orders from customers for the purchase of your products over the website and to fulfil those orders by manufacture and delivery of your products (“appointment”) and we accept the appointment and will carry it out with regard to your interests.”

They have a duty to protect us and themselves against fraudulent activities, but they are bound by agreement to inform us of decisions and actions such as blacklisting, since such decisions and actions, constitute an amendment of the user agreement.

This HAS NOT been done, and the MAJORITY of members affected have no idea of their change of status.
This ladies and gentlemen is where the real issue lies.

To begin with, it is really crazy to ban people living in certain countries from being a member. It’s not only crazy, it’s discriminating and I think unlegal (also in Australia).

@ Peter: You keep saying in your answers that it only concerns less than 1% of RB sales!

But this is not about sales? This is about refusing members because where they live! Did you ever asked yourself how many people got hurt by this dicriminating decision?

Of course you have the right to pretect yourself against fraud, but there are other ways to do so!

I think Philip put it in a nutshell…I stand with him, Ilunia, Eyal, Judy and my other Israeli friends. RB acts as agents and their handling of this has been poor to say the least. There would be no “business” to make a business decision about, if not for us artists in the rb community.

I agree with all who are disgusted with this discriminatory action of RedBubble, which has a taste of “Orientalism”, of declaring that only people from Europe and other “first world” countries are civilized and trustworthy.

It is also obvious that we should have been immediately and publicly notified on such changes, especially those members who are personally affected by it – and this was not done. I think RedBubble has a strange set of priorities, if dealing efficiently with the risk of fraud, in all the available venues, was and still is not on top of the list, and offending and harming existing members seems an acceptable solution for the time being, preferable to taking the time needed to apply the common and reasonable solutions – which may take a precious month, or should have taken that month a few months ago, already.

I, like many others, got attached to this community and may find it hard to walk away in protest, but if the situation stays as it is and RedBubble keeps thinking small and arrogantly dismissing and belittling a part of its community as insignificant – I guess we should soon look for an alternative community.

Ilunia and Philip – well spoken and well put!!
I see it’s almost 24 hours since we had comment from Peter – some tangible feedback would go a long way at this point. The situation has been handled poorly, and sadly it continues to be handled poorly as no action steps, solutions or timescales are being proposed. This is disappointing. What is going on here is very much going against the grain of my belief and value set. It bothers me that purely by association I am effectively supporting something which I do not agree with, but what I love best about RedBubble is the community and that is important to me and I don’t want to lose that !!! Though initially I joined RedBubble because it seemed to be an ideal distribution solution for that which I am in the process of building … I suppose I can find that via other channels …
I’ll keep popping in here, hopeful of finding that these matters are progress to more a satisfying state of affairs

I’ve just created new feedback suggestion Let people from all countries become members of RB community. It says:
—
RB tries to prevent itself from fraud by not posting to some countries and not allowing new members from these countries. It is very important for the whole community and future of RB to find another, more appropriate solution as soon as possible. People from those countries have to have possibility to become members and share their art. Possibility to buy from RB should be assessed individually, members from any country should not be disclosed by default just because of residence in that country.
—
I believe it is more relevant than just ‘RB should post to more countries’. Should you find it appropriate, please go and vote to it. Can we show RB that we find this theme really important?

does this mean that fraud does not exist in US ?
hello, people, it’s probably the country where you will encounter the most of them on Internet (and elsewhere) !
discriminating is not a solution, barely the acceptation of a failure.
if I fail to correct a concern, I forbid it to exist, therefore who cares for collateral damages !
not everything should be seen through the mercantile prism…
my best, francis.

I’ve sent a group message to the members of the group
that I host! Maybe a good idea for others to do the same!

I also sent a message to the members of the group that I host. Thanks Anne Marie for the reminder….

This is how the voting ststem looks

and this is where you vote

why is it that no one is even willing to allow the admin a month or so to fix such a huge problem… of course the solution was poorly implemented, but they had to act quickly, and NO solution that would be immediately available would make everyone happy. I say that before you boycott you should wait and see how this situation is handles long term,,, if it is still a problem in february I will lead the charge!

The amount of fraud that would be allowed to run loose on RB, if nothing was implemented to stop it ,would be far more devastating to the members here.Buyers would stop buying ,a reputation of card theft and more…...This is the way that Peter went and is looking to fix the problem,which will not come about as fast as a lot of people would like.
I think it is very brave of Peter to come forward and explain ,at least, a wee bit of the reason why he has taken this route to preventing fraud and what seems his only way ,if he has to keep RB functioning at a level of secure payments for the members and buyers.
It always looks easier to run a business if the business is not yours…......Unlike most businesses Peter has been straight down the line and has given out information that he does not have to give out….......I don’t know any other managers that would give out as much info as Peter and RB.
As stated RB did not like or want to exclude certain countries and I am sure that this will be resolved in time.
The fact that all issues can be freely talked about and discussed together like adults is an extra bonus that RB provide.Opinions do matter on RB…........Thanks…....xxx…......... Doreen…..x

@Peter et al. I asked my IT geek mate, and he said indeed this takes time to fix, and that he’s had to block a country once when under an “attack” of some sort.I’ve read this entire thread to him. (He’s a lot less emotional than I, and I look to him for advice.)
I will give RedBubble admins time to fix what is apparently a difficult problem to fix/plug.

I Feel Really Sad for the people from countries now excluded from RB. For want of a better word that just plan SUCKS! I have a lot of artists from those places on my Watchlist & I hope this does not happen but I’m guessing it has to do with money,like too many things in this world. I hope they fix the problem so RB can truly be International!

it sucks?
this is where we’re trying to fix it

I just placed my vote and noticed that whilst all other suggestions in the feedback forum that have had comments left show the number of comments under the title, yet the This topic does not

I noticed the same thing on the suggestion Philip posted. I do hope this is a glitch.

Yes I know it’s still there…check under the actual title page before you open the topic…it registers as 0 comments…all other topics have the number of comments left posted under them.

I’m a newbie here on RB, I moved over from Webshots because of their arrogance to ignore suggestions and criticism of their members, as well as their bad information behaviour! No I feel like I’m out of the frying pan and into the fire! The way RB fixed this problem is an extreme action against these states and their people, in other words annoyingly and discriminating!!!

My only guess on this is that RB banned the countries that officially don’t regard copyright laws.
Music and movie piracy, practiced legally in many countries, wouldn’t tickle the Bub’s fancy at all. There’s no reason not to practice art piracy where it’s legal, too. Other countries may not be able to control the piracy going on within its borders. This is the only reason I can think that they might do this. It surely has to be resolved, but I, personally, don’t want my work, such as it is, to be pirated. I see it as a moral as well as a financial problem that’s showing no signs of reduction. As long as countries percieve themselves above moral and legal issues, I wouldn’t want to trade with them in general. Taking it person by person, which is pretty much impossible, but how I’d like it to be done, is what I would prefer.

Another point: The Bub might have been urged to abide by diplomatic or international trade recommendations. Or demands.

If the above are not RB’s resoning for banning countries, and if the are indeed going by the owners’ of the Bub’s political, personal, or religous considerations, then it stinks to the high heavens.

I recommend we ask, before we vote.

To JUDYBJ Your points are very good. So are the Bub’s. I’m willing to let them take the time to work it out properly. There are several problems inside the larger issue that will have to be solved one by one. I recommend patience, but I think the owners of RB should have been more up-front. The more ticklish the issue, the more ‘the workers’ need to be involved, but that’s such a modern-management, non-Asian concept that it’s not in style. Older, “Let’s just put a patch on it for now” works ‘for now’. Suddenly it’s not working ‘for now’ because the Members are stirred up over it. Nobody’s suggesting how to solve even part of this many-faceted problem.
I’d like the Powers that Be to talk to us all in a Forum for the Bubble, with owners and movers and at least a large group of general membership asking questions/ Forum to be thrown open for Members to view. Questions and maybe even suggestions then would be directed to the owners and after 4 or 8 weeks, more talk with Members about the whole thing. Yes, this is a very serious issue. It’s a hard issue to solve. I know that one of the ‘countries’ they’ve banned is an unoccupied island that sells Websites to anybody at all for 13 USD to further somebody’s interest in having it declared a Sovereign Nation. Things like this make me ask questions and seek answers.
I do have a suggestion for under-staffing: ask long-term, well-known and trusted Members to volunteer some time to help with chores, or to brain-storm solutions.
But, the owners are still in business to make money, however they can, as FlowersEtc said above. I love the Site, the Art, the People here. Best to you all—Dayonda

I’ve said all I’m going to say about this. I have a lot of art to post for somebody else to help them out. Maybe another person can help you with this. We are, after all, often separated by a common language. Best to you, Judybh. I’d like to meet in a platform where we can be friends. Dayonda

It’s something like you have a pain in right foot and Doctor ( Peter ) has decided to do surgery on the left. Instead a simple pain killer would have worked. So much of annoyance here across the members. What VIKRAM has suggested worked better. PHIL’s point is right WE bread the butter to RB.

I also feel annoyed that I stand in fraud countries while I contributed sales for RB.

@ Peter – Do you have answer other than it affects less than 1% sales????

Will go for it, Judy

if you spoke to your bank, they would be able to put you in touch with fraud prevention software, the benefit and security far outways the cost.

And who do you suppose would pay this cost, not matter what size it is. RB? Maybe, but probably not. Just like any other private business that has ever existed, costs, are generally passed onto the consumer.

I don’t want the products I sell to go up in price to cover expensive methods of fraud prevention, and I don;t want things I buy to go up for the same reason. I would rather listen to what Redbubble have actually said – in that they are sorting out fraud prevention but it will take a little time to implement across the site. At least that way, I am hoping that our base prices won’t have to rise to satisfy this issue for people who can’t or won’t wait.

A repeating issue here that many comments deal with is, that anyone can open an account and show his/her art. That’s fine, but not the issue that started the uproar. By eliminating 50-60 conties with one click, stripping  members from said countries to buy and sell, not following the user agreement which goes both ways, and knowing about it for a few months already, rb made a poor business, legal, and pr decision. Now that the word is spreading like fire, we start to here about a vague time line etc. I understand the loss/profit aspect from rb, but again, the solution was hasty, unthought well, hidden from members, and put on a back burner. Let’s not forget that thou it is an art community, business aspects of it are relevant to all sides. Rb makes money, and artists also sell and buy. This whole “business, fraud affair” was and is dealt with poorly. I wat to have specific timelines: when will a new anti fraud system take place? Are current members from said countries will now be granted their right to buy and sell? What actions were taken thus far specificaly to resolve these issues? Has a clear, communication been sent to all members, and posted in a clear way in rb site as per the user agreement?
I seek solutions, clarity and action, not harp on emotional comments ( which I do have planty of those, but they will not be productive here) Peter, please respond.   

This is a FREE site if you were to open the flood gates for fraud or put in another Payment system…are you willing to pay for it?

You’ve got me all wrong then Judy. Please try to refrain from losing your temper with me and calling me a liar for starters ok – because, I don’t tell lies. I wouldn’t treat you with such disrespect, and I would really appreciate it you can debate the issue on this, and not the person [namely me with your response to me].

When I said people can’t or won’t wait – I wasn’t referring to any particular timeframe. If people have been waiting a few months, then so be it – they may have to wait a little longer as has been requested of them by Redbubble. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and it wasn’t built in a few months either.

If you think I would rather look after my own, and “discriminate” against the rest of the world, then you don’t know me on that score either. I fight against disrimination where ever I see it – however, after carrying out some in depth research on this issue, and finding out facts, asking the right people, the right questions, I do not consider it to be discrimination. As we have been told, it is a temporary fix, and a long term solution IS being sought. the sooner it comes, the better, but I would rather wait and get a proper, well thought out solution, over a rushed fix that was put in place in a rush – just to keep people happy.

Existing members from the removed countries can still buy and sell their work here. New members can join and do everything on the site, but have to wait for the longer term solution before they can buy or sell. I personally don’t think that is unreasonable. It is just my opinion, but I won’t call anyone who opposes me a liar, a person who likes to discriminate or any other names for theirs.

I do not understand why everyone thinks that they can tell the owner of his business…How to run it….......That, is to me Ridiculous….....How would you feel if a stranger/customer/client told you how to run your business?...........

p.s.

I’d rather pay a small price for rights of all nations

I think you may find it wouldn;t be that small a price. Software development doesn’t come cheap. There is nothing to say taht it will work forever either – as fraud gets more clever, it would need further develpment – meaning, further, ongoing costs.

But we are not Partners or employees….and RB have not offended their own….....
If someone you did not know came up to you and told you how to run your business…How would you feel?.........Would you take on board that they are telling you that you are wrong in the way you are running your business?.........We are invited to join this site as Artists not as Executive Descision making Employees…........Why can’t you direct all this negative outpouring of energy to the proper channels,which would be Paypal.as they are the ones that are stopping any dealings with these countries ,not RB’s fault…........All this negativity has done more damage to you/us and RB than you can imagine….......This journal has done that job well…It has went Global now, ....I hope you are satisfied that RB is starting to get a reputation and name for discrimination which will in turn stop BUyers from coming to this site…....In turn , will effect your own sales….You have bitten off your own nose.

@Doreen
“You have bitten off your own nose”-NO ,i have not! I just showed some integrity

Judy. This has plenty to do with Paypal. If you were to sell your work online independantly, and a large proportion of your buyers used Paypal to make their purchases, that would be your main payment gateway. If Paypal then told you that they were going to stop you from using them, that would main your majority of buyers would no longer buy from you because they would no longer have the payment option that they like to use. If the only way you could keep the Paypal gateway for your buyers was to prevent shipping to a few places – What would you do in that scenario? Would you save your business and stop shipping to the countries that have caused problem via the paypal option on your stats, or would you shut up shop and close down?

That was the choice that Redbubble were faced with – what on earth would anyone expect them to do?

As for thinking a software solution could be written in a few months – it doesn’t work like that. Bespoke software writing takes a long time, it is expensive, and needs a lot of attention to detail. It can take a long time to get right. If a quick fix is applied now – RB may find themselves in the same boat in a few months time, when the solution fails because it wasn’t written properly. I am pretty positive that they are taking the time to make sure that they get things right.

Its a bit like cutting a finger deeply

You first apply some pressure to the wound to stop the bleeding [the immediate quick fix]

Then you ave two options afterward

a – slap a plaster on it and hope if doesnt fall off, and allow some germs to seep in through the dressing [quick and easy]

b – take the time to clean and stitch the wound, and tend it while it heals to make sure it stays clean [a bit more timely, but far more efficient]

” what on earth would anyone expect them to do?” for example switch to moneybookers or enything else exept what they did.
“As for thinking a software solution could be written in a few months “ no need to write new software-it already exists .What do you think other companies do? No need to invent the wheel again ,it’s there and everyone uses it.
Only the wound for them ,it wasnt there,because the wound was the members & that didnt bother them.Now it’s there for both parties and it’s time to fix it !
I’m fedup of chewing this over and over again
All these points have been discussed to exostion by now.So i’m done.
You’re entitled to your oppinion and the rest of us are entiteled to ours

Only the wound for them ,it wasnt there,because the wound was the members & that didnt bother them

Oh I am pretty sure that you are wrong about that, and it was a decision that they didn’t take lightly. At the end of the day Judy, the less countries they sell to, the less money they make. I doubt they wanted to do it by any means.

Now it’s there for both parties and it’s time to fix it !

and that is exactly what they are doing Judy – they have told us this, so many times now. Perhaps we should all give them the time and space to do it.

I’m fedup of chewing this over and over again

Well, if you’re going to light up a fire – be prepared for some smoke. There will be many people who will agree with you [I agree with you that ALL countries should be treated equally as soon as it’s possible to get that up and running] – but there will also be those who do not agree with you.

So all I am left with is hope. I hope that Peter and the RB bunch, see the error of their ways and find a way to fix this by unbanning all those countries. I hope that, if RB purchases some type of anti-fraud software, that they do NOT change RB from a free site to a pay site, where the artists would have to pay a yearly subscription fee to show our work. Right now, I have to give Peter the benefit of the doubt and let him and his people work it out and think things through carefully. I have to get this off my chest, even though no one is probably reading down this far into this unbelievably long thread. If RB does start charging some kind of fee, like a hefty sum per year, or God forbid a certain amount for each megabyte of space, then I am out of here. I hope that does not happen. Passing on their cost of software onto all of us artists here would just set me off and leave me no choice but to leave. The reason being, I am sick of having to get nickled and dimed to death for every time I want to breathe. Where I live, I get taxed to death, prices raised in a year where my salary gets cut, and every business in the world it seems, is justifying making things cost more because of their problems. I say to RB, as if they are even reading this, don’t put the hardship on the artists. Fix it and move on.
I have to thank Judy for putting the time and hard work of exposing this banning issue. She is upset and has used her anger to make us all aware. Anger can be a good thing, because it can cause positive change. Try not to let it eat you up Judy. Have a couple of glasses of wine and give your mind a couple of days rest on this issue. I respect where you are coming from and you did an awesome job of reporting it.
I think, and hope, (there’s that word again) Hope
that Peter will fix this without passing on some type of cost to the artists. Right now, he has his hands full, and because of people like Judy, cannot turn a blind eye onto this banning issue. If he does, he risks being blacklisted and possbily losing a large chunk of business. Because its more that just a business issue now isn’t it.

@ DoreenPhillips:
> I do not understand why everyone thinks that they can tell the owner of his business…How to run it……....That, is to me Ridiculous……..How would you feel if a stranger/customer/client told you how to run your business?...........

Dorreen, we are not telling how they should run the business, but they are our agents, and as our agents, they have a contract with us. We agreed, they agreed. Now they changed it without even letting know… That’s one of reasons why people are angry now. And some people come with ideas how things could be done, because RB says they did take some actions but it didn’t help…

@ Portrait Paradise:
>I think you may find it wouldn;t be that small a price. Software development doesn’t come cheap. There is nothing to say taht it will work forever either – as fraud gets more clever, it would need further develpment – meaning, further, ongoing costs.

OK, so should we leave it as it is? Maybe the bad business moves to my country next week, or to yours… And we’ll be blacklisted too. Wouldn’t that change your opinion on what is small price and will to pay for it?

@ Portrait Paradise:
>This has plenty to do with Paypal. If you were to sell your work online independantly, and a large proportion of your buyers used Paypal to make their purchases, that would be your main payment gateway.

But this was not about PayPal payments. This was about RB using PayPal for credit cards payments. There are other companies that make it possible to do credit card payments… Even so, some people do their online payments via PayPal, but many use others. Agents usually give more possibilities, look for example at the Comparison of the top microstock agencies

@ Portrait Paradise:
>the less countries they sell to, the less money they make

RB says it’s less than one per cent. From the business point of view, it doesn’t seem so important…

>and that is exactly what they are doing Judy – they have told us this, so many times now. Perhaps we should all give them the time and space to do it.

Peter said he wants to know how many people do support this idea before they set it high on the list of priorities. I thought it would be good to find out really about it and do something as soon as possible and as quickly as possible, that’s why I’ve put the suggestion in the feedback forum... Now it seems that people are interested, and it’s RB’s turn. I’m willing to give them time, if only some steps are really taken that would help. I wish the whole RB and all users that good steps will be taken asap. Good luck!

I am an american Jew and at first was very offended by what I’ve been reading, but it appears that it is not discrimination but purely a business decision that had to be made. I sure hope I,m right, if not I would want to deelte all my images . I see that Israelis and others can still be members yet you say Judy that no new members from your country can join ? Or is it that they just cannot buy & sell ?
this is very disturbing as I see a long list of blacklisted countries but if Rb is telling us the truth , I can understand their dilemma. either way, I,m starting to not feel very welcome either and I feel for you.

An excellent explanation from Peter. Kudos to him for the long and detailed response. In management sometimes you have to make a decision that is the lesser of two evils. I understand this as a purely business and monetary survival decision. I am glad that it was that and not some descriminitory attitude. Looks like a lot has been going on, and a lot of money was lost before a method of stopping the bleeding was discovered.
I applaud Peter and the team on all their efforts and hope this whole mess gets resolved soon. Good luck.

Very clear explanation but it completely bypasses a real solution that is quick and relatively painless to implement – and they choose to ignore that solution and/or don’t know enough to be able to find out more.

Get other payment gateways NOT just Paypal

Paypal has gathered a reputation among buyers and sellers of being very fraud-prone.and an increasing number of online buyers shy away when they see only a paypal option to purchase. – that is potentially driving down overall sales for EVERYONE

It is discriminitory Adam – just because you are not effected and that the explanation they’ve provided is perfectly logical, doesn’t make it less so. Business decisions are made by all sizes of companies – WITHIN THE ANTI-DISCRIMINITORY LAWS. No one can justify discrimination on the basis of a business decision – it isn’t legal.

I would be wrong if their agreement contained lines to the effect “We reserve the right to suspend shipping to certain countries at any given point”. But it doesn’t and when I accepted the user agreement that they act as my agent, it wasn’t there – so they are legally liable. The letter of the law says so.

It’s clearly a result of a business plan not having been thought through clearly. I sell a LOT of work through Zazzle and guess what? _they have other payment options!!
I understand that they say they will work on it – and I accept that at face value. What my rant is about is on my perception of what their priorities are and the manner in which they have (not) communicated this to the very people they make money off.