Here is the latest from the Compactsurf admin:
"Dear Compact Surfing Members,
I hope you will read this update closely, and consider
all that I say here carefully, with the understanding
that the Compact Network will be implementing further
changes in the coming weeks, but we are here to stay
for the long term as I have promised from the
beginning.
As of today, Friday, June 16, 2006, Compact Surfing
upgrades will be disabled. Allow me to clarify our
reasons for doing this, and our plans for the coming
weeks ahead:
1. The price of gold per ounce, as all of you know,
has dropped significantly in the past several weeks.
Because of this, the Egold funds in reserves that I
had to maintain for the operation of CS diminished in
value tremendously on a daily/weekly basis. There has
been a 15 to 20% drop in the value of gold in the past
several weeks, from above $700 an ounce in May to
around $570 as I write this. What this means is that
most upgrade values that were sent to CS and held
online in order to provide the old trademark “fast
payouts” dropped in $$$ value while waiting to be paid
out. This has been occurring for weeks now. We
persisted, believing there would be a turn around with
the gold markets, that things would average out, but
to date, this has not happened.
We’ve reevaluated the situation, and have decided now
to stop taking upgrades until such time as the gold
markets stabilize, we hope by mid-summer. We feel
this is best for both the company and our members
financially. Members have faced the same situation CS
has when their payments arrive to their accounts and
drop in value within hours…what took several days to
build in profits has sometimes been diminished within
hours, sitting in members Egold accounts. In
accordance with this decision, the ability to upgrade
to CS accounts will be disabled today.
For those who do not understand why drastic drops in
Egold might affect the reserves of a program designed
like CS, here’s why. The 3 cashout requests per month
combined with the processing of requests every day of
the week, and 48 hour “fast payment” meant we had to
keep a majority of Network funds in reserve in Egold
rather than offline. 48 hours was not long enough to
move funds through exchangers online for payments or
offline for protection of capital, especially on
weekends when banks are closed. This is why, in our
last newsletter, we established the 7-business day
timeframe as being more realistic and manageable for
the future of CS, however, since that last update, we
have considered the situation further.
2. On June 9th, we processed nearly $500,000 USD in
cashout requests. I continued to use the remaining
funds left to pay as many requests as I could, and you can view a screenshot of
all payments sent here:
http://compactsurfing.com/first1.PNG
http://compactsurfing.com/second2.PNG
http://compactsurfing.com/third3.PNG
3660 payments were sent the last 2 days and each single sent was paid.
Moving Forward: We are going to do refunds for
members with pending requests, put the program on hold
and relaunch in the summer, when hopefully the gold
markets have stabilized and by which time I will have had
time to implement Compactpay with features available and
debit cards. All funds in my possession
less operation costs will be used for refunds. In
the coming weeks, the support staff will assist me in
this work. Members in profit will not receive
refunds. Those members not in profit will be returned
a percentage of their initial upgrade purchase
dependant upon the total available for distribution.
Earnings and referral commissions will be deducted
from your pendings in our calculations. Please be
advised that I am doing this despite the fact that our
terms have always stipulated that upgrade purchases
are non-refundable.
3. All Compactpay members with funds in CP, please rest
assured that your funds are secure. I will announce
next week the procedure for how returns of
whatever you funded into your Compactpay accounts will
be executed. After the funds have been removed from
the system, during the next few weeks, the database
for Compact Pay will be inaccessible to members as my
programmers and I work to implement features which I
have not had the chance to dedicate time to. Please
be patient and I will update further regarding this in
the coming weeks. For those members who have made
recent Bank Wire Fundings, I cannot address those
until next week when the bank is open so please be
patient with this as well.
With that said, the following actions will be taken in the
coming weeks. The Compact Network will be relaunched at the
end of August/early September and I have decided for now
that the following three sites will be the focus of my
time and resources: Compact Surfing, Compact Lottery,
and Compact Pay
A. Compact Surfing
1. Expect a new layout and design to the site. The site
will offer 14% daily for 9 days on your upgrade
purchases tentatively. Upgrade units will be $10 USD
each and the maximum member balance with active
upgrades will be $10,000 USD. Payout Timeframe:
Upgrades will become pending in your Cashout History
automatically upon expiration. They will be processed
within 7 business days following date of expiration. No
more having to request cashout. This setup is
perfectly clear on when members will be paid. In
addition, I will know exactly what is needed ready in
my online payment processor accounts each week to
process payouts. As such, I can store the majority of
funds offline accordingly so that we are no longer at
the mercy of gold price fluctuations.
2. Compact forum will still be in place; possibly changed to
vbulletin format as I have received feedback requesting this from members.
3. More details to be announced when available.
B. Compact Lottery
1. Expect a new layout and design to the site
2. No more purchasing tickets from cash balance; you
will be able to purchase directly from Egold and
tentatively Compactpay as well. Winners will be paid
within 5 business days following announcement of
weekly lucky numbers.
3. Cash prizes will be greater in amount, though the
number of winners will be less than the past track record
to allow for ease of management in distributing payment of
prizes. The amounts for Weekly prizes will be announced on
the site as well. Distribution of rewards still to
be determined by the administrator.
C. Compact Pay
1. I will work in the coming weeks to develop
relationships with exchangers to bring on board to
offer funding/withdrawal options for Compact Pay that they
will handle individually and efficiently.
3. I welcome any member suggestions with regards to
implementing debit cards. Compact Debit Cards are
still planned, but due to the current situation, and
recent comments made by members regarding their wishes
for certain cards, I have cancelled our previous order
for cards. For those of you who prefer Cardoneplus
over Virtual Money, and vice versa, please contact
Nvus with your reasoning and he will forward me
details and I will make a final decision in the coming
weeks: cn_nvus@yahoo.com
4. The Shopping Cart Interface will be made available
and upgrades/cashouts through CS via CompactPay will be
available as well to coincide with relaunch of CS.
Expect further announcements from me in the coming
days. The Compact Network is here to stay and we are
not going anywhere, I assure you all. After 3 months
of hard work and dedication I will not give up and I
ask that you do not give up on me now either. We have
faced obstacles beyond our control in the past several
weeks, but the above plan of action will allow us to
return, stronger than ever. Thank you all for your
continued support.
Sincerely Yours,
Luuk Hendriks
Altus Financial Services Inc."
Read the rest of this entry »
).