By Will Judy
Jun 27, 2004
Prologue: Okay, Will Judy has been writing for Blue Blood projects since pretty much the beginning. I love having him review sites for BlueBlood.net, except for the unpredictability of actually necessarily getting the piece assigned within a month window of deadline. Now, in general, I’m pretty sick of the plethora of people who put up three photo sets of tattooed girls and claim to have invented altporn or whatever the catchphrase du jour is. I’m also not nuts about people who want to get on the bandwagon now, when I struggled for years to promote my aesthetic, to show the world that purple hair could be attractive, to change people’s perceptions of beauty. We frequently help folks starting out when they are sincere of course. But that is a whole nother article from this one.
Anyway, there was this site called Goth Fuck which sort of riffed on the Gothic Sluts tour a little bit. Forrest Black, being responsible for much of the design end of things here, was inclined to punch the designer for the Goth Fuck corp in the eye. I was inclined to give the guy a chance and see what he was like. The corporate designer guy did turn out to be a lot of fun and both Forrest and I totally liked him and all of his coworkers we met in three different cities. So, about a million beers into hanging out with a bunch of the reps of Goth Fuck’s corporate parent and I decided that they were so likeable that how bad could the site be, so we should support them and give them some press.
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I’d like Will Judy to get on the stick and finish his review of Sin Is Her, but, as the following email exchange demonstrates, I understand why he might be a little less forthcoming on a review of Goth Fuck. My words are in basic black and Will’s portion of the conversation is in blue.
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Hey Will, can you write a review of this site:
Goth Fuck
Doesn't have to be positive. Doesn't have to be negative. I'd like you to go ahead and buy the $1 trial and review the site during the trial time, including your experience of how easy it is to cancel after your trial. Should you end up getting bizarro extra charges, I want to know, but I do know a bunch of the corporate folks from this company and should be able to take care of any problem. They know the review might not be positive and are okay with that.
Deadline of March 1 okay?
Anything else you are chomping at the bit to write about?
--Amelia
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I'm all over it. I'm in just the mood.
--Will
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Excellent (insert Mr. Burns dialect here)
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They won't take my subscription. I checked with my bank, and they've authorized $1 from checking, but the site keeps kicking me out and won't take my password.
That's my review, short & sweet, unless they're willing to give me a comp.
--W
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lol
Shoot me your username and password and when you signed up and I'll check on it.
Their customer service page is at http://help.gothfuck.com/index.phtml
Did they send you a confirmation email?
--A
PS you marmoset molester
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Username: Meta
PW: 3443
They sent me a load of spam for other sites and an email confirming that I'd been removed from their list (which I didn't request).
I had some vague hope that my bb address wouldn't become a spam chasm. Oh well.
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Don't know if you did this already, but I sent the following email through their online customer help system:
"signed up from email CENSORED@blueblood.net with username Meta and password 3443 and have received a number of email advertisements from you but can not access the site and my checking account has been billed for $1 already."
Please don't forget to use the cancel link at http://help.gothfuck.com/couldnot_find.phtml? before you are rebilled for a gazillion dollars.
--Amelia
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The authorization for $1 hasn't gone through, annd I can't cancel (since they don't recognize that I signed up). So I'm going to wait a day or two to see if the authorization expires.
I'm not giving these guys my CC# again in another transaction. If either one of us hears from their customer service, we can try again. But my finances are fucked enough.
Sorry to leave you hanging.
--W
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PS Here is the addl cust serv thing sent:
"Can't access GothFuck.com
Can't cancel my account
Don't want to be rebilled
Do want access to the site for the trial I signed up for"
I'll talk to someone over there who is an actual person during biz hours, but please give me all the info you can before then. Thanks, A
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How bad do you want this review? Because I'll merrily do a hatchet job on them based entirely on the free tour. They will have to send a minimum of two models over to the house to blow me if they want anything positive written about them at this point.
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I warned them it might be a hatchet job, but I think the inside of the site should somehow figure in it. Have you been able to get in contact with them at all? I just had lunch with someone from a different part of their company today. I didn't think to ask her about it, although that might have been a bad place anyway. I might be able to get her to come over and give me oral if I really put some charm effort in. Would that count?
--A
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Managed to sign up for " Gothy Fucks" $1 30-day trial. Got dumped into a loop of shitty pop-ups and "free members only offers". Finally found my way into the site just in time to get a "confirmation" that I was being billed $39.95 and then shit all over with spam for "free extras" I'd opted out of. Which I will probably be billed for.
Pretty sure I managed to cancel. I haven't looked at the site except the disgusting thumbnails on the front page. This is my review unless you want more swearing.
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Bleah. So is your membership expired? Please make sure you used the cancel form.
What is your username and login?
Also: bleah.
--A
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UN: MetaM
PW: 2437
I followed the instructions for cancelling. We'll see how that goes.
Again, if they comp me, I will review their shitty-looking content. I will also trash their signup system and mock them for even registering
" gothyfucks.com". Hey, no such thing as bad publicity, though I will do my best to make it so.
Otherwise, I have to step away from this assignment. I'm sorry to be a
little diva (and to fuck up 2 out of 3 assignments this month alone), but I have too much shit going on right now to be giving personal info to obvious thieves.
Sincerest apologies,
Will
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Wow. That is even worse than I expected. I mean I expected it to suck. I expected it to suck a lot. But that is so bad, the mind boggles. They don't even have the sets from the tour inside the site. Not that those are great either, but . . . Actually mentioning a specific like that seems like real nit-picking when it is just really really terrible. Their reps are almost all really fun to drink with and people do buy memberships in that site, but fuck that is probably the worst site I have ever seen the inside of. I'm going to have to think about what to do on this. Tempted to run our email convo about the site as the review. My favorite quote is: "This is my review unless you want more swearing." I almost feel like you can't say anything negative enough to do that site justice. The harcore GothicSex people are my pals now and don't seem to hold a grudge though, so maybe an honest review wouldn't get me beaten up.
I am sooooooooooo NOT even a little mad at you for this. Let me know when a good time to chat would be and I'll fill you in on some of what is going on with Blue Blood and we'll come up with some stuff for
you to write which does not involve making your eyes spurt blood.
--A
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Feel free to edit our exchange down as a review. If anyone threatens to beat you up, blame everything on me. If they give me any shit, that's my excuse to finally buy that Mossberg 20 gauge that the house has been missing all this time. I was going to get myself a ukulele for my birthday, but a bantam pump-action would be almost as fun at parties.
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I think I would prefer not to attend any shindig which involved you and a shotgun *or* you and a ukulele.
What times of day are good to ring you?
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Ukuleles rule.
Between 7 and 11pm eastern time is your best bet. I'm in one of those depressive phases where I sleep all the time instead of staring at the ceiling all night.
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Motherfuckers charged me $1 + $39.95 in spite of my having cancelled. This will also cost me a $32 insufficient funds fee.
This is a problem.
--W
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What method did you use to cancel?
You should immediately do their customer service form and point out that you were erroneously charged and tell them when and how you cancelled. Please let me know where you are at.
--A
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Did that, and have lodged a complaint.
Considering that the site appears to exist as a method to steal, I'm not sure that asking for my money back will work.
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Hey Will, when did you cancel and what method did you use to cancel? --A
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Thursday, using the billingsupport interface, which only says they charged me a dollar:
***************** CANCELLATION RECEIPT ********************
This message is to confirm your membership cancellation.
Your membership has been removed from our billing database
and you will no longer be billed for the following product:
Product: Gothy Fucks - 30 Days For 1.00
Site: www.gothyfucks.com
Member ID: 75578425
Your membership to the website will continue until the end of the
term you have purchased, but you will no longer be billed for your
subscription. We appreciate the opportunity to help you.
Thank you for using our online cancellation service!
***************** Date : 03-04-2004 ********************
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Epilogue: Will did get his dough refunded as desired. I will probably never be able to bring him to a webmaster convention. He doesn’t like to leave his garden anyway. And, no matter what it says here, a bunch of you gentle readers will discover GothFuck reading this and rush over to sign up. I recommend buying gift subscriptions for exes using their personal email accounts to register.
