Greetings All,
Many of you know me and know I have been here for 14 years and I do not engage in drama, ever, if humanly possible. However, since Relda has decided that a public thrashing is the way to go to punish me for not meeting her demands instantly, I am going to respond to this posting, just once.
I will choose to just deal with facts and then you all can go with whichever way you choose:
This is the email we sent out and the bulletin we posted and the response we gave over Skype and in local chats with customers that were instantly impacted by the recent changes to the "TOS~Terms of Service" put out by Imgur which is the textures storage resource most of us use since the Photobucket debacle of a few years ago:
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Email and Chat to Customers:
CASTLE ESTATES ~ TEXTURE AND LAYOUT RECOVERY
Hugs all,
The textures from the purchased portfolio of Dominion Properties were stored and sold to us on an Imgur Account, which is a free resource for storing textures and we had decided to keep them there so that way my customers would be protected if I left RLC, and stopped paying for Photobucket and SmugMug (I pay for both), or So I thought! But now Imgur has made some "TOS~Terms Of Service" changes to their site and is using a Bot to determine "active textures and accounts" which is totally bizarre and unheard of before now, and they have not only deleted 1000s of textures across many accounts, they have also totally deleted or removed access to the Imgur account that we purchased from Dominion Properties which held 28 different layouts.
I am in communication with them but No reasonable response has been received and it doesn't look good as of this moment. This is affecting many layouts not just yours and its a huge concern for us.
Although it specifically stated in your purchase contract with us, that we have no control and are not responsible for any TOS changes for Imgur, Smugmug or Photobucket, we are still doing our best to recover what we can as soon as we can or if needed, totally remake textures if we can piece together what was there to begin with.
ASAP is not available. I apologize for the disappointment, we feel the same, this is ten year's of work and investment, but we are not giving up, don't you give up either. Escala, Outlaw, Yachts and the 5 different Jets are at the top of our list to be fixed, if possible. Circle back in a month or so and let's see where we are.
Thank you kindly
Sorry for the inconvenience.
Ladystar_DBN
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I want to say thank you to all those that have been gracious about this event and please note we are still working as fast as we can to recover or remake what can be remade, even though we were not the creators of most of these layouts, but only had made many updates to make them more marketable and more up to date for resale.
However, because we had made so many new changes and updates to these layouts, a very weird thing happened, when the Imgur bot was deciding what was and was not an active texture, even though it removed access to the entire account holding 28 different layouts, for many of the layouts about 2/3s of the textures were still visible to us and remained on a viable link even though we no longer had control of those textures or the account! This was and is a HUGE window of opportunity for us to reclaim 1000s of those still existing textures and do our best to recreate all the remaining missing textures as well, if we can remember what it looked like or possibly find a picture of the different rooms or just totally recreate something new that would be an acceptable alternative.
So in the past two weeks since this event we have:
1. Reclaimed 2000 textures on the Outlaw Layout,
2. Recreated from scratch the missing textures for the Outlaw Layout.
3. Posted a bulletin regarding the Outlaw layout and how to fix those issues
4. Sent out emails to those customers requests with instructions on how to get a new copy of the Outlaw Layout.
5. Reclaimed over 2000 textures from the Escala Layout
6. Recreated 0ver 50 missing textures from the Escala layout.
7. Combed through 5 years of sales and spreadsheets to find customer names for the Escala Layout.
8. Created a new spreadsheet for the Escala and Outlaw Layouts listing all the customer names, and whether we were able to send an email, or if their name has changed slightly or is no longer valid.
9. Created and sent an email to every Escala owner possible with instructions on how to get a new copy of the Escala layout and if they needed assistance re-applying the layout, I would help them personally which I have done and am doing daily!
10. Keeping records of who has received a new copy of the layout and who has not responded but can in the future, because we keep track of all purchases, customer names, and the products they purchase from the beginning to eternity.
11. Moving on to ALL FIVE JETS which were hit the hardest because those textures were the oldest, the cockpits on those jets were incredibly detailed and have props on top of props and textures on top of textures and they were so great, we did not do much updating in the cockpits or in many parts of the planes because they were already so great to begin with, so when it came to missing textures, these are some of the hardest hit so far (we haven't even gotten to half of the missing layouts that were not even for sale yet) we are just racing to recover the textures that are available to us and trying to recreate the layouts that have the most requests for recovery as fast as we can.
12. One of my partners took on the huge and complicated job of trying to recreate of the cockpits, wings, and interiors of the plane. The recreation of the cockpit he did was astounding! and I am so proud of the work he has done as he has not been in deco all that long, and I came in behind him and did some color matching. It turned out so well that I asked him to move on to the other four jets and even though the colors were not matching to put in those same textures in them as well so I can come behind him and do color matching and finalizing of these draft textures. Then we can come back and try to recreate the rest of the missing planes one texture at a time including the exterior portions, wings, etc, and collect the other 6000 textures across four jets that we STILL do NOT have control of and continue on to try to piece together the re-creation of the rest of each jet because each was different.
13. SO...when we have recovered the textures, recreated the layout in entirety to OUR SATISFACTION with the results that they are the same or equal to the layout as originally purchased, we will then comb through all the spreadsheets for all the people that have not contacted us yet and send them an email explaining how they can get a new copy of their purchased jet, we only ask for the transfer fee of 20 rays. Since we have only just started on the jets, they are no where near recovered or recreated yet, but I have very high hopes that we will be producing copies of these jets that are more than satisfactory replacements for the ones that are lost and we hope to start that within the next month or so.
14. And then we will be moving on to the rest of the 28 layouts that are lost and hoping we get a chance to recover as many of those as possible too. We could have thrown up our hands and said "oh well, not our problem" like many did when this happened in Photobucket, as every layout recipient agreed to a contract when purchased that we were not responsible for TOS changes to Imgur, Smugmug or Photobucket, but we have not done that, we are spending every working moment trying to do our best to recreate and recover layouts for EVERYONE involved.
With regard to Relda herself, it is hard to know where to start? The idea that she is more important and her layout is more important than any of the other 50 customers that we have heard from that are all concerned about the demise of their layouts and properties? That she should come first because, well she has referred some people to my clothing store? That despite 50 other customers politely understanding the news of what has happened, know that we are not responsible for that event, and are grateful and appreciative of the fact that we are racing to recover their layouts as fast as we possibly can? Not a single person was impolite or disrespectful with the exception of Reldra, who believes that because she gifted one of our layouts, hired another decorator to make changes to it, that somehow we owe her more than what we owe every other customer? That somehow we have to become her personal decorators for free to restore her layout texture by texture. She was absolutely free to make changes to the layout we sold, but we are not responsible for those changes, nor are we taking on that responsibility and we will not continue to receive disrespectful emails from her making demands that we stop what we are doing and concentrate only on her needs. I won't go into the disrespectful remarks used and the only thing I am sorry for was my terrible judgement in her character.
I was going to hire Reldra to help me get some of my other older layouts off Photobucket and on to Imgur to protect those customers too prior to this issue. I even spent 45 minutes training her on a much more simple method of doing so that takes less than half the time. Since she makes her living restoring Photobucket debacles, and I don't do deco for hire, I referred some work to her from another customer that was looking for someone to fix their Photobucket problems. Reldra reached out to me to thank me for the referral because they paid her so well and with the new methodology I taught her personally, it took her almost no time at all to fix the whole thing. I am quite sure the rays she made from this referral will cover the 20 ray transfer fee we will be requesting when we are ready to send out a new copy of the jets.
The thing that strikes me though, is here is someone who now knows how to copy, paste and replace textures and links, and can quite capably take the new copy of the jet we will be sending out, put it on a clone or another template, and then replace the links to the textures herself if she doesn't want to lose her most recent decor updates to her older version, this is literally what she does for a living here. But instead of thinking this through for herself, she decided to do a public thrashing to try to force me to do what she wants in the time frame she wants it done. This is not going to happen and I don't really respond to threats.
And for the most accurate record, Reldra GIFTED the Rockstar Jet to King_CJ_GNV, it is HIS jet, so he is the one that received purchase contract regarding no responsibility for TOS changes in Photobucket, Imgur, and Smugmug. Reldra had bought the Club Neon and the Infinity Yacht for herself over the last two years, for which she received the SAME purchase contract for both of those properties and is therefore quite familiar with the purchase agreement sent out with all property purchases that also gives instructions on how to reset start points and music selections.
So Reldra, I am sorry you are upset, we all are, and as you were told, we are racing to get new property versions created where we own and control all the textures and have recreated all the additional missing textures and got the layouts completely restored to OUR satisfaction, just as fast as we can. When that is complete, we will send a newly restored jet to King CJ and all the other customers patiently waiting for them as well.
Oh and finally yes...you are fired.
