See y'all at the next concert!

Stop acting like it's gon' be the last time.
Prince can slap you around as much as he wants.
Then he'll sing you a love song to make it all better.

But when them tickets go on sale...
That purple trenchcoat won't come out of storage fast enough!

Purple Rage: Prince Fans Automatically Charged For Another Year of Dormant Fanclub...

The Musictionary:

To Prince, His Purple Majesty, His Royal Badness, The Dick Formerly Known As Prince:

Today, a year after opening your LotusFlow3r club, you charged fans who had requested to cancel their annual memberships another $77. How do I know? Because I am one of them.

Prince, you’ve gotta cut this shit out. I’m a big fan, I drove 15 hours to see you last year. I own all of your albums, movies, and lots of other memorabilia. Yeah, I’m a fan. But would it kill you to treat your fans correctly for once? When you first announced your new LotusFlower club, many more experienced fans said “don’t do it, Prince has a baaaaad history in the online marketplace.” I went ahead and signed up anyway, gladly paying the $77 because of all the things you and your team mentioned would eventually be coming to the site. Exclusive content, rare material, possibly even long-awaited releases from your vault. Instead we got a spinning orb of videos, three albums (which were available at Target for less than $12), four “new” streaming tracks and if fans were lucky, they actually received the t-shirt you promised. Luckily I got my shirt, but from reading what’s available on the internet, I’d say anywhere from 30–40% did NOT get their shirts.

The worst part is, several months ago I sent a request to your support/sales group at LotusFlow3r requesting to cancel my membership. I never received a reply, so I went into the site and changed my credit card information. I figured that surely that would be enough. I knew that the site auto-charged every year, but the terms stated that you had to email support@lotusflower.com, which many, many fans did. Instead of a reply, we all woke up with nice little $77 charges this morning. The best part? As of the time of this writing — your website is actually down, and completely inaccessible.

Part of me wants to hope that you have something bigger planned. But that makes it sound like I’m drinking the purple Kool-Aid, which I’m not. I just want my $77 back, please. If you can show me that you have better things coming, I would even possibly consider rejoining the site, but I don’t want to pay $77 for a black page.

Sincerely Please stop being a giant purple dick,

-Steven Anthony Hammock

UPDATE: And just like that, here’s the official message from the support team:

Dear LotusFlow3r.com members,

We were saddened to hear today that the earliest adopters of LotusFlow3r.com were charged $77 for a repeat subscription to the website. We did not expect this action to occur automatically as we had not set up a recurring billing script in our code. After getting on the phone with the payment gateway Authorize.net, we found that the subscriptions were being renewed on their end. We immediately discontinued the recurring billing for all further subscriptions and we will be refunding those who have been charged. We are very sorry for the inconvenience and are working quickly to refund anyone who was charged for a second year. Please be aware that Prince himself had no hand in this and that the error was due to lack of thoroughness on our part.

Sincerely,
LotusFlow3r development team

[Insults snipped - We really don't need to repost what I consider very negative remarks made by members. Let's stay above ground, shall we? - June7]

Giovanni777 said:

Jesus. And this is what P.org has become. I long for the days of AMP.

Giovanni777 said:

Jesus. And this is what P.org has become. I long for the days of AMP.

BlackandRising said:

That is what it became ... The Son Of AMP after the Prince.org 2.0 occured.
All of the negative people floated over here in 2001.

If someone could pull the old "org" up they will see the "planned invasion" back in the Spring/Summer of 2001. When Ben upgraded the site shit went batshit crazy.

Giovanni777 said:

nah. hopefully it'll curb his impulse to be a dick.

The Daily Swarm? Here I was thinking we'd made the New York Times or something.

I'm curious about something that y'all seem to be deliberately not talking about.


Since Lotusflow3r faded to black before Gavin contacted anyone over there, technically year 2 was abandoned without a word, before the eye of the shit storm hit, so if no one had said anything and just sat back waiting for year 2 of what they were told was a yearly membership to commence, I wonder if they would have kept the money and how long they would have kept y'all dangling waiting for something for BIG to happen?

What is the world coming to? I mean really, get a grip.

If an erroneous charge of $77 would make you write such tripe, perhaps you should ask yourself if you really should have spent the money in the first place; certainly Prince did not reach in your pocket and spend it for you.

Sweet, so, to be honest, I have received actual hatemail from some of you people. Crazy. C-r-a-i-z-e-y.

Let me clarify a few things and this will be my last post in this topic.

I AM a fan of Prince. I gladly signed up for LotusFlow3r, and I liked the site. I liked that I got guaranteed tickets to his Paisley Park gig last year. And I drove 15 hours to see him there.

Everything on my blog is written with humorous intent. Yes, I called Prince a dick. And yes, I did mean to use a pejorative term for the article. I don't know why some view it as such a "low blow," but I'm sorry if I've truly offended you. I am not, however, sorry for calling him a "negative" name. If this article hadn't been taken up from my site, you would see that I posted a follow-up in which I praised the LotusFlow3r support for getting the refunds out and clarifying things.

I will not take down my article because it was an honest reaction to what was going on at the time. I have made sure on my actual website that people KNOW LotusFlow3r did everything they could to help the fans.

But to those of you sending me hatemail, threatening me, etc. etc., it's all good. Do what you want -- but a heads up, I WILL use your emails on my site if I so choose. And for those of you calling the original article "tripe," I don't feel that's a fair assessment. I wrote an honest response to what was going on at the time. Overreaction, maybe. Immature by calling Prince a dick? Depends on how you view the word "dick." Regardless, my article was a response to something that happened online. It's not something to get bent out of shape over.

And remember that this article was from the DAY the $77 charge occurred. It was more relevant at that time.

Basically, get over it.

man.....

in all fairness-it was a mistake-not a malicious grab-and was returned swiftly

personally-im glad Lotus is gone-i moved on from it a while back

now its gone-mabey we all can

False, never once did I personally send Prince hatemail. In fact, I don't even hate Prince. Yet some of the crazies here now hate me. Regardless, I didn't say I couldn't take it -- I was merely offering clarifications for things that people were attempting to dish out.

If you have something to say to me, go ahead. But man up and say it in public instead of sending it to my private email address, or better yet to my cell phone, you crafty fams. Some of you all are crazy, for real. But it's all in good fun, I suppose.

Oh, and when I say get over it I mean both the $77 problem (after you get your refund, that is) and my article. It's old news.
[Edited 3/29/10 22:48pm]

Sweet, so, to be honest, I have received actual hatemail from some of you people. Crazy. C-r-a-i-z-e-y.

What is the world coming to? I mean really, get a grip.

If an erroneous charge of $77 would make you write such tripe, perhaps you should ask yourself if you really should have spent the money in the first place; certainly Prince did not reach in your pocket and spend it for you.

Well I wasn't one of them who sent hate mail.

But what's important in all this to me are 2 things.

1. By the time this story was posted, members had already received refunds so it's old news and not true anymore that they have not paid for another year of membership.

2. The org comments that were originally posted with the blog post only draw negative publicity for the org and reflects on the kinds of fans Prince has to deal with. Personally, I think it only worked in fAVOUR in Prince's favour which is obviously the opposite of what the writer wanted to do.

Sweet, so, to be honest, I have received actual hatemail from some of you people. Crazy. C-r-a-i-z-e-y.

Let me clarify a few things and this will be my last post in this topic.

I AM a fan of Prince. I gladly signed up for LotusFlow3r, and I liked the site. I liked that I got guaranteed tickets to his Paisley Park gig last year. And I drove 15 hours to see him there.

Everything on my blog is written with humorous intent. Yes, I called Prince a dick. And yes, I did mean to use a pejorative term for the article. I don't know why some view it as such a "low blow," but I'm sorry if I've truly offended you. I am not, however, sorry for calling him a "negative" name. If this article hadn't been taken up from my site, you would see that I posted a follow-up in which I praised the LotusFlow3r support for getting the refunds out and clarifying things.

I will not take down my article because it was an honest reaction to what was going on at the time. I have made sure on my actual website that people KNOW LotusFlow3r did everything they could to help the fans.

But to those of you sending me hatemail, threatening me, etc. etc., it's all good. Do what you want -- but a heads up, I WILL use your emails on my site if I so choose. And for those of you calling the original article "tripe," I don't feel that's a fair assessment. I wrote an honest response to what was going on at the time. Overreaction, maybe. Immature by calling Prince a dick? Depends on how you view the word "dick." Regardless, my article was a response to something that happened online. It's not something to get bent out of shape over.

And remember that this article was from the DAY the $77 charge occurred. It was more relevant at that time.

Basically, get over it.

What is the world coming to? I mean really, get a grip.

If an erroneous charge of $77 would make you write such tripe, perhaps you should ask yourself if you really should have spent the money in the first place; certainly Prince did not reach in your pocket and spend it for you.

sweething said:

Quoted for astonishingly blinkered fammy idol worship.

Giovanni777 said:

You really think so?

Not laughing at you. It's just that I suspect "the usual suspects" will actually get off on seeing their negativity trumpeted to the wider world.

NouveauDance said:

it is the perfect example, isn't it?

See y'all at the next concert!

Stop acting like it's gon' be the last time.
Prince can slap you around as much as he wants.
Then he'll sing you a love song to make it all better.

But when them tickets go on sale...
That purple trenchcoat won't come out of storage fast enough!

HonestMan13 said:

XxAxX said:

what do you mean by "mistake"? it was right in the terms of service when people joined.

2elijah said:

Damn,I missed the argument I hate when comments are removed before I get to see 'em

errant said:

'mistake' as in, the auto-renewal service employed by the entities handling the website was not updated to reflect those members who had canceled their membership to the website. that 'mistake'