Re: Ultra Technology online store

[jfox@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Jeff Fox)]

Dear MISC mail list readers,

The problems I have been having with Humboldt Bank are history since
I have asked them to shut down my account as soon as I have confirmed
that all back orders were shipped and they have subsequently sent
me the money for the orders.  I got my statement from them today in
the mail showing that I had over $1000 of income in December but never
saw a penny of it last year.  My priority much of that time was
testing F21, partying, and trying to find enough money for some
food every few days.  Since my online store had been my only source
of income for a while it was a problem when they used a greater than
$200 per month rule to sieze all the funds and refuse to provide any
customer support.  After a more than a month of daily phone calls and
emails to the bank pleading with them to release any money to the
Ultra Technology account I finally got the option this week provided
by a rather old partial iTV paycheck to cover the costs of all the
pending Ultra Technolgy orders (stay on my current food budget just
a little while longer) and assume the bank will transfer the funds
before some other bank sees an opportunity with delayed morgage payments.

That is very good news.  It means that within a few days things will all
be back to normal and the entire staff will be transfered back to F21
testing. ;-) If the phone company shuts down the Ultra Technology phone
line while these things are going on people should not be concerned.
We will still be available via email.  RSA encrypted frequency hopping
radio modems are great.  Of course F21 testing will have priority to 
email about current events at Ultra Technology, web updates, and many 
other things.

It also makes for a delightfully interesting situation in a rather
new field of internet fraud or banking scams, or class actions or
something.  I mean I have this pile of 30 mail messages to Humboldt
Bank and the reply they finally gave me after a month.  I simply
had to cave in yesterday and agree that they won round one when
the opportunity for me to cover for the funds that they siezed presented
itself.  I am very happy to go back to shipping some products from
the store and testing F21 and stop wasting time not being paid
to argue with people who are being paid to do what they are doing.

It feels very good to get back to productive work at Ultra Technology
after the latest problem with all funds being siezed.  First it was the 
chips, then it was the store funds.  I had to shut down the store 
because every order became a greater liability.

The real joke with the bank right now is that because $1075 worth
of orders in December was over the $200 limit that they had set
to trap the funds in my account and hold them since last year and
after a month of pleading with them they reset my limit to $1000.
So if the store were still open and I got $1075 worth of orders
in January they could sit on all the money for another month,
require that I ship another $1000 worth of stuff before they
turn anything over to me, and make a little bit more interest
from our funds.  This is definately not the deal that we or our
customers thought that we had in the online store.  That is
the only thing they have given me in writing.

I would also guess that with all the people who read about my
project there might be a few who feel a tiny bit of the outrage
that I have felt about the way this bank has treated us while
I have repeatedly told them the problems that they are causing.
I am not asking anyone to send complaints to the bank or to
regulatory agencies or anything like that yet.

>> Humboldt Bank has taken the stance that I must shut down the
>> Ultra Technology Online Store.

That is not their official stance.  Their official stance however
is that they need to sit on all the funds indefinately and
setup things to prolong that condition for months.  The store
cannot function that way.  It is the consequence of their stance.

Anyway the merchant account with Humboldt Bank and the online
processing service that I was using is history folks.  When F21
testing has reached a certain point I might put some buttons for
people to order stuff on the web again.  One of my many jobs
here is to prioritize the work on all of the other jobs.  F21
testing has had priority except for a couple of emergency
situations.  Testing is will be top priority again very soon
and I feel very good about it given that initial testing of F21d went
exactly as expected.

Happy New Year! 1999! I feel like I have been celebrating with all
of you.  I have wanted to pass out cigars to celebrate the birth
of my little silicon mind children.  It took a very long time and it
remains a quite amazing mythic  adventure!

Jeff Fox
Ultra Technology