Customer ReviewsforVerticalScope

Good afternoon. Yesterday I ******* a specific skin care product that I am not familiar with. I had a question about a skin care product not marketed towards Caucasian skin types, so you can understand my need for further information, as I am of Caucasian ethnicity. I was directed to the SkinCareTalk advice column. In my experience, many products that are not necessarily marketed towards my ethnicity group are actually just as good for my skin and/or hair type as they are for the individuals with whom the product is targeted. Many times, those products are even better than anything available, or marketed towards my ethnicity group. I could go down a long list of such products, I will not though, as the purpose of this particular message today, is not seeking general information about skincare. I'm seeking an explanation as to why my account was banned immediately after I posted this question, with no answer to my inquiry, and no reasonable explanation for my ban from the advice column. I left a message asking for clarification. A simple explanation as to how my question could have been perceived as spam, considering I never left one link leading to any product I was trying to sell, which is my understanding of what spam is. My question was not spam. I guess there wasn't an " I'm petty, block just because I'm offended" option that they could select as an official reason for banning my account. With all due respect. If you are going to run a professional, helpful, NON DISCREMINATORY advice column on skin care, then you should probably be professional, helpful, and NON DISCREMINATORY.

Hello, we use special technology and automated tools to combat spammer registrations. Unfortunately, your account registration was inadvertently designated as spam. Your account was restored within 24 hours of the original ban and we replied to your ban appeal email.

In the future, we recommend starting a new email or topic in your contact us form instead of replying to an older, inactive discussion to ensure that the appropriate priority and review is given to your issue.

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I am a lifetime subscriber to ********* - a photography forum for the Micro Four Thirds community. I have been on the forum for 3 years, and up until recently, it has been a vibrant community of both professional and amateur photographers.

VS acquired the forum last December. Although initially promising that the Terms of Service would be "the same as (we) already work with" - that turned out to be far from the case. Specifically, the terms grant VS the right to sublicense, create derivative works, and to use submissions on all VS websites.

These terms are unacceptable to many of our users, and distinct from other photography forums. Many have left (one estimate 50-70 users) for other websites, particularly ***********.org. This is easily verifiable - simply search for "*****" on that site. One will find at least 200 posts, many with terms like "refugees", "unfortunate changes", etc.

The community made a bona fide effort to work with the company for change. When the ToS was published, many users posted about the challenges to the support staff (VSadmin) who were not helpful ("The TOS as we currently have it will not change because any limitations put forth in it, any narrowing of scope and focus, can be cause for frivolous lawsuits and attempts at copyright fraud.").

This last month, I have attempted to work with the legal department, and I personally attempted to contact their Chief Community Officer, and President. Even their support staff recently replied only to a web form and not to two follow-ups over the last week.

I prefer to believe that the company cares, and the decision-makers simply aren't aware of the effect the current ToS have had on the community. We look forward to working with VS on a win-win, and hope that the BBB can help facilitate this by raising awareness. ***********************************************

Thank you for your feedback and for reaching out to us on our site as well. We understand that our support staff has already responded to you. Our terms of use are standard and customary for community sites. We do value your feedback and will be taking it into consideration as we review our Terms of Use.

The terms of use are _not_ standard and customary for photography forums. Please see message #23 of the "Support for Revision to ToS" thread I posted on the site in question. It contains the relevant terms from nine of the largest photography forums on the Internet, all of which protect photographer rights better than those of the present forum. However, we are thankful that VerticalScope values our feedback, and look forward to working with them openly and expediently on improved terms.