Good news and proof that persistence pays in the end. After an hugely frustrating three year battle, you can use PayPal to buy my tutorial DVDs, ‘Japanese Rope Bondage: Tying people, not parcels’ once again. Yes, the little man has won this time but it was probably only because I was starting to account for a significant proportion of their email traffic 🙂
When I originally produced these tutorials, I was very careful to avoid nudity or anything sexual so as to comply with policies of on-line sales platforms like eBay and payment processors like PayPal. As part of the process, PayPal were contacted and sample material was provided. Having reviewed this, they agreed that it was intended appeal to the prurient interest and was entirely educational, thus was not in breach of their Acceptable Use Policy.
A year rolled by and sales rolled in until, one day, I received notification that my account would be blocked if ‘Tying people, not parcels’ was not withdrawn because it was in breach of their AUP. I pointed out that it had been pre-approved to avoid exactly such problems. This fell on deaf ears and produced standard replies with the only explanation being a link to their very vague policies. I re-iterated and proved evidence of this approval but still the replies were “The computer says No”. Each request for clarification merely resulted in a boiler-plate email saying “The complete Acceptable Use Policy can be found at the following URL: https://cms.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/AcceptableUse_full&locale.x=en_G“. The only possibly relevant clauses I assumed to be (f) items that are considered obscene, or (h) certain sexually oriented materials or services. Clearly, obscenity was not an issue as all models were decently clothed and nudity only extended to a male nipple. Although, one reference was made to a cover photo but the greatest degree of exposure there was a model in a bikini. Admittedly. due to loss of shadow detail and cropping, this was not entirely obvious but an unedited version failed to convince them or even elicit any response beyond the usual AUP link.
Numerous requests have failed to provide any clarification of the meaning of “certain” in “certain sexually oriented materials or services”. To use such a non-specific word in a legal document is patently ridiculous. This is like saying, “You will be considered in breach for certain, i.e. unspecified, reasons”. For “certain” to serve any legal purpose, it must be defined! Again, bondage cannot be deemed to be “sexually orientated material” by PayPal as numerous tutorial books with far more explicit content offering their service for payment.
For the past three years, I have bombarded PayPal with hundreds of emails and gained a clear understanding of what can drive a person to mindless gun killing sprees. Finally, at the beginning of March this year, I had a vague but promising reply saying:
“We have further reviewed your case and the items for sale on your website http://www.esinem-rope.com, including the tutorial DVD “Japanese Rope Bondage: Tying people, not parcels. Vols I & II” and determined that your account is currently not in violation of our Acceptable Use Policy.
The complete Acceptable Use Policy can be found at the following URL: https://cms.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/?cmd=_render-content&content_ID=ua/AcceptableUse_full&locale.x=en_GB
To learn more about the Acceptable Use Policy, please refer to our Help Centre page here: https://www.paypal.com/uk/cgi-bin/helpweb?cmd=_help”
I was unclear whether this meant offering PayPal on Esinem-Rope was OK since I had clearly high-lighted that PayPal was not available for the DVDs or that approval had been re-instated for this product. Oddly, the author of this email was unable to tell me if she meant I could now offer PayPal on the DVDs without having to refer to the legal department. Finally, I got a phone call a couple of days ago confirming that permission had been re-instated and, just to be sure requested, written confirmation:
Here is a summary of our phone call.
Please refer to: – Website: http://www.esinem-rope.com/tutorial-dvds
We sincerely appreciate your business and offer our apologies for any inconvenience this disruption in service may have caused.
Furthermore, we are pleased to inform you that you have been approved to use PayPal as a payment option for your sales Tutorial DVDs on the following website/s: http://www.esinem-rope.com/tutorial-dvds.
Again, we thank you for your cooperation and understanding in resolving this matter and appreciate the fact that you chose PayPal to accept payments for your business. If you have any further questions, please contact the PayPal Brand Risk Management Department at euaup@paypal.co.uk.
Sincerely,
Richard
PayPal, Brand Risk Management
So, there you have it, it is even easier to buy my tutorials. Right, must get back to working on the next series, ‘Ground to Air’