Compact Surfing - Another Goner

As most obviously know, today's big news is the end of one of the recent giants of the autosurf industry, Compact Surfing. They say they're coming back and there were problems resulting from the declining value of gold, but the fact is that they're closing down their doors and you'll be lucky if you get a refund.

It just shows you how quickly these autosurfs can go to the wayside, even ones that seem to have a lot of momentum. It was only about a week or so ago that payments started to slow down and they changed their payout terms. I decided to get out then, but unfortunately I was due a large payment tomorrow. So close, but so far away. Live and learn. For the time being, I'm taking a break from the autosurf industry.

Here is the complete update from the folks over at Compact Surfing.

Dear Compact Surfing Members,

I hope you will read this update closely, and consider all that I say here carefully, with the understanding that the Compact Network will be implementing further changes in the coming weeks, but we are here to stay for the long term as I have promised from the beginning.

As of today, Friday, June 16, 2006, Compact Surfing upgrades will be disabled. Allow me to clarify our reasons for doing this, and our plans for the coming weeks ahead:

1. The price of gold per ounce, as all of you know, has dropped significantly in the past several weeks. Because of this, the Egold funds in reserves that I had to maintain for the operation of CS diminished in value tremendously on a daily/weekly basis. There has been a 15 to 20% drop in the value of gold in the past several weeks, from above $700 an ounce in May to around $570 as I write this. What this means is
that most upgrade values that were sent to CS and held online in order to provide the old trademark “fast payouts” dropped in $$$ value while waiting to be paid out. This has been occurring for weeks now. We
persisted, believing there would be a turn around with the gold markets, that things would average out, but to date, this has not happened.

We’ve reevaluated the situation, and have decided now to stop taking upgrades until such time as the gold markets stabilize, we hope by mid-summer. We feel this is best for both the company and our members financially. Members have faced the same situation CS has when their payments arrive to their accounts and drop in value within hours…what took several days to build in profits has sometimes been diminished within hours, sitting in members Egold accounts. In accordance with this decision, the ability to upgrade to CS accounts will be disabled today.

For those who do not understand why drastic drops in Egold might affect the reserves of a program designed like CS, here’s why. The 3 cashout requests per month combined with the processing of requests every day of the week, and 48 hour “fast payment” meant we had to keep a majority of Network funds in reserve in Egold rather than offline. 48 hours was not long enough to move funds through exchangers online for payments or offline for protection of capital, especially on weekends when banks are closed. This is why, in our last newsletter, we established the 7-business day timeframe as being more realistic and manageable for the future of CS, however, since that last update, we have considered the situation further.

2. On June 9th, we processed nearly $500,000 USD in cashout requests. I continued to use the remaining funds left to pay as many requests as I could, and you can view a screenshot of all payments sent here:
http://compactsurfing.com/first1.PNG
http://compactsurfing.com/second2.PNG
http://compactsurfing.com/third3.PNG
3660 payments were sent the last 2 days and each single sent was paid.

Moving Forward: We are going to do refunds for members with pending requests, put the program on hold and relaunch in the summer, when hopefully the gold markets have stabilized and by which time I will have had time to implement Compactpay with features available and debit cards. All funds in my possession less operation costs will be used for refunds. In the coming weeks, the support staff will assist me in this work. Members in profit will not receive refunds. Those members not in profit will be returned a percentage of their initial upgrade purchase
dependant upon the total available for distribution. Earnings and referral commissions will be deducted from your pendings in our calculations. Please be advised that I am doing this despite the fact that our terms have always stipulated that upgrade purchases are non-refundable.

3. All Compactpay members with funds in CP, please rest assured that your funds are secure. I will announce next week the procedure for how returns of whatever you funded into your Compactpay accounts will be executed. After the funds have been removed from the system, during the next few weeks, the database for Compact Pay will be inaccessible to members as my programmers and I work to implement features which I
have not had the chance to dedicate time to. Please be patient and I will update further regarding this in the coming weeks. For those members who have made recent Bank Wire Fundings, I cannot address those until next week when the bank is open so please be patient with this as well.

With that said, the following actions will be taken in the coming weeks. The Compact Network will be relaunched at the end of August/early September and I have decided for now that the following three sites will be the focus of my time and resources: Compact Surfing, Compact Lottery, and Compact Pay

A. Compact Surfing

1. Expect a new layout and design to the site. The site will offer 14% daily for 9 days on your upgrade purchases tentatively. Upgrade units will be $10 USD each and the maximum member balance with active upgrades will be $10,000 USD. Payout Timeframe:
Upgrades will become pending in your Cashout History automatically upon expiration. They will be processed within 7 business days following date of expiration. No more having to request cashout. This setup is
perfectly clear on when members will be paid. In addition, I will know exactly what is needed ready in my online payment processor accounts each week to process payouts. As such, I can store the majority of funds offline accordingly so that we are no longer at the mercy of gold price fluctuations.

2. Compact forum will still be in place; possibly changed to vbulletin format as I have received feedback requesting this from members.

3. More details to be announced when available.

B. Compact Lottery

1. Expect a new layout and design to the site

2. No more purchasing tickets from cash balance; you will be able to purchase directly from Egold and tentatively Compactpay as well. Winners will be paid within 5 business days following announcement of
weekly lucky numbers.

3. Cash prizes will be greater in amount, though the number of winners will be less than the past track record to allow for ease of management in distributing payment of prizes. The amounts for Weekly prizes will be announced on the site as well. Distribution of rewards still to
be determined by the administrator.

C. Compact Pay

1. I will work in the coming weeks to develop relationships with exchangers to bring on board to offer funding/withdrawal options for Compact Pay that they will handle individually and efficiently.

3. I welcome any member suggestions with regards to implementing debit cards. Compact Debit Cards are still planned, but due to the current situation, and recent comments made by members regarding their wishes for certain cards, I have cancelled our previous order for cards. For those of you who prefer Cardoneplus over Virtual Money, and vice versa, please contact Nvus with your reasoning and he will forward me
details and I will make a final decision in the coming weeks: cn_nvus@yahoo.com

4. The Shopping
Cart Interface will be made available and upgrades/cashouts through CS via CompactPay will be available as well to coincide with relaunch of CS.

Expect further announcements from me in the coming days. The Compact Network is here to stay and we are not going anywhere, I assure you all. After 3 months of hard work and dedication I will not give up and I ask that you do not give up on me now either. We have faced obstacles beyond our control in the past several weeks, but the above plan of action will allow us to return, stronger than ever. Thank you all for your continued support.

Sincerely Yours,

Luuk Hendriks
Altus Financial Services Inc.