After a somewhat manic afternoon of coding while the sun set over snow-covered Langstonedale Chase, we have implemented and tested the new EU VAT rules for membership accounts on Saturation Hall.

From the 1st of January, memberships for anyone in the EU will rise from $50 for six months to $60. That's an increase of 20%, from which we'll then pay the appropriate VAT rate to the relevant EU government - in some cases we'll pay slightly more than we have taken, in a few cases slightly less, but on average the price increase will pay for the additional tax requirements.

We've implemented it by detecting what country the visitor's IP address is registered in, so it can't be "got round" by people claiming to not be in the EU when they are - sadly we are forced to pay the tax whether we want to or not, so we have to ensure that customers pay it too. In the case of visitors from outside the EU who are connected through EU IP addresses, if they email us after joining, once we have confirmed that the billing address is outside the EU, we'll refund the extra $10 (this allows for say American visitors joining the site while on holiday in the EU). You have to pay the $60 up front but we will happily refund anyone in this situation afterwards if they contact us.

So if anyone in the EU wants to join for six months for the current $50 instead of $60, they have from now until New Year's Eve to join.

Meanwhile, here's a bunch of current promos - messy first, then mud, then wetlook - note that most of these are reduced size, all images in the Members Lounge are unreduced full size originals, plus of course lots of HD video.

If someone uses a randomizing proxy or other IP stealth type method, how will that effect all this?

Just curious.

Seems like a headache they dropped on you guys for no real reason.

Glad you like them! And a happy new year to you too - here's to a great 2015 of WAM!



If someone used a non-EU proxy then the system wouldn't know they were from the EU and would only charge them the $50, however unless their billing address was also outside the EU then we'd know about it from the payment confirmation data, and suspend their account until they paid up the extra $10, or we could reduce their membership time by 20%. We have to pay the VAT on all EU sales regardless, so if someone tries to "get round" it they aren't affecting the EU governments, just ripping the site itself off. So far our regular members have proven to be a very honest group of people (and than you all for that, it's appreciated ) so we haven't built the system to be too aggressive as we trust our members.

If we did start to run into those kinds of issues though there are various things we could do, for example we've long toyed with developing a system that would only open up the six months back catalogue one set at a time, that could be adapted to only release the previous sets to a new member after we'd manually checked that the correct rate had been paid. Or we could simply put the price up for everyone, though we'd rather not do that - but at current prices there's certainly room for manoeuvre - many of our competitors charge rather more than we do, $20 a month seems to be common, while we're effectively $8.33 a month (6 months for $50), and new members get six months of past updates included. Or we could close the membership site completely and go download only.



No arguments there - I've been using the word "clusterfuck" rather a lot of late! :devil:

As preparations for New Year 2015 are now well under way here at the Hall, I've just activated the new signup pages, as by midnight I don't think anyone here will be paying much attention to the Internet, there are rumours of a full-scale Phantom Flan Flinger re-enactment involving Cook and one of the serving wenches when the New Year bells begin to sound.

Anyone who joins from the EU before midnight will get the extra $10 refunded when we all sober up again in a day or two's time.

Happy New Year everyone, and here's to a fantastic 2015 of WAM to come!