Our move to SatelliteHome

[DrSat]

As some of our new members may be wondering why we have decided to move to a brand new discussion forum, I am posting a detailed explanation of what happened.

We had been sponsoring the Free To Air forum on Digital Home Canada for a few years now and were spending close to $5,000 per year. However due to severe accountability issues with some of their staff and previous owner Hugh Thompson, we have decided it would be in our best interest to discontinue our sponsorship in that forum.
 
 As part of our forum sponsorship agreement, we had been provided full moderator access for our sponsored Free To Air forum on Digital Home Canada. However, our DrSat user account was banned for over 1 full month (34 days to be exact) by moderator Jase88 simply for trying to close a cross-posted thread as cross posts are against the Digital Home forum so called "rules"! Normally this would not be an issue but as that thread was opened by Hugh himself, it is apparently not subject to the forum's rules.  This is especially disturbing as our authority was subverted by someone at the very same level as us in that forum and is akin to a police officer stopping another police officer from arresting a criminal!
 
 Most of you are probably saying at this point “WTF, a sponsor who spends 5 grand per year gets banned 1 month for closing a cross-posted thread in his sponsored forum?!?  If this was Apple or Microsoft, the matter would already be dealt with legally but as we are a much smaller company, we attempted a more diplomatic approach.  During the whole ordeal, we have been very patient and more than understanding in trying to resolve this issue.  As our sponsorship agreement is between Dr. Sat – The Satellite Doctor and VerticalScope, our legal counsel had advised us to deal strictly with them in order to resolve this issue.   
 
 We were hopeful that making an appeal to the forum administrator and VerticalScope management would allow to eventually get this matter resolved but alas, this is not the case.  The only solution they are willing to accept is to remove our moderator rights from our sponsored FTA forum and create a brand new sub-forum in FTA which we would have moderator rights to instead. This is unacceptable to us as it does not solve the real issue at hand which is Jase88's improper issuance of a forum ban.
 
 Furthermore, we have made a significant effort over the years to build up traffic on the Digital Home Free To Air forum which was pretty much dead before we began sponsoring it so it would not be fair for us to flush that effort down the toilet and start fresh with a new forum.   We have lost significant trust in VerticalScope as they apparently have little control over the forums that they apparently are supposed to own and refuse to accept responsibility for the actions of their volunteer forum moderators.
 
 I would like to state that even though Hugh sold Digital Home Canada to VerticalScope and pretends to no longer have anything to do in operating the forum, he is very much still in control via his moderator puppets who all still have their privileges on the forum.  Ironically enough, he still had moderator access on the Free To Air forum at the beginning of this ordeal which has since then been removed but he still has moderator access to the Television Industry / Channels and Providers forum at http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=12 where he continues to post his tirade threads about anything he disagrees or has an issue with.

[DrSat]

Some of you may wonder what lead to Hugh going against us with his tirade in the first place so here is how this whole ordeal first started.

On June 25th, we started posting information on a review thread for a FTA satellite receiver we carry, the AzBox miniMe American Edition. As the review was and still is in progress, we had marked the thread as closed in order to avoid any members from posting until we had a chance to complete the review.  This is obviously the case as we created a few placeholder posts with the text "Coming soon..".  This would have all been fine and dandy but due to the fact that Hugh still had moderator access to the FTA forum at that time, he was able to post to the thread even though it was closed.  As we did not feel comfortable having any member posts in that thread until we had a chance to finish the review, we deleted Hugh's post with a reason that the thread is currently closed for commenting until we finish posting our review and immediately sent him the following private message to address his concerns:

Recipients: hugh
2014-06-25, 10:09 PM

DrSat
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Oakville, ON 
Posts: 1,191       

Private message: Removed post 

Hello Hugh,
 
I removed your post in the AzBox miniMe American Edition review thread as it was off topic and your personal concerns should have been sent as a PM to myself instead.
 
As AzBox Canada and Dr. Sat are two separate companies, there is absolutely no conflict of interest as the the sponsorship agreement is strictly between Dr. Sat - The Satellite Doctor and Verticalscope.  Dr. Sat - The Satellite Doctor does NOT own or have any involvement with AzBox Canada other than being one of AzBox Canada's authorized dealers. Currently authorized dealers are listed at http://dealers.azbox.ca
 
I have done reviews on other products that we sell such as the GeoSat Pro HDVR 1200 at http://www.digitalhome.ca/forum/showthread.php?t=207074 and will continue to do reviews on other FTA satellite related items that we carry in order to educate forum members about products that they may be interested in.
 
 Thank you for your understanding in this matter.   
__________________
 Dr. Sat - Proud sponsor of the FTA satellite forum
 Dr. Sat - Fier commanditaire du forum FTA

Hugh's only reply was the following:

Private Message: Re: Removed post
2014-06-26, 08:28 AM

hugh
Member #1   
Join Date: Dec 2001
Location: Toronto 
Posts: 47,716   

You've really burned a bridge.   
__________________
 As of January 2012, I am no longer the owner of the Digital Home website. My comments and opinions are my own and not those of the current site owners.
 I have disabled private messaging so for personal inquiries contact me at the Hugh Thompson website or via twitter.

We then tried to get more information in regards to his concern by sending the following reply which remains unanswered up to this day:

Private Message: Re: Removed post
Recipients: hugh

DrSat
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Oakville, ON 
Posts: 1,191     

Private message: Re: Removed post     

Not sure what you mean by this comment or even what your issue is with all this.  Didn't you sell the digitalhome.ca forum to VeticalScope?   
__________________
 Dr. Sat - Proud sponsor of the FTA satellite forum
 Dr. Sat - Fier commanditaire du forum FTA

From that point on, Hugh went on with a mission to discredit and make us and AzBox Canada look bad by opening his tirade thread simply because we deleted a post he should have never been able to make in the first place as the thread was closed.  The final straw was when Hugh started posting crap into some of our old dormant threads, forcing us to edit or delete these and making it look like we are trying to cover our tracks as a vile attempt to defend his groundless accusations. Also to make things worse, a fair amount of posts in his tirade thread made by members who were defending us were deleted shortly after they were made.

Just to point out that our sponsorship agreement with VerticalScope allowed us to post information about the products we carry on the Free To Air forum.  If we include prices and direct purchase links to our website, we are obligated to prefix the thread's subject with SPONSORED: in order to indicate it is a sponsored post.  However, as our AzBox miniMe American Edition review thread has no prices or direct purchase links to our website, it does NOT have to be prefixed as SPONSORED.
 
As the issue was starting to get out of control, we consulted with our legal counsel who advised us to deal with VerticalScope directly as our sponsorship agreement is strictly between Dr. Sat - The Satellite Doctor and VerticalScope.  We also posted a message on the tirade thread that we are strictly dealing with VerticalScope Inc. in regards to this issue.

Unfortunately, VerticalScope refused to take responsibility for hugh's and Jase88's actions as described above.  As continuing to spend money to sponsor a discussion forum that we or even the forum's owner VerticalScope no longer have control would be very risky, we have decided it would be in our best interest to pull our sponsorship out of there.

[cyberham]

I don't know or care about the detail of what forced a new forum. What I do know is that years ago I determined Digital Home moderators were out of control. I left that forum at that time, but I eventually returned to it since it was the only gathering place of Canadian FTA enthusiasts. Now that this forum has been created, I will encourage all I know to gather here. And happilly I can delete the Digital Home bookmark. 

[DrSat]

I don't know or care about the detail of what forced a new forum. What I do know is that years ago I determined Digital Home moderators were out of control.

You're not the only one to make that determination.  Many members from other discussion forums such as DSLReports or Channel Canada have had issues with Digital Home and posted about their experience.  Sadly, the only way to discuss these issues is on other discussion forums as any complaints in regards to moderation made on that forum would instantly get deleted.

[cyberham]

Exactly! I was given some kind of punishment because I attempted to understand why a moderator had deleted a swath of comments by myself and others. But you are punished if you talk to a moderator. It was all so grade school-like. I thought they were going to make us write "I will not talk back" 100 times.

[DrSat]

Speaking of punishment, now that we dropped our sponsorship at Digital Home, they moderated ALL of our previous posts so that you have to be logged in as a user in order to see any of our DrSat posts.  As well, our account is now moderated so any new posts we make first have to be approved by a moderator before appearing on the site.

Needless to say, we won't be posting ever again on Digital Home and we recommend that other people do the same.