MallOfErotica

Hi all...I've been fighting with my merchant account provider for a week now and I wanted some advice to see if what they're doing to me is standard business practice or if I'm getting screwed around.

Last week they contacted me and said that 8 products on my site Mall of Erotica (.com) were in violation of their content restrictions. One product was a video featuring a woman who is caught sleeping in someone else's bed and is punished with a spanking ("spanking" is apparently an abuse now and I can't show video that has anything being done to someone who is drugged or sleeping, though the woman is woken up before she is spanked). The other seven were eBooks with *no* pictures or video content, and whose plots were mostly about women who travel to exotic locales and have recreational sex with strangers. No kinky stuff, not even light BDSM.

I complied with their request immediately, but then set out to find out why the eBooks were rejected. To give you an example, here is the description from the eBook "An Encounter with Paris":

Irene finished her business in Paris successfully and decides to reward herself with a few days in the city of love, in search of sexual adventure. She hopes to find a man who will sweep her up in passion, and take her to heights she hasn't experienced before. In a sidewalk cafe, she meets a handsome and sexy man who takes his name from the city. When she takes up his offer of a sexual encounter, she finds herself riding emotional white-water rapids and it is all she can do to keep her balance. She learns that a simple encounter is not such a simple thing. A story for adults only.

The above description was labelled as an "abuse" BRAM violation by an automated program. My merchant account refuses to tell me what about that description is abusive, they refuse to contact "the bank" to find out why it was labelled thusly, and they refuse to disclose the identity of "the bank" to me so that I can find out what was wrong.

Is this standard business practice? Does this happen to you guys? Do you put up content and then you're randomly told to remove it for no apparent reason? Is it unreasonable for me to want to know what was wrong or what words are bad so that I can prevent it happening again? Is it wrong or bad to expect there to be some sort of dispute process where I can rectify erroneously indentified products?

I can help but feel like there's a whole set of secret rules that I'm not allowed to know, but will be punished for again and again without explanation. Even masters tell their slaves why they're beating them.

Any information/advice would be really helpful,

NiCheng
Mall of Erotica (dot) com