First of all, let me publicly apologize for any role we may have played in your problem. I don't yet know if there's a bug in our system or EDS' system that caused this to happen, but if so I assure you it will be found and fixed. We are investigating. I am responding now -- in advance of any real facts to offer you -- primarily because you sent a CC of your mail to so many public lists. The "humanhelp" address on your mail will feed into a complex customer support department, from which you should already have received an automatic acknowledgement and a "tracking code". You should receive a response from one of our human operators within 48 hours. However, the way that the humanhelp software works, those answers will NOT automatically be CC'ed to cypherpunks and all the other places you CC'ed your question. Therefore I am answering you now in order to assure everyone who saw your message (via those widespread CC's) that it is indeed being handled through the normal channels, but that FV's responses will not be widely cc'ed. It will come to you alone, as private mail. In general, it isn't necessary to CC the world on your first interaction with a customer service department; perhaps if you had sent us several messages and we hadn't answered you, this would have been an appropriate response. As it is, the situation is almost certainly either a human error in the data entry for your bank account or a hitherto-undiscovered software bug. But we have many happy sellers who can attest to the fact that we do regularly deposit money in their bank accounts. It's not a scam. Please don't assume the worst until you give us a chance to diagnose and fix the problem. (In fact, if it were a scam, why would we send you an alarming-looking letter telling you that your bank account information appears to be invalid? It seems to me that it would be much smarter for us to just quietly eat your money, if that's what we wanted to do!) I assume that you did not, in fact, close or otherwise change your bank account -- if you did, that would certainly explain the whole episode, and our system would be functioning completely as intended. We will proceed in our investigation under the assumption that this is not the case, and will let you know (via private email) what we find out. At some point, someone may need to contact you via telephone to verify your account information. Stay tuned. -- Nathaniel -------- Nathaniel S. Borenstein <nsb@fv.com> | When privacy is outlawed, Chief Scientist, First Virtual Holdings | only outlaws will have privacy! FAQ & PGP key: nsb+faq@nsb.fv.com | SUPPORT THE ZIMMERMAN DEFENSE FUND! ---VIRTUAL YELLOW RIBBON-->> zldf@clark.net <http://www.netresponse.com/zldf>