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G.I. Joe Collectors Club Renewal and Subscription Update – New Store Info!

by | Mar 17, 2012 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Collectors Club

Another email from the G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club has gone out with more information about your membership and the new store!  I have copied it below.

“Hello and thanks for your patience.  We have come a long way since we turned off the stores approximately two weeks ago.

For those of you who are interested in the ongoing investigation, our original server has been taken offline and will be undergoing an investigation over the coming days.  The current server online is a clone of the original with all of the critical data removed.  If we find a reasonable cause for the security issue, we will let you know.

We have decided to change our store and forum software.  It has been many tedious hours converting the existing data to work with our new store.  All the membership data is loaded in the store.  The forum will be brought online at a later date.

With our new store software, we have figured out a way to extend the deadline a few days.  This means that everyone’s April magazine will run 7-10 days late.   Our new cutoff date and time is Wednesday March 21, 2012 at 5pm Central Time.

The store has been brought online before its completion to allow renewals and new memberships.  All of the features are not implemented at this time.   We apologize for the length of this email but there is a lot of new information that affects all members.

PLEASE TAKE THE TIME TO READ THROUGH THIS THOROUGHLY BEFORE YOU TAKE ANY ACTION.  Here are the parameters for the new store:

1.  Each membership must have its own UNIQUE email account.

2.  Your store log in is the email address that this message came to.  Your password is the same as the one you have been using at the former club store and forum.  If you have forgotten your password, you can use the “remember me” function.  It only sends your password to your email account; it does not send your login.

3.  If you have a change of address, until further notice, please call our office or send an email to admin2@funpubinc.com or admin@funpubinc.com.   We are running two systems in parallel until we are satisfied that the data is identical.  Please email Customer Service as much as possible as the more they are on the phone, the less time they have to respond to your needs. Customer Service is available from 9:30-4:30 Central Time weekdays.

4.  In order to bring this system online, we have not separated the Transformers and G.I. Joe Clubs into their individual online stores.  At this time, both TF and Joe Club members will use the same storefront to place your renewals or new memberships.

5.  Please look at the bottom of this email.  It has your renewal date.  If your date is prior to March 16, 2012, you will need to create a NEW account in the store, as we did not transfer your data.   If your date is after March 16, 2012, you don’t need to do anything at this time.

Please let only those who need a membership renewal or new membership use the store for now.  In a couple of weeks, we will have everyone start checking their account(s).  In addition, please note that we will be discontinuing the Trooper Level membership in the G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club.

6.  Please note that if you had multiple memberships in your name; multiple memberships that all came to a single email address; or a membership in each club, we had to replace all but one of your email addresses with a dummy address.  The new store requires unique email addresses for each membership.  Your email and password will only work for one account.  You will need to contact Customer Service to look up your other logins (dummy emails).  This will enable you to change the login and modify your accounts if you want to have multiple accounts or accounts in both clubs.

7.  When you renew or signup for a new account, you need to select your free figure choice.  The selection choices are found on the signup page  (Transformers members please select the “none” option.   G.I. Joe members, please select 12” or 3 ¾”.

8.  Please note that this store is a commercial package that has hundreds of merchants working with the same store software.  It has features that will be new to us, but until we have some custom programming done, there are a few features that are missing from our old software.   This is a totally different service provider and data storage facility than we have used in the past.  One of the features this software has is to automatically renew your membership without you doing anything (provided you have a valid credit card on file).  If you don’t want your credit information on file (the CVV2 code is never saved after the transaction), you can log in under the  “My Account” feature and delete your card on file.  In order to make future purchases or renewals, you will have to come back to the store and enter your information.

9. The URL for the new store is https://toyarama.com/store.  At a future date, we will split the stores back into an individual store for both the Transformers and G.I. Joe Collectors’ Clubs.

10.  As an additional security measure, please change your password when you log into your membership account.  Do not use any password that you use with other stores or financial institutions.

We apologize for any inconvenience that the prior security issue has caused.   On a side note, we are anticipating that the event registration software will be back online around the end of the month.  If you have any questions, please use the email links at the bottom of all of our web pages and we will provide you with a prompt answer.

Thanks for your support,

Fun Publications Staff”

Great news for the Club and for us as well!  Looks like things are ironing themselves out and moving along.  Keep your eyes peeled here for all the information as it develops.

G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club Security update and Membership Deadline extended

by | Mar 16, 2012 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Collectors Club

The G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club sent out the following email today to its members:

“Dear G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club Member,

We have been working diligently to get a replacement store online for you. This is still in progress. However, we are ANTICIPATING that a temporary solution will be available later today (Friday). This is a totallly new website, with totally new software, at a totallly new provider. This commercial software has hundreds of stores and is fully PCI and PCI DSS complient. Their facility has been described to me as a military grade security facility.

Do not go to the old store site. I will provide you with the new url for this system in a later email and we will change the links at that time.

In addition, we have figured out a way to extend this month’s deadline for a few days (because of the new software). We are extending the deadliine date to Wednesday, March 21st, at 5pm central time in order for all of the mail that is enroute to arrive.

However, this will effect EVERYONE’S monthly magazine. The April issues will be approximately 7-10 days late.

Also, we will not be able to reinburse anyone who spent money on expediting renewals to us.

We again apologize to everyone for all of the issues we have been having. We think that you will be very pleased with the new features this store will offer you.

Brian”

So, good news!  Sounds like the new store software is imminent and folks who are scrambling to get payment in for subscription updates have a few more days as well.  Here’s hoping this is the beginning of a nice upswing for the Collectors’ Club and Fun Publications.

Hasbro releases official statement on issues with Fun Publications online security

by | Mar 5, 2012 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Collectors Club, Other Toys, Transformers

Various members of the fan community have been reaching out to Hasbro in many different ways to express their displeasure over the credit card security issues within Fun Publications, and Fun Publications’ reaction to those issues.  Through their PR firm, Hasbro has released the following statement:

“To the G.I. Joe and Transformers fan communities and Fun Publications customers,

Thank you for bringing your concern to our attention and for giving Hasbro the opportunity to respond to a matter that impacts its G.I. Joe and Transformers brands.  Please know we take all consumer concerns very seriously and are in regular contact with Fun Publications (our licensee) about the possibility of a breach in security to their online purchasing system for the G.I. Joe and Transformers Collectors’ Clubs.  Fun Publications is also taking this matter very seriously and is diligently working at identifying any problems, the number of customers affected and ways to ensure it does not happen to any more customers. Hasbro wants consumers to have a positive experience at all touch points for its brands, including transactions with its licensees.  As such, we are confident that Fun Publications has detailed instructions and pertinent information available for those consumers who believe they may have been targeted by credit theft via their portals.

Based on our extensive conversations with the Fun Publications team Hasbro wants to convey the following to the fan communities:

Fun Publications has assured us that they are taking necessary measures to curb additional issues, and they are working with third party experts to identify the problem.  They anticipate knowing and communicating the cause of the breach as soon as possible to those affected.

— They believe that the number of customers affected is low relative to the volume of sales transactions made.

— However, if you believe fraudulent charges have been made to your credit card after making a purchase with any portals for the G.I. Joe or Transformers Collectors’ Clubs, we urge you to contact Fun Publications immediately and provide them with the information requested at <https://www.transformersclub.com/tccccinfo.cfm> or <http://gijoeclub.com/ccinfo.cfm> by using the “Contact Us” link at the bottom of these pages.

— Fun Publications can also be reached at the following number for additional consumer affairs inquiries relating to the G.I. Joe and Transformers Collectors’ Clubs at (817) 448-9863during regular business hours.

— As more information becomes available, they will be contacting all affected customers who have notified them about the issue.

Thank you again to all of the fans of our Transformers and G.I. Joe brands for their continued support and for the opportunity to respond to this matter.”

The ultimate resolution of this situation remains unknown, but here’s hoping things get back to normal for all involved.

Another update from Fun Publications on recent security issues

by | Feb 29, 2012 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Collectors Club

In what is becoming an almost daily occurrence, Brian Savage from Fun Publications has sent out another notification email to members of both the G.I. Joe Collectors’ Club and the Transformers Collectors’ Club, strongly encouraging everyone to not only cancel your credit cards, but also consider changing any common usernames or passwords you were using on their website or forums.

I cannot stress enough the importance of following this advice.  The full text of the email is below.

 

As we continue to work on our systems, you will see some of our services go offline and then come back, so please be patient as we preserve data and clone servers and websites. 

 

We are also taking this opportunity to remove all non-essential services from our ecomerce server. So in the short term in the next day or so, the club forums will be discontinued. It will be several days until we are ready to bring them back under an entierly new piece of software. I know alot of you have been asking for this so, we have decided to replace several of our systems with new packages. This means that you will not have access to the forum for a while at all. We do plan to make the old forum viewable (no posts) in the future. 

 

Since we do not know exactly what data was taken, we are recommending that if your have used common logins or passwords with our system and any other system that your change your passwords in those systems immidiately (especially any financial sysstems)! We will be resetting all of the passwords in our system very soon. Please don’t delay in changing your passwords in other locations 

 

In addition, we have found a few recent aticles concerning security issues with other vendors. If you use these services, these issues could possibly impact you. Please read the attached links:

 

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/10/itunes-hack-unauthorized-charges-apple_n_1268593.html 

 

http://www.greenpois0n.co/itunes-accounts-being-hacked-to-steal-money-from-store-credit.html

 

Thanks for your support in this difficult time. We will continue to work with our vendors to correct the issues and we apologize for any inconvenience this has caused any of our members.

 

Brian Savage


GIJCC Membership PDF Order Form is now online

by | Feb 27, 2012 | G.I. Joe, G.I. Joe Collectors Club

With their credit card systems shut down while they investigate security problems, the G.I. Joe and Transformers Collectors’ Club have uploaded a PDF form to renew or sign up for memberships via check or money order.

The following email comes from Pete Sinclair.

“Hello!

We wanted to give you the latest update on the current procedure for membership renewals and NEW memberships. As we continue to work to resolve the online store issues, we have put up a PDF that members can download and print out. These will need to be mailed in with a check or money order.  We will process your membership as soon as they arrive. Just click the “Join Now” button in the top right corner at www.gijoeclub.com

Please note that the March 16th deadline is still a hard deadline (in house), so please make sure any mail is in the postal system by March 9th. If we could move the date we would, but that is not an option as these have to be processed due to existing schedules.

If you want to receive either the 3 3/4-inch Footloose OR the 12-inch “Man of Evil” action figures your membership must be active as of March 16th. If your club expiration date is after March 16th you are good to go for this years figure.

Thanks as always and we do apologize for any inconvenience!”

This is obviously a frustrating event for all those involved.  Here’s hoping they get the situation ironed out quickly and go back to business as usual.