Warning/Disclaimer: I have no dog in this fight, and am offering up my unsolicited opinion (which is just that, my opinion). If you don't want to hear it, just stop reading right now. After this post, I will STFU again.
Having said that, I've been following these threads since the beginning, and I have made a couple of observations (again, just my opinion).
First: Team 2, I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. I don't believe that it was ever your intent to screw anyone over. In fact, I commend you for continuing to come on here and take the heat day after day when a lot of guys would have just disappeared. Good on you for that. My uneducated guess is that a big part of this problem is that you never enough operating capital with which to begin, and that is on you and you alone. Let's face it man, if you run a business, but can't beg, borrow or steal an additional $10k in order to fix this situation, well, that house of cards was going to come down at some point anyway. But that's water under the bridge now. A bigger part of the problem is that now your mouth continues to write checks that your a$$ can't cash. Here is quote from your post:
" There have been several times I told someone that a refund will go out within x time frame. Then this old processor comes along and takes the money before I can even transfer it to an account to send out refunds. What am I supposed to do about that?"
Here is what you are supposed to do. Don't promise people they will have a refund until you have a cashier's check in your hand, sealed in an envelope, and made out/addressed to the person to whom you are sending it. Given that is doubtful that the processor will wait by said person's mailbox to intercept said check, the money will get there as promised. Don't promise the money when you think it's coming in. Don't promise the money when it's still in a bank account. Don't promise the money because somebody made another purchase. Don't promise the money until you are dropping it in the mail. Then, at least that part of your current problem (people being rightfully pi$$ed about money that was promised but didn't arrive as promised) is now eliminated. The result of this is that you will have to promise less money and you will have to tell people that it is going to take longer to get them paid back than you originally hoped. People will probably be pissed, but let's not kid ourselves, they aren't exact throwing you a ticker-tape parade right now are they? Over time, if people start getting money when you promised them the money (even if takes longer than they hoped it would) you might even rebuild a little bit of credibility.
The second observation is this: There is some serious internet mob mentality going on here. Holy sh*t do people like to pile on when somebody is down. If you lost money to Team 2, you have a right to be angry. You bet your a$$ I'd be angry, and I'd want my money back yesterday. But you read some of these replies by people who have nothing at stake (yours truly included) and you'd think that Team 2 is a communist pedophile who hates puppies and sh*ts on the flag, when in fact he's a guy who made some poor business decisions and now finds himself in the unenviable position of owing a bunch of people a bunch of money that he doesn't have. Add to that that he has made some promises along the way that he probably shouldn't have, and now we want to lynch this guy. Let's face it, we all would like to think that we would never let ourselves get on the position that Team 2 is in right now, and we all think that that even if we did, we would handle it quite differently than he is handling it. I'd argue that most of us have done some stuff at some point in our lives that ain't so different than what Team 2 did. I'll be the first to admit that when I was younger and less responsible, I didn't always pay my bills on time, and (gasp!) from time to time, I may have told a credit card company or a cable company that I would send them a check and never really got around to it, at least in the time frame that I said I would. But maybe I'm the only one who ever did that. If that's the case, flame away; You all are better people than I was. But apparently, reading some of these posts, I was the only one ever to do something like that.
Anyway, sorry this was so long, and like I promised, I will now STFU. Hopefully, this gets resolved quickly for all parties involved, because I would imagine that none of this is fun for anyone involed, and it certainly doesn't build a whole lot of cohesiveness in our Snowest community.
(Anybody want to sing Kumbaya)?
