Well folks I'm sorry to say it but nothing lasts forever, and after eight years of running Bomscans I'm afraid it's time for the site to close. I'm leaving the members area up and running for a little while to give people a chance to grab everything, and I'll be refunding any outstanding months for people who took out 3-month or 6-month subscriptions.

Naturally you'll be wondering why the site is closing. There are actually two different reasons -- one reason why it's closing, and one reason why it's closing so suddenly.

The first reason is that I'm looking to pursue a brand new career. Bomscans has become almost a full-time job, with my "real" job (writer/photographer) struggling to compete. So with this change of direction becoming an increasingly attractive option, I had intended to wind the site down over the next 3-6 months.

The reason the site is closing so suddenly is due to my billing company NoChex deciding to stick their nose in where it wasn't wanted. Allow me to elaborate...

Countless times I've been asked how I was able to run this site without the copyright holders trying to shut it down. I always had to avoid answering the question but now I can explain that, basically, several copyright holders did know about the site but they chose to turn a blind eye, presumably because it was helping to promote their programmes. I can't say for certain that every single copyright holder knew about the site and approved of it, but I know that some did, and some even had access to the site's members area, and I never received a single complaint.

So you can imagine what a nasty surprise it was about a month ago when I received an e-mail from NoChex stating that they had suspended my account until I explained the situation with the copyrighted material I was supplying. (This was done without any notice and after they had already seen the site and confirmed that it met with their terms and conditions of business.) Not to worry, though, as I simply explained the situation, or at least as much as I could, and within a few hours they re-activated my account.

That was the end of that until a couple of weeks later when they closed my account, again without notice, and told me that it would stay closed until I could supply written permission from all copyright holders. Well of course that was never going to happen.

So to cut a long story short, faced with the hassle of switching to a different billing company, but knowing that I wanted to close the site soon anyway, I decided to just close it now. I may start it up again at some point in future, but I have no immediate plans to do so.

Sorry for the disappointment. I've really enjoyed running this site, and I think I always provided a good service at a reasonable price. But unfortunately without a billing company I won't have any subscribers, and without subscribers I can't afford to run the site! So thanks to everyone for your support over the years, NoThanx to NoChex for the most appalling customer service right up to the bitter end, and maybe I'll see you all again sometime in the future!

Bye!

-- Andy @ Bomscans dot com

(2 July 2006)