Montolio Damage Control

Montolio is pretty good at propaganda... but not as good as he thinks. He recently wrote this response to the EVE News 24 article concerning his alliance's financial situation:

I'm not going to link the article because I'd prefer they not get advertising ISK to funnel into gold watches for -A- leadership, but I would like to address the claims.

Yeah because -A- leadership has serious stakes in EVENEWS24. We actually bought all our shares of this publically traded company when they were trashing us during the DRF war.

For starters, the article insinuates that Goonswarm Federation has loaned TEST ISK. This is false, we've had a line of credit with them but it's been untouched. We have a few notable loans from individuals / organizations.

30b ISK - Pandemic Legion
100~140b 60b ISK - Karab Gerlinger
37b ISK - Leetcheese

Our various squads and individual members have donated a shitload of ISK as well. Our financial difficulties come from two main sources right now: 1) Expansion into new space (high capital investment and time costs) 2) Technetium speculation and CCP patches. The first is simply something that will go away with time, we've instituted an alliance wide 5% ratting tax for two months to help smooth out the costs associated with that. The second is something out of our control, technetium prices have bounced back up since the patch has gone live but the few weeks of wild speculation damaged revenues. We are working some alternative income sources to alleviate any technetium dependency issues our alliance has, my next State of the Alliance will cover that in more detail.
 

I think they would try renting out that new found space, except that no one in their right mind would rent right next door to -A- and get dumped on constantly.

Darkos Nightmare, our main money wizard has been working on making the accounting spreadsheet more informative and has started tracking historical data and charting that as well. We don't have the historical data publicly accessible yet, but it will be.

The article is an attempt to poke at our financial data much like we've done with OWN Alliance in the past, the exception here is that we are a transparent organization and we welcome honest scrutiny.

 Irony overload. Karma is a bitch isn't it.

 I don't know who Danny Centauri is - his industrial knowledge may be sound but I question his experience with the scale of large organizations and reading investigative abilities. He doesn't mention in his article that our sheet doesn't cover capital expenditures, its too hard to account for those, it only covers recurring expenses and most of it is estimation. We are actually doing reactions like he suggests, but they take time and effort to make profitable. In ~real spaceship life~ things don't work like spreadsheets. Logistics is messy at this scale.

Our community is strong, donations pour in when we need them. We won't be flattened by ISK woes like some alliances. I've been investigating Against All Authorities finances in the meantime, an alliance with which the EN24 owner Riverini sympathizes heavily.

 Yeah Riverini seems to sympathize with us constantly. Man, I should pull up some of the old articles from as recently as 6 months ago. Montolio should know better than to fling around accusations like that. But then I consider his audience and figure they will buy it. Maybe he should even sponsor an EVENEWS24 boycott. It can be his "burn Jita" campaign. lol

 Against All Authorities has used the 'we are poor because no technetium' line for ages, but this is not the case. Against All Authorities runs a vast renter network filled with botters.

 Last time I checked the botters were most numerious in Deklein. But sure, play the botting card. I've used it, DRF used it, CFC uses it, everyone does. A bit of a pubby play for someone as "in" as Montolio but its ok, I am no longer surprised by his bullshit. I choose to grab some popcorn and enjoy the show these days.

 Renters with -A- have to hand over a phone number when you sign up, this is so that they can call and harass you if you miss a rental payment. 

 Man that sounds almost realistic! We don't need phone numbers though... if someone doesn't pay they just get kicked. Besides, can you imagine the long distance phone charges?

They don't reimburse subcapitals at 100%, but they reimburse (or claim to) supercapitals < 2 weeks. 

 And you can't even reimburse 2/3 of your fleets anymore. Don't throw stones in a glass house bud. Also-supers are reimbursed, fits are reimbursed and bitch, we don't even have tech.

Sup.

Rumors are abound about -A- paying FCs ~real life~ money in order to stick with them - I have no proof of this last claim, but the fact that the rumor exists just points to the corrupt culture and elitism going on with Against All Authorities.

 

Well man! If rumors existing point to real corrupt culture and elitism.... I should start making more rumors immediately!!

I sure wish I made money for FCing. Then I wouldn't have to work and could go to school full time for my degrees. But alas, the only gift I get from FCing is posts like this, and the occasional teary eyed jabber ping from TEST leadership.

You should also not call anyone else elitist when you are in bed with PL. But I suppose it doesn't matter, TEST and the CFC in general call anyone who isn't in their band of blues elitist. It creates a nice persona that helps build the "you aren't us" mentality.

TEST doesn't need to pay people to work with us, we don't need to fine people to fight for our cause, we have fun. 

Well with no recruitment standards of course you don't need to pay anyone. With 75% of your organization ratting away they pay for themselves :)

 I would like to thank Montolio for this awesome post, and look forward to more gems in the future.