This is not a BellyRub story. The company we host the bot with got bought out by Amazon.

We published this on https://SteemThat.com recently about Cloud9 being bought out by Amazon. We did not expect the amount of service interruptions that we have been experiencing . I'm still locked out of my Amazon account as I forgot my developer password and kept trying like a noob to get in. So I think they locked it. Customer service stinks as I'm basic and refuse to pay extra for customer service. Companies that offer a customer service oriented product should provide customer service. I'm not sure exactly how things will be different once we get fully migrated with Amazon. So far not very good.

Many people have suggested running it through Digital Ocean and we might do that at some point. I would prefer we ran it through our own servers so we could have more consistency in uptime. The @steemthat promotion bot performs well most of the time. It's a penny and we do not generally issue refunds due to the cost associated with verifying if the bot voted on the post or not. Often people request a refund withing a few minutes after sending their SBD and their URL in the memo. It takes longer than that for the bot to upvote. We are not instant Upvote.

We Issued a massive refund for the first time because the bot was down.

We plan on voting on everything we can without draining the bot. I know that you have never seen @steemthat have to issue a refund like this but it proves we will do the right thing not when forced to or publicly embarrassed but when our own audits show we have been missing votes. I would rather earn your business for years to come verses risk anyone thinking we are not on the up and up. Especially with the recent @bellyrub scandal. Honesty is more important than ever.

What is @steemthat and how does it work?

The promotion upvote bot is a great value. It helps new people that write high quality posts get a small boost. Only a fool would spend hours or days writing and then sit back with fingers crossed. Smart writers promote their posts via the promote button, via Promotion upvote bot services, via community groups like https://steemthat.com or @minnowsupport on discord. Smart writers often network and find those willing to give a significant upvote for some steem or other crypto off the books. (be careful as some are just running scams).

Once you join enough groups and start asking around you can find people that will give your posts a boost if the funds are right. Some people don't like this level of honesty or refuse to accept this is how things work. It's not worth flagging a bunch of minnows for trying to get ahead. Go flag some whales or dolphins up voting pixabay pictures on their fake accounts. The small amount of upvotes given by Promotion bot services is a drop in the bucket to self voting whales and fake accounts etc.

The money @steemthat receives gets spent generally 3 ways...

• We lease some Steem Power until we grow enough to not need to lease
• We often buy promotion upvotes from other services to help new members get started earning something for their posts they share on https://steemthat.com. If the post is quality and we have some extra funds we spread the wealth around.
• One day funds could be used to help fund the website https://SteemThat.com where minnows or anyone can join and network with other members and support each others posts. Use cool tools and get helpful information about Steem and Steemit.

Thank you for your continued support as we work to resolve issues. The @steemthat promotion bot is back up and running and if has hiccups again we will issue a mass refund again until we get it ironed out in the coming week.