yeah i am confused by that statment as well. Did Bambi ever do anything wrong? Just seems she hit a LONG patch of horrible luck. Her site just sucks at communication with her fans.
I make this post with a certain degree of trepidation, as I feel it may be tantamount to sticking my bloody little toe into shark-infested waters, so if the mods feel it prudent to remove this post at a later date, I will brook no complaint.
The issue of Bambi, her detractors, and her relationship with the community as a whole has become so tangled up and mired by rumors and 'he-said-she-said' accusations that it is virtually impossible for outsiders to determine what actually happened and who - if anyone - is really to blame. As an outsider myself, I attempt to present what little I know as objectively as possible, pointing no fingers and making no claims to having the 'inside track' on anything.
A few years ago, Bambi had the misfortune of alienating a number of people who had been very supportive of her during the early portion of her career, donating time and personal resources to help her build the foundation of her site and productions. Given that these individuals had a long-standing reputation within the expansion community for being kind and generous people, the news that they had apparently been ostracized caused a backlash against Bambi within the community, with a great many people either boycotting her sites, or - in more extreme cases - actively attempting to slander her reputation. Whether Bambi truly intended to cause offense, or merely suffered an unfortunate mis-communication between herself and the parties involved is impossible to say.
Another major issue, as I understand, involved the ownership of some of the content featured in the pay sections of some of Bambi's websites. I know for a fact that at least one of the comics featured on the Expansion Comics website was discovered to have been traced, panel for panel, from a comic featured in the BEA Story Club. Another of her websites - the Expansion Mansion - also had a habit of appropriating artwork for its pay section that other artists had posted for free on their own websites or online. Exactly how much of this was Bambi's doing is impossible to say, as it is entirely possible that the stolen or plagiarized material was donated to her site by art thieves posing as the original owners. Regardless, these incidents only served to re-enforce the negative image of Bambi painted by her more aggressive detractors.
Lastly, according to a number of people I have spoken to, the structure of Bambi's websites seemed deliberately designed to make canceling one's subscription as difficult as humanly possible. Many individuals found they were still being billed for a subscription months after they had seemingly canceled it, and attempts to get the issue resolved were often met with stony silence. There were even reports of people having their subscriptions re-activated without their consent up to a year after cancellation. Again, how much of this was Bambi's fault, and how much was simply due to poor management by her webmasters remains unclear. She always seemed more heavily involved in the creative side of things - working as an actress and spokesmodel - while leaving the nuts-and-bolts of the business to others.
This constitutes what little I know of the controversy surrounding her - at least as far as her presence on the internet is concerned. I never owned a subscription to any of her websites, so the bulk of my information is second-hand in nature. Of the real-life tribulations she faced in her home-town I can say nothing one way or the other, though I can sympathize with her plight, as I know a number of people who've faced similar adversity in their attempts to contribute to the community.