Some of you may be hearing about a lot of companies filing for Chapter 11 protection lately. And yet you still see some of them on SR. What's up with that?

I'm not a bankruptcy attorney anymore, but I did work in it for a couple of years. So I'll do my best to give you the short and sweet about a Chapter 11 and how SR is dealing with these merchants.

First--CH 11 does not mean that they are going out of business for sure. It means that they are having some problems but that they are "reorganizing" their debts and credits in an effort to stay afloat. Some companies will come out of it just fine, others will not.

Second--If they do NOT emerge from the CH 11, you will have already seen your credits and SR will be the one to eat the loss. So if you see a credit hit your account, it it there to stay, even if we do not eventually get paid.

Third--We are watching all of them carefully. We have pulled a couple off of the site but left others that we feel more comfortable with or that we have closer ties to the affiliate managers.

The economy is bad and I feel for these companies who are doing everything they can to keep going until it gets better. I don't want to make things worse for them by pulling out our business from them as well, but we continue to be prudent about our relationships.