1700 $ deduced from my revenue for "fraud" !!!

[Catfish]

Beanie I like the courtroom scenario very much. Whatever anyone else has been telling me about it, I still believe that this is exactly what would happen if someone took them to court, Gibraltar, Tonga Islands or wherever ...

I hope someone does sue them. If anyone knows someone who does, I'd like to know about it. Or maybe we should open a separate thread and get this thing organized so that a bunch of affiliates affected by this hire one attorney, share the costs and sue them (if that is possible).

And Jeremy : it is ok for me that they re-attach the duplicate account players to the original affiliate. If that guy was on CPA, it's no difference for him anyway. But again : they can't punish the affiliate for their negligence. And if the original affiliate brought the guy in on MGR : you must be the only one hoping that they will give you the MGR of that player back or even reattach him. Since they do not have to give any names of duplicates, there is no way of controlling that, so they are not going to do it. I asked them three times about this, and they ignored the question everytime. In my experience, when you ask PartyPoker affiliate dept. a question and they do not answer altogether, it means that you can be pretty sure that you have struck a nerve and your question is "inconvenient" to them. Next thing, they stop answering your mails altogether, as happened to me.

And by the way, I contacted them two times when a player opened a second account in his wife's name to get an extra 50 $ free bankroll out of me. They told me "they had no reason to believe that this account was fraudulent" (yeah, of course not lol), and I had to stand by my word and gave the guys a second free bankroll. Those four accounts are now probably all considered fraudulent .... Whose mistake is this now ??? Still it costs my money !

And lastly, yes I have given up the free bankroll scheme, but not because I think it does not work, but because I believe that the poker rooms are not taking the necessary steps to ensure that it works (+EV for everyone ...). So I rather focus on MGR deals.

[Randy]

This thread is 1 of the greatest advertisements for the virtues of a flat advertising model over an affiliate model. If I get a flat $10k/month from a poker room to advertise on my site, I don't have to ever worry about my commissions being deducted or credited or whatever.

[PPP]

Originally Posted by Catfish

But again : they can't punish the affiliate for their negligence.

You aren't being punished. The more you say that, the stranger it sounds.

You don't deserve the money. You should not have the money. You got an interest free loan from them.

The only victims here are any original affiliates whose players you got a free loan for.

It's unreasonable to expect that they would catch any fraud player 100% at the instant of signup. It would be nice if they did cleanup like this every month, but even once a year is a great value to affiliates creating genuine players.

[losercore]

it's hard to feel bad for affiliates this is happening to.

I agree with a few things though:

1. Party was just trying to show stock holders the #'s so they turned the other check. This is a wrong way to do business by knowingly allowing this to happen.
2. Affiliates only took advantage because party turned the other check and now Party has come to it's senses and wants their money back. It is their money anyway so I can't say any affiliate should be able to keep it.

Hopefully you are like me and stopped promoting Party last October. I only promote them via PAW since I know PAW will pay me.

I refuse to feel sorry for any affiliate that poached players because their are many of us that have been taken for $,1000's of dollars a month in the past when some jackass affiliate offered them a free bankroll and ended up making a fast $50 of them. What a waste.

Not saying this is you Partyforfree. I'm referring to crap ass affiliates that have been making this industry shit for the past few years. They deserve this as this money does not belong to them.

[Liam]

Originally Posted by PPP

You aren't being punished. The more you say that, the stranger it sounds.

You don't deserve the money. You should not have the money. You got an interest free loan from them.

The only victims here are any original affiliates whose players you got a free loan for.

It's unreasonable to expect that they would catch any fraud player 100% at the instant of signup. It would be nice if they did cleanup like this every month, but even once a year is a great value to affiliates creating genuine players.

However if you do offer an incentive program and did everything in your power to not accept fraudulant players, then yes you are getting punished. It works like this

Affiliate: "Party I would like to give this player $50 for signing up. Can you confirm he is not a fraudulant player so I will still receive the $100 from you."

Party: "Yeah sure go ahead here's your $100 go and give the player $50 of it"

8 month's later.
Party: "Ohh you know that player that you gave $50 to when I told you it was ok"
Affiliate: "Yeah how is that player going? Making lots of money from him?"
Party "Well actually the player was a fraudulant customer so give us our $100 back."

In this case the affiliate is out $50 because Party told them everything was ok.

Of course not all affiliates took the above approach but those who did are being punished.

Cheers
Liam

"Yep sure go

[PPP]

While that might seem reasonable at first glance, it really is irrelevant.

Why should incentive programs be any different than other affiliates paying for advertising, or paying writers, or anything else where money comes out of pocket? The answer is they shouldn't. We all spend money to attract traffic/players. We all end up with some fraud players. We all end up with compensation effected by those fraud players, both those detected immediately and those detected months or years later.

[mfosouto]

If they keep doing things like that, they will see what is like to have no affiliates.

[Jeremy]

If they keep doing things like that, they will see what is like to have no affiliates.

Or they will finally eliminate the poachers and incentive marketers which they have wanted to do for the last year. Although I would agree the timing seemed fishy, and the lapse of time was bad here. I imagine some legitimate affiliates are getting screwed unfortunately (hopefully they can state their case to Party and get a proper resolution). If you're on MGR, this will probably be much easier. But overall this is a good thing for the affiliates that drive their traffic via white hat or through quality content on their site.

You can certainly see why it would look a little strange for a player to sign up a few different accounts at one site, all through CPA affiliates.

The most important question out there that still has no answer is if the original affiliates will be credited. That should be more important in this entire discussion than the guy giving illegal rakeback or incentives to existing Party players losing them out of his account.

[Catfish]

Actually I work on MGR basis now. Party is refusing to settle the issue, they do not respond to any argument. It's like Beanie said, they have me by the balls on this.

Originally Posted by Liam

It works like this

Affiliate: "Party I would like to give this player $50 for signing up. Can you confirm he is not a fraudulant player so I will still receive the $100 from you."

Party: "Yeah sure go ahead here's your $100 go and give the player $50 of it"

8 month's later.
Party: "Ohh you know that player that you gave $50 to when I told you it was ok"
Affiliate: "Yeah how is that player going? Making lots of money from him?"
Party "Well actually the player was a fraudulant customer so give us our $100 back."

In this case the affiliate is out $50 because Party told them everything was ok.

This is exactly how it was with me. I did not defraud them, the players did.
So the big question is : why don't they take their money back from the players who defrauded them (and me) ? They definitely have violated PartyPoker rules !
Simple answer :
1. the players may not have any money on their (double, triple) accounts,
and moreover 2. if they do that, they lose a player.
So they rather punish the innocent affiliate because he cannot run away from them so easily, instead of punishing the guilty player.

And btw, I did not give any illegal incentives, nor did I poach. The marketing scheme was discussed with Party and agreed upon by them.

[Beanie]

Originally Posted by PPP

This is a major step in the maturity of the industry.

No its not, its a major step in keeping things par for the course. There were better ways to deal with this problem and I do agree it was a problem. This approach should have affiliates very insecure because it shows how companies behave when they feel there will be no recourse to them.

There were better ways to do this PPP and why 8 months, why not 2 months or 3 years?

BTW, your other post was too long, I can't read that much but I am absolutely certain I would disagree with just about every point you made;-) I mean that with all the respect in the world.