I signed up with AFF (adultfriendfinder.com) about 5 months ago, and started trickling traffic out to them. For my tiny site, I thought it was decent cash ($60 first month, and 2 months after than another $60).
Starting December of '03, I started getting serious with my site (as serious as my little site can get!), and starting making appx. $20-$30 a day. By January 5th, I had well over $600 in my account, and I was happily awaiting my payment.
Then AFF decided to ban me. After close to 20 emails to them, and maybe 10 or 15 calls, they finally call me back 2 weeks after the banning. It seems that I was flagged for spamming by their automated system. Fine, I said, go ahead and do an investigation and you'll see that every single one of my hits are legit. I even offered to allow them access to my server logs so they could see how my hits to them fluctuated with my site's hits. See, I was advertising them with a pop-up and a banner. On their FAQ it says that it's OK to send them hits any way we'd like (blind links, banners, text links, etc). I even told the guy who called me this.
This month's payday was supposed to be January 18th, but since I was under investigation, STILL, I didn't get my check. Around Janurary 21, they finally get back to me, after many many phone calls/emails on my part, saying that they'd gone ahead and unbanned my account, and that I would be recieving my check within 2 weeks.
I was ecstatic! I thought I was going to get my $900 in the mail!
Well, not exactly.
See, AFF has two programs: pay-per-click and percentage payments.
Up until January 29, I was on the pay-per-click program, and I had raked in over $1,200 with AFF. I was VERY happy, and was willing to overlook the banning problem if I recieved my check. To stay on this program you have to keep a ratio of somewhere around 1:400, which I've had for a while.
Well, tonight, they decided to switch me over to percentage payout. RECTOACTIVELY switch me over. Meaning, ALL MY EARNINGS starting in December, which I should have recieved in check by January 18th, HAVE BEEN CUT IN HALF. I lost over $500 with these people tonight, all because they either purposefully or not held back my check until the next pay period. MY balance went from nearly $1,200 to $650.
I ask you now, should the money that I'd already made, and had been promised to me, be affected by this switch over? Should I be punished because they took so long to figure out that I was indeed, not spamming?
I've already called tonight and left a message, and sent out an email to their general accounts information and the young lady who finally was able to unban my account, but I feel that I will go ignored for weeks, and most likely not get my cash back.
I've visited these forums many times in the past year or so, and have seen that AFF is one of the most respected and reliable sites for y'all. I also gathered that AFF does not frequent these forums to interact with the members.
But, here I am, begging someone, ANYONE, out there who thinks they can help me with my problem. As I've mentioned, mine is not a big site, and I am a poor college student. Those $1,200 (even the original $900) were going to support me for 2 months!
I don't care what you want in return. Money? I have none. I have a measly website that gets 3,000 uniques a day, with a googlerank of 5. Want your banners all over it for the rest of my life? Fine. And any other site I ever start/help with.
Please, and your help will be so greatly appreciated.
Thank you,
Juan Treminio
[email protected]
http://ehacked.com
AFF ID: p64473c