This is exactly right. You even warned me about them, lol. But, I was making decent money with them and thought they were on the up and up now. When I thought I was being lied to I did some investigating and everything changed. Now, here we are.

Part of me wishes I listened to you, but part of me is glad that I had the opportunity to stay around and maybe help some others.

this thread shouldn't die this quickly

Am i right in thinking this thread is about people who sign up under a white label get emails afterwards without the white label's name attached? And VS are saying that even though this happens those members still get credited to the webmaster who sent them?

I'll give you the highlights:
- Video Secrets reps tell me that white label customers aren't targeted by their main site Flirt4Free

- After some back and forth emails I do more testing on my own and find out that immediately after a customer signs up to your white label they are targeted with free credits from Flirt4Free

- Haven been fed enough bullshit and lies I bring it to the boards so that other affiliates are aware of this underhanded way of doing business

- Another Video Secrets rep makes up a nice long post that's pure bullshit

- I check my stats and notice that white label customers would sign up for free on my white labels and as quickly as 11 minutes later make their first purchase on Flirt4Free and that this has been going on for at least a year, perhaps years

- Video Secrets rep tries to say it's not a branding issue

- Video Secrets rep makes belittling comments to its affiliate(s)

- Video Secrets rep disappears from board and has yet to answer the questions in the thread

if it wasnt for us assholes you old dusty pieces of shit would never learn how to swim:winkwink:



http://oi40.tinypic.com/xlf3hj.jpg

how come it's always a rogue programer or employee or whatever in question who hast to look at the problem and it's always that program rips off an affiliate not the other way around...?

Have you at least confirmed since Brad's post that they've fixed the issue? Obviously they still need to address why it went on for years per what you've seen, but has it been confirmed that it no longer happens?

there is a direct relationship between the size of a company and its willingness to fuck over anybody involved with it. small companies / solo proprietors dont spend hours in board rooms looking for ways to squeeze an extra dollar out of a business partner or customer.
:2 cents:
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you are losing branding, not sales correct?

No idea, I haven't done any additional testing and I don't plan on doing any. It's up to the affiliates that remain with the program to do so.

Branding, traffic, rankings, social sharing, promotions to start. Then there were emails sent out that had no affiliate links in them (the ones without free credit offers) which would be impossible to track and know for certain if sales were lost.

*Edit, there are also free sign ups that occurred on white labels with no credit card information entered that never appeared in our stats. These free sign ups not only didn't show up, they were targeted with Flirt4Free emails directly after signing up. And here again, no way of tracking if sales were lost or not.

Wow, can't even host it yourself?

So you admit after finding the problem, you went straight to the forums, thanx for clearing that up.

next time, contact the program first when you find a problem and show them, then give them a chance to fix it before bringing it to the forum, whiny bitch!

Done with this thread, my work here is done!

[QUOTE=Vendzilla;18762198]After I was lied to since January, and continued to be lied to. After email communication failed and I not only found a concern for my own business, but the business of other affiliates, I brought it to the board. Don't paraphrase my text and try to pass it off as fact. Even you can do better than that...I think.

This problem has been ongoing for at least a year, if not more. My email didn't shed light onto this problem, it just exposed it after bringing it here. And you think that's wrong? You think the wrong thing to do was to expose a dishonest, cheating business and not to keep it quiet? That's so absurd I'm speechless.

Put me back on ignore internet tough guy :1orglaugh

i respect Vendzilla, i think he has a lot of knowledge and a pretty good reputation in the industry. i am not sure why he decided to get in the muck and defend VS on this one tho. he doesn't work for them, so the hostility displayed here can only hurt future prospects.

as far as the purpose of this thread, one of the important roles of gfy in this industry is to record the issues and scams that happen. the drama is not nearly as important as the log. many people use the search tool when researching a sponsor or vendor. gfy actually does have a higher purpose for most webmasters beyond the silly name-calling bs.

at the very root, this thread to me is about white label branding, not specifically about VS. it shows some insight into how one WL sponsor views its affiliates, and values its own branding over that of the WL. to me, it calls into question the whole purpose of building a WL. the OP would have likely made more money simply redirecting from a blog network.
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Very few in this thread have a complete understanding of how this bug really affected whitelabel clients - and that particular loss of revenue cannot be rectified 100%..

Why should he?

Seriously why should he go straight to the people who made the mistake, hadn't found it, continued to have the problem. In the first place?

So they could fix it on the quiet and hope no one else has seen it?
So the program can rectify it and then email all affiliates and tell them of it and make a monetary recompense?

No the best place to bring it is to other affiliates who might be in the same boat and make sure the perpetrator sits up and take notice and can't possibly hide it.

Good point, besides Failed who else has had the problem?

Thanks for posting this Failed. I was just digging through the forum researching which WL to choose for a killer domain I have been sitting on. I'll give you 3 guesses which program I WONT be using LOL

Glad I could help :thumbsup It's a shame that to this day there is still no explanation of why this went on for years and nothing was done about it.

On a lighter note, Vendzilla has created his own affiliate program now :1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

BTW have a look at 7.2 of their Terms & Conditions that you all signed.

It's a shame that a company does so much to try and screw their affiliates. It's almost as if they work hard on coming up with new ways to do so.

I don't know who their bean counter is, but they better fire him soon. Obviously most them don't have a clue about how sales and salesmanship works. :2 cents:

Did those emails at least mention users did not have to create a new account and could use the login details from your white label?

They could use the details because of the way the system is set up, but no, there was never any mention of the white label, just free credits to F4F. The emails weren't even addressed to the username of the customer.

So is this shit still going on or has Video Secrets fixed this problem?

No idea, I got rid of my white labels with them and haven't looked back. But, after putting canonical links secretly in white labels, dropping commissions to 5%, and luring customers from white labels to F4F, I'd say this isn't the last time they are going to fuck with affiliates and are probably scheming something new as we speak.

It's just pathetic.

It was fixed that same day 2/13/12.

How about filling us in on why it went on for years?

After thinking about this, a lot of this stems from a failing business model. Knee jerk reactions to things that are a real problem. Instead of looking inward into what's going on with your organization you start attacking the very thing that keeps you alive. Your ground troops, your peeps in the grass roots of your organization. Your sales team aka affiliates.

Leading to very bad business decisions.

Because it didn't affect anyone to the point of noticing. In short, we usually send promo emails to customers with the branding from each white label, but we accidentally sent Flirt4Free branded emails as well. If your customer spends money on your white label or on flirt4free, you make the same money. You keep trying to ignore that part.

The only way a customer can lose tracking is if they intentionally create a new account on flirt4free with a new credit card, new email, new address, basically a new identity. We continued to send those emails because nobody noticed the error. When somebody noticed, we fixed it.

For some reason, you think there is a customer that we stole from you and didn't get credit for. Feel free to send me the user name in question and I'll look into it, but I'm confident that it is very unlikely.

You never noticed that white labels didn't make any money after the initial sign up, for years? I find that hard to believe.

I lost all of my customers, that's what you refuse to acknowledge. They were all lured from my white labels, and my domains which I spent a great deal of time promoting, to F4F. I lost all return visitors, traffic, rankings, and branding associated with all of my hard work.

I understand that all of those customers were able to log in and I received credit for their purchases, let's be clear about that.

Anyway, I moved on. But, I hope no one forgets about this thread and all of the shady shit Video Secrets has pulled on their affiliates. Anyone who does business with these dishonest people are in for a rude awakening, just like I was.

It's actually amazing to me, that a site still exists when there is this much PR against it. Makes you want to start your own first rip off program

Sad, they were such a great company. Obviously lost touch. :(:2 cents:

This is just not true. You have access to your stats and ALL of your customers, I strongly urge you to look at any customers that you think you lost, make a list, and send them to me. You don't make the checks that you were making based off of first time purchases alone.

I'm confused how you're supposed to go looking for something that you cannot see...

Sounds like Failed just did a favor for everyone promoting VS.

Nice one fella.

damn that sucks

who gives a shit? why would anyone touch it after this ?

It's just amazing that after all these years it's the affiliates who made VS and that now they turn their backs on us and shit down our throats. You just got to wonder if this is just some desperate move to prop up a sinking ship. Time to bail I guess and head for higher ground.

lolzzz...........