5th page?

Your my bitch and I'm not sharing - Duke hands off :1orglaugh

At least call us "affiliates", just a notch higher than surfers :) Having read the whole thread, it just seems unacceptable that NATS took 3.5 months to resolve a data transmission issue with Electracash especially when it appears you made it clear to them that you wanted to use them for your processing. I realize some issues are complex and require time to sort out, but I'd be pissed too if I bought software because it I was told it integrated with my processor of choice, only to find out it really didn't.

Ok. So I see NATS has admitted to this problem. & Explains that they are letting affiliates and program owners of the problem.

But shouldn't "ElectraCash" be taken off the front page of the site ( http://www.getnats.com/ ). Which was explained that it was the problem in the first place (That it says on the site your software works with ElectraCash, yet there is an obvious problem).

Seems a simple solution to me would be just drop ElectraCash from your webpage untill you have this problem solved.

When JSA joined, ElectraCash was enabled. We had issues with them after JSA started using them, we pointed this out to JSA and ElectraCash. We then worked on it and had it resolved together with ElectraCash.

ElectraCash officially works again. If we did not remove it from the page during that time, I appologize, but like I said before, we told everyone that wanted to come aboard with ElectraCash about this.

Can someone from NATS (Not KimmyKim) answer these questions please? I was thinking about using your system, but iBanker has asked some questions that have been avoided, and I would like to see your response to each of these questions.

Thanks

well well well-

You'd think a company that is so cocky and full of themselves would take the time to improve their system rather than bash their competition.

I find it laughable that John and Charlie love to point out the flaws with MPA2 while in the same breath - they have worse issues to fix now

Perception is reality in this business people and if people think NATS is fucked up
then NATS is fucked up.

I already know that they can't be straight up and honest- since Charlie had told everyone I'd be representing them as their PR guy- then they had a bad time at the Players Ball and found it in their best interest to hold me accountable for their miserable time-

I still don't know why NATS being anti social at a party has anything to do with my excellent PR services-

:pimp

hmmmmm But hey it's their biz they can run it anyway they want
I guess, unless they are costing webmasters money
Then YOU run THEIR business!

This is one of the most simple yet profound points anyone has brought up on the boards.

Unfortunatley on GFY or any other board, you are guilty until proven innocent :2 cents:

If you really want, sure. I will not use quote for all these, so I have the questions here and will put my reply below them...

How much money you cost us by letting our members stay in our members area utilizing plugin feeds AFTER the were expired?
I can actually not tell you that since I have no access to your financials. What I can say is that the times this did happen, we explained to you why it happened and got it resolved as fast as possible after you told us there was an issue.


How many times you told us this was resolved?
Every time we resolved the issue on hand. You encountered more than one regarding unexpired members though.
To explain this to everyone else some more: Member expiration is not triggered internally by NATS because many billers, even if a rebill fails, will not cancel the account directly in hopes of a rebill being possible a few days later. We therefor expire members once billers tell us about it. For one of the billers JSA used there were issues with this which were resolved together with the biller at hand.
We find it is safer to not deny someone access to the members area when we know they might still be billed again from the biller to avoid unneeded credits or even chargebacks because of it.


How often you blamed EC, CCBill, Paycom, or NetBilling for problems?
We only pushed the blame away from us when there was an issue with integration we could have not foreseen without an in-production setup.


How often you actually admitted any sort of fault for errors?
Quite often actually. And we still do that to this day whenever we caused any errors for any of our clients.


Why the templates never worked on the config page?
Because we feel that it is better to have you perform an extra step (easy one, simply use FTP to change the templates in question) than open up security issues with a template editor in that area.


How many times you had to fix our stock bonus page?
I am not sure, I think twice? Did it every time you found a problem with it though.


HOW MANY BOOKMARK JOINS CAME IN (ONE OF THE WORST)?
Many, because you used in.sitedomain.com or the like for link codes and jasonandalex.com for the domain in the join form links, causing cookies (including the cookie that holds the referrer) set on in.sitedomain.com to not be able to be read from the join page. This was explained to you and multiple approaches to resolve this were given.


Why and if your software wasn't tracking properly with referral codes?
We tracked and still track reseller/referral codes just fine. Where was your issue with this or do you mean referrers in which case this basically is the same question as the one above.


Why you have so many different screen-names (one I actually think you labeled Nathan-Hidden or something like that)?
Uhm what exactly does this have to do with your NATS? I am not allowed to have two AIM Nicknames?


Why it was always so hard to get a hold of you guys?
We have a phone, you can call us. We have a ticket system you can post in, we have ICQ and AIM. Where was it so hard to get a hold of us?



Why you close out tickets that weren?t resolved? (I know that we closed them all out in the end, but that was just because we gave up on you guys)
I just checked the ticket system, found a few tickets we closed. Some of them might not have been resolved but most were with the closing msg we posted. We have changed the procedure on how we reply to tickets though which means this would not have happend anymore.


Why all the errors on the join pages?
Errors on the join pages? What you talking about? The switching of the credit card and check button order for that short period of time?


Why the errors on the surfer pages?
You mean the surfer stats? And you mean why they were missing for some sales? Same reason as the referrer issue above.


Why there were different ratios under referrer statistics?
Referrer stats are cookie based because we need to store the original referrer of the request somewhere, making them not as accurate as normal stats. There are there for information, but can not be as accurate as normal stats. All stats are tracked correctly in the main stats area.


Why were payouts different in admin reports and admin stats? (sure its just a processing issue right? not like a program owner would want to know that they were all the same)
The reason admin stats and admin reports were different for some time (they nolonger are) was because of the way admin reports had to build this data and how admin stats was building it. Because of the much higher detail in admin reports there were some minor issues with payout reporting not perfectly reported there always. We resolved this issue and have no more problem with this currently.


Why your documentation was so incomplete?
Our documentation, especially since we started adding the knowledge base, is actually very complete considering the amount of features we offer. We might have a few features which are not documented 100%, we do explain them to everyone that asks though and we do keep adding more data to the knowledge base. For anyone interested, the knowledge base is openly accessible at http://knowledgebase.toomuchmedia.com/


Why to my knowledge you STILL don?t have the rewards information in the documentation?
The Advanced Rewards Admin is very new and very easy to use. We will eventually add documentation for it, but have not done so yet. Like I said before, if you ask about it we will tell you. Reward points currently have to be setup by us, and we tell this to every client in the training sessions.


Why sections like "7.1 for payouts per reseller" were never completed or given to us?
This is not explained in the documentation inside NATS, I agree. You can not seriously tell me that you did not know how this works though. We explained it multiple times to you and you DID use this feature. This also is explained to everyone in the training sessions.


Why you could never keep new affiliates from our automatically joining on our cross sales?
I honestly do not understand this question? Do you mean the cross sell program? If this is the case, then the program was globally enabled. Explained in Doc section 3.6.

Thanks Shuki
You know it was case when they came out and said the MPA2 shaves
All of a sudden people were jumpimg out their windows and screaming - leaving Mansion in droves

I wonder what Oystein and Garry think of this
:-))

by the way if you want to make some real money and have your stats tracked 100% accurately see my sig for two great programs that don't monkey around

JOEBUCKS.COM is looking forward to seeing everyone at the XXX BASH in PHX!

Enough Nathan. We are gone and have learned from this experience and hopefully you have as well too.

Good luck to you and we wish you the best.

Take care.

JSA,

Do you guys use MAS from Mansion too?

If you are referring to their members area system, then no we don't.

We use MAT. Actually, his full name is Matt, and he is our lead programmer. :)

We switched to NATS and they have been solid for us with no problems. We were told not to use ElectraCash because of a problem on the end of ElectraCash so we have been using wts instead. Even when we were with mpa they had many problems with ElectraCash changing stuff on their end and not letting anyone know about it so I am not surprised that nats is having problems with ElectraCash too.

Mark

YARGH! Me too.

Fact 1- if you want to shave Nats, MPA, CCbill or any tracking system, there is always a way to do it. You should send your traffic to the people your trust and that are making you money. Period

Fact 2- Don't expect any tracking software to work perfectly all the time. Software like mpa and nats are pretty complicated applications and you should expect bug out of them once in a while. It's a matter of getting services from the company you are dealing with and if you are not happy with it, then you simply have to change or build your own application.

We run Nats since 6 months now and we are more than happy with the result so far. We had bugs, we still got a few one and I'm expecting that we will have more bugs in the future from all the custom features we want but over all, we are more than happy with it. The little bugs are nothing compare to the options the software gave us. We made the choice of using Nats since it give us time to focus on building other applications that will give us an edge in this industry compare to what our own tracking software would do. I only have good comments about the software and the services we had from them so far and I do beleive that nats will be a good part of Braincash success in the future.

I like that one :thumbsup He isn't for lease is he :winkwink:

Hey Fred you rock. See how great minds think alike. I post almost the exact same thing on page 2. LOL :thumbsup

You know that you are my mentor :winkwink:

Hmm... After some of my sponsors changed to NATS (and some other systems), my sales has become worse. Some nothing at all.
I know that is not proof, neither accusing someone, but it makes me considering which strings I wanna play on.
To be honest, I don't really care what kind of software sponsors use, as long it works. Shaving or not, I direct my traffic where I can make most money.

PS. It's kinda amazing that like old ccbill codes that still works, can generate sales out of almost no traffic, while you have to feed ten thousands of hits to generate few sales on the new and "improved" system.

All of the backend software serves it's purpose. I have never used a piece of intricate software that didn't have a few bugs. At the end of the day these affilliate software companies can't be expected to make mission critical software. It's not like they are branches of Oracle or something.

When Larry Ellison comes on here selling his brand of MPA/Nats/Exec Stats then pull out your credit card. Until then you will do well with any of them.

oracle... not what i would have expected ever uttered in this thread.

(Nope, didn't read the whole thread, only first 2 pages):

Sounds like some folks need to code some error checking.

no shit. How many of you can afford a SUN E class machine and the crew of DBAs to take care of it? Let alone the systems guys like me who HAVE 10+ years of experience on E class sparcs? Very very few.

Not to mention the bugs and speed issues with it...

Looking forward to seeing everyone in Phoenix... Drinks are on me :)

Before I give my two cents, here's where I'm coming from:

1) I own a billing company that is integrated with both MPA2/MPA3 and NATS.

2) I own a hosting company and support about a dozen managed client programs that use either program, several clients that have been with each respective company through their upgrades and a few more still who have switched from one vendor to another.

3) I owned an affiliate program which was sold late last year, SinBucks, which was originally MPA2 then MPA3 then post-sale I provided technical support the new owner while he migrated to NATS.

Someone want to tell me I don't know what the fuck I'm talking about? HA, I can't fucking wait.

Now, here's my :2 cents:

All versions of every every back end package can have problems with "post-back". That's the process where the 3rd party billing company posts back to the accounting package so that a sale ultimately gets tracked and reported.

This isn't a shave, this is a technical problem. When it doesn't work, it just plain doesn't fucking work so nothing gets reported. This is something that won't start working again until gets fixed. Why does this usually happen? For one reason or another, it's usually a result of biller and merchant servers not being able to communicate properly either because of an authentication issue or a DB issue. I won't speak to the specifics of the Electracash issue that was identified, but I've seen problems with post back on both platforms with every 3rd party billing program.

Whose resposibility is what? Well, obviously when you buy software you expect it to work - and when it breaks due to no malfeasance of your own, it's reasonable to expect your software vendor to warranty it. If someone like a billing company who is somewhat of a 3rd party to the software vendor and the actual merchant decides to not be part of the solution, really everyone gets screwed except them I guess.

My point?

At the end of the day, the ultimate responsibility for the integrity of an affiliate program lies with the person signing the checks. Like was suggested earlier, you reconcile your 3rd party billing reports to your payout reports. An honest business person either fixes the problem or moves to another software solution. Obviously, J&A moved so it's clear their intention is to do right by their affiliates.

NATS got stuck with a billing company that evidently wouldn't fix the problem, they did what they could in the situation unfortunately it wasn't enough to make their client happy.

:321GFY

Is there some magic bullet solution out there? Fuck no. The integrity of a program is only as good as it's operators.

What are my honest thoughts on both pieces of software? You won't hear them unless we're drunk and naked at the next tradeshow. Any one of you that thinks either program is "perfect" is an idiot. I've lived in them from EVERY angle and there are nightmares and dramas with some vendors. The reality? The affiliate public can't handle the truth. Even with a great product sometimes communications are so bad that vendors and merchants will never see eye to eye. This thread is a perfect example, I think.

Get me started, get me drinking - let me tell you how many tens of thousands of dollars in support costs and lost productivity has come off my kitchen table for MojoHost doing "whatever" it takes to triage problems with accounting packages and their customers who are our hosting customer. What bugs me the most is the lack of humility and accountability when they royally fuck up.

I fully appreciate that as a host I'm responsible for my client's entire livelihood. Sometimes I wonder if I'm the only one that feels this sense of accountabilty and thankfulness for my client's business.

Mind you, I say they and them as if to indict everybody when in fact I might not really be doing that..

Is it both of them, one more than the other? I'll have to leave that up to speculation. I think I can plainly state that I'm the only guy out there that has the triple experience of being the hosting company, the affiliate program and a 3rd party billing company.

Finally, the reality check.

Despite whatever shortcomings such vendors might have, I will say that it's obvious they are all well-intentioned. The goals are simple for each program, to have the best affiliate management software out there. When you're growing a business it's not easy to please everyone and despite best efforts it's statistically impossible to anyways.

Who pulled it off, who has the better product? Buy and use both, find out for yourself. I'd love to get drunk with Garry, Oystein, John and Nathan but I don't think that'll ever happen. I certainly won't double talk any of them, I'm more than happy to tell them exactly what I think about their products but you had best believe such opinions won't end up in a public forum, published, online. LOL

Just don't be a fucking moron and start pointing fingers at one company or the other and be ignorant thinking that whoever you think is better isn't without sin. You're simply unaware of what such sins might be.

Cheers,

Brad

This is the problem with adult. Its allways a balancing act. When people ask the price of our VOD software and we tell them that our starting price is 60K, 90% of them walk away saying they can find some thing for less or they will build it them self and I say fine. Never tried to win clients over price.

Granted over the past 4 years our software has not been bug free, but by charging a hire price we can give far more help and hand holding. No wonder out of the top 10 VOD sites 9 of them use our software. Also this pays the bills for having all most 30 full time developers.

What we have learend is that when a customer has issues...take care of it ASAP, this makes the client happy and it does not end up like this.

Developing complex software is hard and Adult is one of the most competive market so you are forced to add so many functions and forced to charge less to be competitive. I have been a software eng for all most 15 years and I feel sorry for the NATS guys, we have an excellent relationship with them.

Jay
CTO
www.objectcube.com

I use NATS, I have NOT noticed anything wrong
like I did with MPA2.

Here is a fact, ElectraCash is a SHITTY check company, fraud is so fucking huge with them that I ceased
using them.

I bet your problem could lay with Electracash as well.

If you need any help, let me know as I would be
glad to research our own data to resolve any concerns.

Damn.

:helpme

Great post :thumbsup

But then you are stuck with CCbill as your primary processor. It is good to diversify and the bigger sponsors all have their own affiliate software and do their own payouts anyway.

Z

We were notified of the problem with electracash and switched the cascade to a different biller, granted we HAVE has some problems with a few CUSTOM FEATURES we wanted set up but overall the program works great... Some things take long to get fixed but other take a hour... It's to be expected... and now that the problems (minor) we had have been fixed or solved, everything seems to be running smoothly...

We checked and double checked ALL our billers stats, rebills, signups, moneys with nats and they all match up 100%...

My 2cents.... (using NATS for 6 months now)

Thanks! You just might be the only one to read the whole thing... hehe

:)

Brad

fucked up

:1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh :1orglaugh

Fucking A well put!

Wow, and nobody from there is answering yet????

And that's why (even though at times Brad may wish it weren't the case lol) I have all my servers with Mojo Host.

:thumbsup

Hey Ibanker is this your companys symbol IMAG.PK ?

Thanks MikeSmoke! Your business and prompt, early... every single month... payments are UBER appreciated. Now we just need to get you using even more bandwidth! (snicker)

Hey I like that SmokeCash banner, I've never seen it before. Snappy!

Everyone, this guy is the KING of smoking fetish. And seriously, he's as honest and hardworking as program owners get :)

Cheers,

Brad

Thanks for the nice words, Brad - and actually, I guess I should have said that COREY was the one who probably wishes at times I was hosting somewhere else :1orglaugh
Although (and I've discussed this with other people repeatedly over the years), it still baffles me that some people *don't* pay their hosting bills on time --- what bill would be more important, in order to keep your business alive???
As for the extra bandwidth...hopefully soon :winkwink:

When CCBill added the new "void transaction" feature several months ago, i noticed it was not working correctly in my NATS admin. I noticed a problem with 1 sale, I contacted NATS and they fixed the code immediately.

You on the other hand have 270 missing sales, and it took you 3+ months to find this out? You shouldn't be putting all the blame on NATS and the postback error - you should of caught this much earlier! If you run an affiliate program it is your duty to check the numbers. NATS would of helped you immidiately.

50/50 at fault

I think that if you look at the timeline the issue reported was 3 weeks after the program started with NATS... I'm not speaking for the company because i've tried to stay out of this but you might want to reread iBanker and Nathan's posts about the timelines about the problem being reported.

ouch :1orglaugh

You need to wax KK has WAy better legs ;)

No pending symbol issuance from the SEC and OTC:BB. Pinksheets are weak an not fully reporting.

LOL, you won't catch me talking smack about former employers or clients either ;)

we have been using nats for many months and although there were a couple glitches fully expected in all intracate software that does so much, there was never ever a time that someone at nats couldnt be reached. As soon as we advised nats of the problem they fixed it. These are good guys and I think that appologies are in order, if you watched your biller back end more closley
you would have seen the problem way before 270 su rebills were missing.

Fact is there are alot bad guys out there to launch your vindictive, yes vindictive attacks on. The only thing a thread like this does is attemp to tarnish the name of a good program that many people like and use.

The entire adult community gets tarnished by this type of thread, and it hurts affiliate confidence in general
Its not like your calling out a sponsor thats shaving, nats is affiliate software
and they all have small glitches,do you think john and charlie would pourposley ingnore a problem that could hurt the nats name.

I know from experience that these guys are good guys and have the interest of webmasters in the forefront of their operations if not they would put a shave option in nats that many unscroupulos webmasters want and that many other affiliate programs have built in,I think theyd sell more nats installs if they went that route but they wont and dont. Thats the nats difference.

Instead of tarnishing the good name of nats, and sig whoreing this thread on the board how about some positive posts,and sig whores can bump that

andy c....peace out

You say "fuck" alot but it sounds kinda sexy and you made a good post

250 ??????