Sue the shavers?
 

I know there has been alot of talk about sponsors shaving on this board.
If that is the case couldn't that be grounds for a huge lawsuit?
If someone were to break a shaver and won the lawsuit wouldn't all those who were promoting theier program be entitled to settlement?
What are your thoughts?

Yes and I would happily sue anyone I KNEW shaved me and not say "Oh but they still convert better".

How do you prove an amount to sue for? How do you prove they're shaving? How do you account for sponsors changing their payouts the day before court ("Terms and conditions may change at any time without notice").....

So who's shaving now?

have your lawyer demand to login directly to the processor thru the reseller account.. that's proof right there :Graucho

Why would anyone use a sponsor? They all shave in one way or another. Trust nobody.

I myself am not the brightest, but I have to believe that if this practice is being done there must be someone out there doing some investigating, documenting, etc.
It would be newsworthy to say the least.

yeah.... prove someone's shaving... the only way you're gonna prove that is to have the co. in question actually testify in court that they shave., and that aint gonna happen. get over it, deal with it... companies shave to stay in business. if they go out of business, who the fuck are you gonna promote?

You promote your own shit, not some second rate site filled with skanks, plug-ins, and pixmasters content. Fuck that.

If what you are saying is true. Why resort to deception?
Couldn't they structure things to be truthful?

exactly...

If people really knew what was in most paysites they would never join.

truthfully, just get over the shave. it happens.

If you had proof, sure you could sue. It's the same as any company not paying their salesmen what they've earned. If some pissed off whistle blower ever sneaks info to the authorities and they investigate, in theory it's possible. The GFY drama would be off the wall.

I know. Not like I can do anything about it. But, if the right person really got pissed off about it I think some shit would hit the fan in the industry. Just my opinion.

read my 1st post. it's highly unlikely that would happen.

I agree. The problem is that if you are in New York and the shaver is in Florida or California, you are shit out of luck unless you have a lot of money to throw at the lawyers.

Having said that, it would be money well spent, especially if it was a big program.

You're probably right. Although, I think if a lawsuit were to even be initiated there would be much publicity. Wouldn't that be a bad thing?

I guess I'm not alone in my analysis.
Look what I found on another board....
http://chat.ynotmasters.com/public/C...04&Site_ID=yno

What do the morning people have to say about this?

Sueing these programs would probably be a waste of time and
money. All the large ones are incorporated, most likely with
leased equipment and buildings. They have very little real
value to attach, and the corpotate status protects the assets
of the owners. It would also be nearly impossible to prove
that they actually shave. Anyone with some experience could
make the company records change to their advantage since
they are contained in a computer database.

Understand, I have no experience with possible sponsor
shaving. I don't know whether they do or don't.

I do know that a reasonable person should expect what I would
call "incidental shaving". A certain percentage of referrals are
going to get lost in the signup process. Different browsers and
surfer actions could corrupt the java-forwarding and/or cookie
state so that, by the time the signup is made, the sponsor
honestly doesn't know where it came from.

I think the advice above...live with it and stay with the best
converting sponsors...is probably the best way to go.

Only TRUE way to prove they don't shave is when these large sponsors allow you to login to the actual proccessor stats page to see if it matches with your stats.

Kinda of like how oxcash does but unfortunately they are just partnership program

... nobody shaves ... period !

an honest company?

Programs that let you view processor pages can still shave, only in different ways.

good point,, that ain't 100% either

"This isn't "cheating" as they refer to it, it's fraud and someone is going to get fed up and sue making headlines that will make the Enron scandal look like a sunday afternoon walk in the park. The news networks would just eat it up. Dragging ALL of us into the scandal

Can you see it? "Porn kingpins steal billions from unwary business men."

There would certainly end up being federal investigations into these practices and new laws passed to control it. "
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I'm really sorry to burst someone's bubble here but this just makes me laugh so hard I couldn't pass it up.

At the end of the day, most of you are worrying about the wrong things entirely.

Who pays you the most for your traffic?

I just wish more webmasters would think like you KK...
WG

they should be up front about things. you say that you pay per sign up, pay per sign up. not every so many sign ups or however you want to count.

its dishonest and bullshit.

Oh I don't, since too many people would make it in the business then. I can count on one hand those still around that were in my 'newb class' so to speak.

I suppose you also get really mad when a surfer from an unbillable country gets redirected to a dialer. Or when there's popunder's and popups.

WG

thats not the same as being dishonest...

SHAVE HAPPENS :glugglug

If it weren't for delusional affiliates there would be no dishonest sponsors....

I don't know what the uproar is all about, you can thank your peers -- the cheating ass resellers -- if they weren't ripping off the sponsors then the sponsors wouldn't need to constantly try to figure out how to improve their margins.

It's just like shoplifting, someone is going to pay the price.

thats like saying because people steal from sears its ok for sears to rip off other customers...

what do they actually do? they increase prices or eat the costs.

Glad I gave you a good chuckle....that would appear to be one of my posts and from Ynot no less :-)

All it takes is one disgruntled employee and one pissed off affiliate and, if this truly is an industry practice, the entire house of cards will come crumbling down.

-joe

It's (relatively) easy to prove who's shaving, we tested it with 2 big programs we were suspicious about and bingo! one of them shaved at about 25% an the other almost 50%, test ran in a week. We approached the program guys, one of them magically stopped the shaving machine (at least for the account in question) and the other simply terminated the test account. They promised 35 PS, but in fact they were paying little more than 17.50 . Anyway, for common people or people living out of the countries where these programs are based, sueing them is just a waste of time and money. Plus, you can prove it for yourself, but not sure if it's enough proof for a judge, prolly not (even when it could be "reasonable doubt")

And no, won't say which programs are those because we ocassionally work for them in other areas, so if you're curious, run your own test :winkwink:

Once again we come back to this subject. It seems to be coming on more and more, and it's only a matter of time before something happens.

I've said it a thousand times before.... If you want to know who shaves, go to the shows, find the programmers, and get them drunk. They'll tell you all you need to know.

It wouldn't be too hard to prove if someone shaves in a court if needed. The programs themselves aren't the only ones that have records - So do banks, and so do the credit card companies.

In our case, Lightspeed Media uses CCBill as our primary credit card processer. A simple court order to CCBill to get their records, and compare it to ours and you can tell where the truth is. (For the record I will state that Lightspeed Cash does not shave in any way, shape or form, nor could we if we wanted to. )

It's only a matter of time before some programmer quits and wants to raise hell and exposes the truth. When it happenes - with any luck - a class action lawsuit will take place with hundreds of webmasters in it...... I'd love to see this. I'm all for taking out the trash.

Oye Rochard, that's exactly what I don't want to see happen. I was hoping for some sort of self policing before we see headlines screaming news about a brand new adult industry scandal. It's the last thing we need right now.

-joe

Cuncur

It is a big deal. And the sponsors who have nothing to hide are beginning to make cc post-back data available to 3rd party auditors, ClickTruth

Sloooowly we become a real industry.

aha...that is what I was looking for:-) nice find!:thumbsup

I think that's just what you'll see happen, you'll see headlines screaming. Once they start it, they just can't quit. They get use to a better life style and will keep doing it until the doors have a chain and lock on'm. I don't know'm but I dam sure do know there kind. Porn business is no Diff. in this aspect than main stream business, a crook is a crook.

Do I smell a 20/20? 60 mintues?

There are a shitload that do but what can you do. U have to prove it first