Falsely accused of spamming! Anyone had this happen to them?
 

Recently I contacted Pimp Roll because I wasn't able to login to my account. Phil emails me back telling me that my account was "terminated due to spamming". Not only can I not believe this but I have only created and submitted a total of three galleries for that sponsor and I only submit to TGPs where I have partner accounts. In fact I don't even know how to spam because I've never tried. I contacted Epoch via phone, got transferred twice and finally was able to talk to someone who gave me the email address of where I could get some answers. Here is the transcript of the emails:

Sorry. Risk management's position is that when suspicious
activity is found, we do not inform anyone affiliated with that
party why they were frauded thus compromise Epoch's
proprietary risk management techniques.


Thanks
Risk Management


At 12:20 PM 1/13/2004 -0600, you wrote:

> I am an affiliate of MD MEDIA INC. using the affiliate code pimpxxxx. I received notice from this sponsor that my account had been terminated due to spamming. I explained to the sponsor that I do not spam. I need to find out why this account has been terminated and what evidence Paycom has acquired- in terms of what domains the spamming arose from and also from what source the spam report came from. I believe that this is obviously an error as I have stated that I do not spam. I have called Paycom support about this and they informed me to use this email address ([email protected]) for reporting. Please feel free to contact me if you need any further information.
> Thank you,


My resonse was:
So you're basically saying that a webmaster with a malicious intent could do something like clone pages created by myself containing my linking code, spam it all over the world and then I'd get my webmaster account terminated because of their actions? I think you need to reasses your risk management features in the future if that's the case. Because there is no way I have spammed the account code in question. I would like to request a rereview by Paycom of my account activities if possible. Again, I have stated I was not involved in any spamming activities of any kind.

Could this be some new way to rip honest webmasters off?

Eden69,

You mention in your post that PimpRoll is the one that told you your account was terminated due to spamming. As an affiliate of their program, they have the right to terminate any affilaite as they see fit. I won't speak for their policies. You'll have to take that up with them.

It is rare that Paycom terminates anyone for spamming, although it does happen. Paycom's Risk Management can terminate for any number of reasons, none of which I will discuss here or anywhere else for the exact reasons stated in the email from Risk Management.

I do not doubt that there is a degree of sabotage that takes place among affiliates and/or programs. If you have evidence of that, we would be happy to look at it. No IPSP wants to do anything to stop honest business. But it's in every ones favor to control risk. There's nothing personal, we don't know you. The decisions we make are all based on numbers, statistics, and assessments. It's all just business.

You can contact me directly if you have anything you want us to reassess.


http://www.epochsystems.com/images/r...ner_120x60.gif

Believe me I am on the lookout for whoever sabotaged my account. I have never had an account terminated in the year I have been in this business. Hopefully I can find out some way to protect myself from this happening in the future. Perhaps copyrighting my pages but this again is probably no surefire protection against plagarism or sabotage.

all spammers say they arn't spammers

And about the business of spam...

It is in everyone's best interests to react to complaints and to remove email addresses of those who request it, and, to terminate any affiliate who generates legitimate complaints. Not reacting can produce serious consequences, and those consequences are getting worse all the time.

I've tried to contact you Rand through your profile on GFY but I get a message that it's disabled. Do you have an email address where I can contact you?

Sleazy I do agree with you in that respect. However, If someone accused you of spamming, how would you go about proving your innocence? I'm willing to do whatever it takes.

If you really want to know litigate it

Kingfish,
Do you have any more information or can you point me in the right direction on how to go about doing this? I've never had to seek resolving any disputes through litigations concerning something like this.

[email protected]


http://www.epochsystems.com/images/r...ner_120x60.gif

Just shot you an email Rand, thanks

Well if your serious about it go see a local attorney. Assuming everything you posted is true and you aren?t a spammer you probably have a cause of action for defamation, and then in some states you might have a cause of action for intentional interference with a contractual relationship.

In a nutshell your attorney sues them, sends them a discovery request (request the so called spam complaint and any evidence they have of the questionable activity). Then it is put up or shut up time for them.

Thanks Kingfish,
I've only made two sales so far with them and actually weren't sending them that much traffic as of yet (they are a fairly new sponsor for me). However, since I have no idea how my affiliate code turned into spammed material and would like to resolve this fairly I will most likely end up looking into your suggestion if I am unable to get it resolved directly through Epoch and my sponsor.

I respect Epoch?s need for fraud scrubbing, but to accuse someone of fraud, being a spammer or a scammer and then refusing to back up of those statements with some sort of evidence is simply unacceptable conduct. This isn?t first time I have heard a similar complaint either.

Don't expect epoch to back you up after they tell you that they never shut off your account. They only care about the company that they are processing for. (After all, they make them more money.) Also don't expect a reply until you have emailed and called for 7-10 days straight. Oh yeah, i speak from experience.
I also don't promote any programs that use epoch becasue of this.

I have not heard back from Rand yet but we'll see what he has to say after reassesment of this issue. Hopefully it will be something as small as they just got the wrong account number because I'd be really interested to see what kind of evidence they can produce to support their claims. I really hope not to find myself in a similar situation save11.

Eden69,

I am not finding an email from you. Please resend it to [email protected]. Put GFY / Eden69 in the subject line. I will get back to you as soon as I get a response from Risk Mgmt.

--Rand

Rand,
Thanks for the update. I'm sending an email to that address right now.

Rand,
I have been trying to contact you via email as to the status of the issue and haven't received any response. Could you verify if the request to re-assess my status is being worked on presently?

no proof and they keep your money?

not good.

without proof they have nothing to stand on.

where is the proof he spammed?

:glugglug

This is not the first time this happened not will it be the last time. Until someone takes someone to court and lets a judge decide on the evidence presented.

On one hand you have have Paycom/Epoch suing Visa becasue of their abuse of power. Then on the other hand you have them as judge and jury, without showing the evidence, deciding not to pay someone for the work he's done.

On one hand you have Paycom taking Visa to court, claiming abuse of power. Then they act as judge and jury, without showing the evidence, deiding if someone gets paid for their work.

Popcorn, peanuts, hot dogs anyone?

That sucks... you should at least have the right to a fair trial, as it were.

Threads like this are almost the worst publicity a program can get.

At this point, I'm not sure what to do. Tomorrow I'm moving across the country (to make a long story short I worked my ass off as a gallery submitter and actually made enough to move myself to be closer to my family after being in the mass exodus of layed off engineers). So at this point I am not going to immediately take action but may do so after I get settled in. I'm really going to have to decide how far I want to take this considering I only made three galleries for this sponsor, so it hadn't brought it that much income. To have this kind of news come to me after having proved myself to many high profile TGPs as a trusted submitter and partner for well over a year now and designing galleries day in and day out, this is totally unbelievable.

Not sure why you care? It's $70 they are taking from you so why not just move to a different sponsor?

It isn't right, but the time you waste for all this you could have made a new gallery and submitted it and made back the $70 elsewhere.

It's hard enough as a sponsor to get quality webmasters.

Send me hits! ICQ#5051691

everything you need to know about gettin your money can be found right in this thread

http://www.gofuckyourself.com/showth...hreadid=228631

Did Pimproll terminate you or Epoch tell Pimproll to terminate you?

Im confused??

No shit...


Picture this:

Malicious TGP'er is promoting Pimp Roll sites at various TGP's.
Then eden moves in and buys some paid listings and cuts into Malicious guys profits -- he wants the be the only affiliate promoting those sites on that TGP.

So he takes out the competition.


Makes sense to me.


Perhaps Epoch & Pimp Roll should investigate whoever else on the program sends sales from the TGP's eden was using. :2 cents:


--- Eden... go make a list of all pimp roll sites, especially the ones you were promoting & make note of pimproll IDs of people who were promoting the same ones. If those TGP have an archive even better.

i predict more of this.

http://www.greenguyandjim.com/board/...?threadid=4265

its going around

Thanks for that informative link Fletch, it's good to know I'm not the only one who has experienced this.

makefuckingmoney: I was informed by Pimproll that Epoch (who I assume does their processing) had terminated my account for "spamming". I did not receive an email from Pimp Roll however, I had to inquire as to why I was unable to log into the webmaster area.

Well if your terminated by Epoch then there typically is a good reason..

Where are you located?

eden69 email me with your account ID.

[email protected]

shut the fuck up

I'm in US makefuckingmoney, Minnesota

I sent you an email PimpRoll

PimpRoll wrote:

What I see in the Epoch admin is that you sent 2 check/ach sales at the
exact same time.

Both of those sales from the same person came back as bad checks.

That is a huge red flag in Epoch. 2 sales, 2 returned checks, all by the
same person.

How do you explain that?

My response:
I don't know that's a very good question. Seeing as how I only made two or three sales, how about extremely bad luck? I've been working with over ten sponsors for the last year and never had this problem. I'm still with them and nothing like this has ever happened that I have been informed about. If you'd like written words from them I'd be more than willing to show you that.

Well in Sleazy's case, all he'd have to do is show them his #3 rank on Sextracker :glugglug

What I don't understand is that I was initially told I was spamming which was obviously a false claim. I would rather a sponsor initially be honest with me when they are terminating my account and at least give me the reason why they did it than to claim something I did not do.