WTF, trying to stiff me because of chargebacks?
 

One of my PPS sponsors says my chargebacks are too high for October and so far in November, so they are going to block my account and suspend payment?
I don't do anything shady, and these guys owe me thousands...I'm pretty new to this, are they really going to stiff me?

What would you do?

I wrote them an email asking for more info and explaining that their T&C say that if they suspend for chargebacks they will pay in full.

Starting a thread on GFY is a good start. Things get resolved pretty quickly and since you're new I'll forgive that you made the rookie mistake of not naming the sponsor :1orglaugh

You're new at this, and they owe you thousands? That sounds odd.

Anyways, I'd think that if that's what their T&C says, you should be fine...

But I wouldn't be surprised if they require that you hang awhile while they ascertain if the sales you sent them are legitimate or not. High occurrences of charge-backs are a huge warning flag to anyone that takes notice of such things... on a few different levels.

But then - who really knows... I reckon it's between you and the program. After it all, if you feel you've been wrong, I say get ahold of a soapbox, and come back.

i highly doubt their tos says if chargebacks are too high you will still be paid, i would think they would be a bit more clever , but since you didn't name the sponsor it's hard to tell.

it's kinda hard for us to help without knowing how many chargebacks there were etc.

i could make a suggestion/compromise though ..

if your legit then it shouldnt be a huge problem.. let them come to the board and make some good pr out of it..

obviously you dont get paid for the ones that charged back but as far as the rest, you should ask them to switch you to revshare , once you have earned $1000 , then you get the funds that are being withheld added back to your account

that would be fair.

Agree with SmokeyTheBear.

Good luck in getting that resolved so that it's fair for each party involved. If you are looking a new sponsor, see sig!

I also agree with SmokeyTheBear.

They certainly should pay you for what you are truly owed.

Standard practice for most companies

If they are legit, they should hold your payment till they figure out how many chargebacks they have on the account. Then they should pay you out on the non-chargebacks and cancel your account.

As for what you should do. I'd contact them and tell them where you are getting traffic from. There are unfortunately a lot of false-positives when it comes to policing fraud. I wouldn't sweat it.

Seems odd to be new and owed thousands. Also for a program to stiff you I bet your ratio is pretty off which is always a sign to us. Over the course of years of signups one affiliate rarely deviates from the average very far without something being off. But who knows, keep at it and maybe it you post some numbers and ratios here you questions might be better answered.

:2 cents:

Thanks for the good replies!

I wanted to make sure I was on the right track before I started the drama thread...but the sponsor is Adult-Profit

1) I am new (started in late June, and all I have is a couple of blogs). I can't really explain it but I have had immediate huge success. I do know how to get traffic to blogs (Im an experienced SEO) but this is my first try at adult and I really dont understand most of the stuff you guys talk about (FHG , TGP all that). Trust me, I know how lucky I am with this, but I really cant afford a $4000 hit.

2) I have bought zero traffic. I dont email people. I don't even know how I would defraud somebody. People show up and and click on my links. I get lots of emails and comments but no one has ever bitched to me about the product or told me they were going to chargeback.

3) I dont know how many chargebacks there were, but I asked them for this info. I had about 130 signups in October.

4) Here's the section of their T&C regarding chargebacks:
6) I suggested that they pay me in full based on the above and we stop working together. There have been a couple of little wrinkles with them, that have pissed me off before, but nothing amounting to this.

SmokeyTheBear, I don't really get it, I ask them to convert this months signups to revshare and then switch it back when it hits $1000? I'm sorry to be so dense..

Please help, I really cant afford to get stiffed...

ratio for PPS in OCtober was 1:130 which was much worse than all previous months. Is that "off"? THe month before was 1:96...August was 1:77....July was 1:93

Which traffic source? Zango?

whats your blog's url?

Nope, its mostly Yahoo Search, Google Images is getting big and then I get a bunch of type-in traffic, which is coming from Youtube, where I have a very popular video - I disclosed the youtube video to them at their request back in July.

man, I hate giving this out :)

http://www.foleyscandal.com

heres the problem.. if they got an abnormally high amount of chargebacks from your account and your a new webmaster , what they are worried about is 1 month after they pay you , they get more chargebacks = they can't recoup their loss at that point as they have already paid you.

what i am suggesting is , they withhold your paycheck ( minus the chargebacks of course ) for 1 month until you send $1000 worth of additional sales ( as a good faith effort to prove you are not a scammer ) and switch you to revshare for the time being .. ( their loss and yours is limited when using revshare )

so basically i am saying you should suggest this to them..

say " hey i realise you guys are looking out for your best interest but i am an honest guy and would like to propose a compromise, switch me to revshare ,hold my payment for 1 month ( to assure no more chargebacks occur ), re-evaluate my account after 1 month

Is it just me or is your blog fucked up?

uhhh, its ugly, and amateurish, is that what you mean? :)

Nope, I mean that every single post I see is exactly the same.

well, I consider that part of the "ugly and amateurish" part but yeah, thats how I roll...

Ok, I'm not looking to get into a flame war or anything, but frankly, I would never do business with that company. I have done detailed reviews on both the Celeb Kings site and the Babylon X site for a client and their member's areas are filled with stolen content, materials that are watermarked with KNOWN pirating websites' URLs and there is tons and tons of MTV, VH1, etc, videos which I seriously doubt they have the rights to, although I couldn't say for sure.

The stuff watermarked as being from pirate websites, however, is indisputable. If they can't/won't provide only LEGAL content for their members, I don't see how affiliates or anyone else can be comfortable working with them and trust they won't rip you off too.

IN ADDITION to the apparent less than legal status of some of the materials, they advertise videos that are FAKE. They do NOT have a Britney Spears sex tape as claimed. I've seen that video and it IS NOT her. That's just one example.

Bottom line, it doesn't surprise me that you would have a lot of charge backs. I'd charge back too if I shelled out money for a site and then A) didn't get what I saw on the tour and B) saw that they just took much of the content from pirate sites.

anyway, good luck in your venture...

Another thing that smells fishy here, is that a lot of your comments are written in Spanish.

:2 cents:

Honestly, I've never even looked at their content or been in their members area. As far as I can tell, ALL my conversions are based on 1 celebs video. That video is beyond a doubt a legitimate celebrity sex video, and no one to my knowledge, and I have looked into that, has stepped forward to assert they own the rights to it..but I do appreciate hearing your opinion of it. I always check GFY for feedback before I sign up for a program, and all I ever read about them is that they are "good people" etc. Looking a program up on GFY is the ONLY way I know of to vet an affiliate program. It would have never occurred to me to try to determine whether they have the rights to what they sell, don't even know how I would do that..

I understand why that would be a flag for someone. The celeb sex tape is a Spanish speaking pop singer, virtually unknown in the US except to spanish speaking music and tv consumers. Almost all of my contacts from users have either been in spanish, or have had other cues that would make you think they were Hispanic. As a result, I translate my English posts and repost to the blog and I pull in several spanish feeds, but that's just paying attention to your userbase, right? I could understand if we were talking about Nigerian or Malaysian traffic where credit card fraud is super high, my mainstream web work, has had to police fraud from those countries many times, but the majority of my traffic comes from USA IP's and I believe based on my research that most of my signups are spanish speakers from the US.

Even if it's a legit video that people are after, there's a good chance that they don't have the full video. I've seen several celeb sites (and I don't know if these sites fall into this category or not, can't remember) where they will have a CLIP of a video, for example the Pam Anderson tape. They might have 5 minutes of it or something. So something like that could easily be happening here and it wouldn't surprise me if that, too, could lead to charge backs.

with that ratio, it's a little understandable if you're getting high chargebacks

i would say it depends on the amount of CBs you're getting.. it does signal fraud

I'm assuming the star is the girl who is mentioned over and over on the blog. If so, I logged in to the site (old pass from the review still works) and the video they have of her is LESS than one minute long. So if people join expecting to see the "full movie" they will most likely be disappointed.

Yes.


:2 cents:

well, thats probably the whole video, I dont know what to tell you...I refer to it as the full video on the site because there was an even shorter version also circulating when this whole thing broke, and many people were linking to that. I have seen what is ostensibly the full video and it is less than a minute long. I also refer to the video because I have promos of it that are very short, that I have distributed to youtube.

I wish I knew the number of chargebacks, they didnt tell me, I dont think their stats show it, and they didnt repsond to my request for the number of chargebacks...i think there's a lot of reasons for my ratio being "good" but none of them involve me doing something deceptive

I would dump them as a sponsor and promote sponsors that aren't so shady...