Thread: Grand Privé / eCogra Investigation - Official Response from CAP

Several days ago eCogra put out a marketing campaign which put them at the forefront of the Grand Privé debaucle. For those who are unaware, it is well-documented and easily found in the search engines. For the sake of brevity: Grand Privé closed down operations and left many affiliates uncompensated for their player base. Affiliate commissions were not paid and they opened another affiliate program for a non-US facing casino, Villa Fortuna. With a large player base from the Grand Privé group, they were able to regain 100% profits from their players (and cut affiliates from their contractually-earned share of the commissions).

Almost a year ago, I was to meet with the senior management of Grand Privé in London to work towards a proper resolution with all affected affiliates. Due to our own internal challenges at the time, it was not feasible nor sensible for CAP to be involved any further. Nevertheless, I have been watching the situation since then and was quite disappointed that no effort towards a resolution had been put forth. Hence, I e-mailed an ex-senior executive at Grand Privé several weeks ago and started to make progress again towards a proper settlement plan with affiliates. I realized that a fair, independent party to CAP, Microgaming, and Grand Privé would be required to make sure the resolution is acceptable for all affected affiliates. That's when I contacted Andy from Affiliate Guard Dog (AGD), and even got the support of my contact at Grand Privé to allow Andy to oversee the audit, which was to be handled by an independent auditor such as Price Waterhouse or similar at the time. AGD graciously accepted to be involved in the matter and even went to the extent of creating a proper investigative method and audit procedure.

The procedure would have included contacting all Grand Privé affiliates (not just those who submitted a claimant form) in the same manner that a class action lawsuit informs all affected persons. The initial investigation would have been an affiliate audit to determine which persons to contact. Subsequent to the affiliate audit would have been a complete player audit with affiliate-tag verification, matchup. Once the second audit was performed, a compensation/commission audit could be performed. This portion of the audit was to be a 2-part audit: Historic Commissions Audit and Cross-Promotional Audit of tagged players. [This is a rough outline of our plans. Feel free, eCogra, to use this or contact us for more details]

The auditor of choice was being looked into until last week when eCogra sidestepped us with their announcement.

The announcement from eCogra was both surprising and unexpected. We hope that eCogra will be able to do the right thing and provide a resolution for ALL affected affiliates and not just the ones who complete the claimant form, considering the Grand Privé affiliate system has been inaccessible for roughly a year, if not longer.

The eCogra claim form can be found here: http://www.ecogra.org/grandprive.aspx. Please ensure your claim is submitted no later than December 21st, 2009.

Good luck to all Grand Privé Affiliates!

It surely would have made a lot more sense to send a mail to each affiliate with a link to the claim form.

Originally Posted by Dominique

It surely would have made a lot more sense to send a mail to each affiliate with a link to the claim form.

Yes that would be the right thing to do, but that would cost GP more money, so I guess they avoid anything that costs them more.

I have a question, how does eCOGRA look in this situation, a hero, a lame duck, or a slimy organization that butters their bread on both sides?

1. Lame duck because they took so long and did not act on their own accord.
2. Hero because they are doing something about the situation.
3. Slimy, because they sit in the GP camp and list their casinos as "reputable gaming sites" while at the same time sit in the Affiliate camp.

Mark my words.

So many claims are going to be rejected as they are asking for information that is hard to get hold of. That form is stupid, all that should be required is my affiliate ID, name and address at most.

CPA is always an iffy business - one party always wins and one party loses. If the casino is super happy with you, you know you would make a lot more money on rev share. If the casino loses, it will sever the CPA.

REV share is a bit different.

But either way, the clause you quote would not hold up in any court, it is not intended to apply to comission payment contracts but to service contracts regarding the use of software by subscribers. The casinos just plucked it off the net and stuck it in their contracts, but it isn't applicable at all.

If the contract says "lifetime comissions" then that is what the program is contractually liable for.

If the program cannot pay, it needs to reach out and arrive at a mutual agreement with it's affiliates. Contracts can only be changed if both parties agree to the change.

Nobluff, I submitted a claim and received a response that it was being processed, even though I had no dates, $ amounts or aff tracker filled in. I can't very well fill these in without accessing the aff site, and that is off line.

eCOGRA is aware of that apparently and will process claims anyway.

Originally Posted by Dominique

Nobluff, I submitted a claim and received a response that it was being processed, even though I had no dates, $ amounts or aff tracker filled in. I can't very well fill these in without accessing the aff site, and that is off line.

eCOGRA is aware of that apparently and will process claims anyway.

Thats a relief as I also can not remember the numbers. I have yet to receive a confirmation from eCOGRA, how long did yours take?

Originally Posted by MrProno

Do you read the contract when you sign up ?, do your print it ?, When you enter in a hurry in your account and they say before accessing click here to agree with contractual change ? do you read them en print them ? Most affiliate don't.

Thankfully you don't need to. You can go to Casino Affiliate Forums and scroll down past the forum and you'll see all the T&Cs of the listed programs evaluated and recommended, not recomended, rogued and everything in between.

Now, I have been doing this for some 9 years, and I can tell you that on CPA I would make but a small fraction of what I make now.

CPA is good to get on one's feet, for some quick working capital, but in the long term it is not a profitable thing.

Originally Posted by MrProno

I always prefer cpa, because I have more guarantee to get your money, and also it is more logical, I get pay to bring the client, it is job of casino to make them deposit.

1. This is not a thread about rev share or CPA, its a thread about a affiliate program that ripped off a lot of affiliates. The only reason something is being done about it, is that there are a lot of affiliates that have been affected, so there is strength in numbers.

2. Your theory of CPA is flawed, as the CPA stands for Cost Per Action, and the Action part is the client making a deposit, so if there is no deposit, there is no pay. Anyway, as mentioned this is a topic for another thread, as this is the thread about GP affiliates hopefully getting some type of closure.