Hi casinocrush,
I appreciate and take on-board all your comments with the due validity and weight that it deserves. I understand that you are passionate about this industry and what you do – so am I. I also appreciate the fact that the Villa Fortuna issue has sparked great aggrevation for you and others – which is understandable.
However, please do not make this into a personal matter on the part of my integrity or my knowledge and experience. I have been nothing but upfront with you in my discussions with you on the phone, as well as in my responses to posts here.
I have come into this role at a very difficult time in the life-cycle of Grand Prive Affiliates, and I can honestly say that I have done everything I possibly can to not only fix past issues and mistakes, but to also ensure complete transparency and open communication between the program and affiliates.
Yes, I have been involved with the planning of the affiliate program for Villa Fortuna. Yes, I have been working on getting the program up and running for affiliates to be able to market.
However, let me reiterate this point yet again – the 25 free offer has never been advertised on the casino website, nor have we asked any players to refer other players. The offer was sent to a very small base of existing non-affiliated players as a means to generate the necessary wagers for the licensing of the casino. The decision to go to players with 25 free was made outside of my knowledge and a day before the players were invited, due to the urgency of the need to get wagers through. The fact that one player then decided to act outside of any actions endorsed by the casino or ourselves was beyond our control. We have even gone so far as to request that affiliates block any advertising of Villa Fortuna on their forums.
It is entirely your right to either market or not market Grand Prive Affiliates. If you feel we have done wrong by you and that we hold no value to you as an affiliate, that is your right to feel that way, and by all means, I do not and will not hold that against you.
I do not appreciate being branded or pulled into a class of being an affiliate manager who has a “half-assed attitude” towards any affiliates, because I don’t. If this comes as a result of me not being able to fulfill your request of providing you with tags / links for Villa Fortuna before any other affiliate, even though the program is not live yet, then I apologize that I could not deliver on that request.
I believe in doing things properly from the start, and my objective is, and always will be, to launch a working program for the casino without repeating the problems that was experienced in the past. Doing that without proper testing in place would be as you say “half-assed”.
At the end of the day, if I am to buckle under pressures and launch a program that I am not 100% happy with, and things went pear-shaped, then this conversation would be around the fact that we have launched another problem program, or topics along those lines. So, forgive me if I am pedantic in wanting a program launched that works 100% from the start, and not wanting affiliates joining one that had “half-assed” effort put into its creation.