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What incentives were you offering the players?
Why were the players deemed fraudulent?
That’s a large number of fraudulent players for such a short period of time.
It’s particularly rare to generate that many fraudulent players on the poker side of things without having at least some knowledge or suspicions that something might not be right.
This seems like something that would be more common on the casino side.
Maybe it was a single player charging back? How many fraudulent players? And yes, what did you spend the $1,700 on?
nodepositneeded – he mentioned the network told him they had pushed through chargebacks.
I would double check the T&Cs as most programs have a clause about chargebacks in them.
I would also like to make the comment that a player is able to claim a chargeback up to 6 months after the transaction is made, and unfortunately the operator only has 2 days to dispute it, so if the chargebacks are made over a weekend, tough for us.. The next step is to try to retrieve the money which is in about 99% of cases impossible…. the operator also pays fees associated with this, so not only do they lose the amount that is charged back, but they pay extra in fees to the processor.
I think with chargebacks you need to look at it in two ways – if you didn’t send them the player, they wouldn’t have them in the first place, so 1 – yeah they paid you commission on the players like they should have, and 2 – if the player has for some reason charged back on the casino, you should honour your side of the “business partner” agreement. This is my opinion of course. With our program I try to be fair and only deduct the amount the affiliate has earned – pretty decent compromise if you ask me.
My 2 cents.
Renee’s suggestion is reasonable and that is used by most programs except a few who recover the entire value of the chargeback from the affiliate. You need to check the terms and conditions which you have signed with them to clarify this issue.
If there is a chargeback, the program will have to recover a % of that from you. These are mostly case specific and discussed with the affiliate. Ask them to give you a breakdown of the chargeback.
BTW what did you spend $1700 on to get those 19 players. Are these incentive players?
I don’t see why a chargeback should be paid for entirely by the affiliate. I’d say the % of the revshare is adequate.
Yes, we’re an incentivized site. It looks like the players came from some sort of fraud ring because the ip addresses were all different and some of the countries were different. Also, the Cake stats reports showed that these players all played a lot of raked hands, and generated sufficient rake. Fraudulent players don’t normally play a thousand or two thousand raked hands. The $1700 was spent on incentives.
Renee, I don’t think it’s fair to have the affiliate pay for all of the chargebacks. You can say that we shouldn’t have brought the player to the site, but at the same time, why did the poker site allow the player to play at the site for 6 months before telling the affiliate? or however long? Affiliates have costs as well, especially incentivized affiliates. All that I asked from Cake was some sort of compromise in regards to the fraudulent transactions. We did not knowingly defraud Cake. We were defrauded as well. Why should we be responsible for the entire amount?
Then, not only did they lock our affiliate accounts, but they also closed all of our Cake player accounts, and notified the other affiliate managers of these fraudulent transactions, defaming us in the process. Would other affiliate managers have done this as well?
If this happened to a rakeback affiliate, and the payments were already made to the players, then would the rakeback affiliate lose all of their commissions? Ultimately, I think it’s the responsibility of both the affiliate and the site for taking on these fraudulent players.
@gamblingbutler 213591 wrote:
I don’t see why a chargeback should be paid for entirely by the affiliate. I’d say the % of the revshare is adequate.
As I said, if you didn’t send the player, we wouldn’t have that cost right?
Just like if you didn’t send the player we wouldn’t be earning the money from their deposits/losses etc etc. I think it’s gotta work both ways. It might not seem reasonable but I think that is very short sighted. You can’t argue one way and not the other.@ptg 213594 wrote:
Yes, we’re an incentivized site. It looks like the players came from some sort of fraud ring because the ip addresses were all different and some of the countries were different. Also, the Cake stats reports showed that these players all played a lot of raked hands, and generated sufficient rake. Fraudulent players don’t normally play a thousand or two thousand raked hands. The $1700 was spent on incentives.
Renee, I don’t think it’s fair to have the affiliate pay for all of the chargebacks. You can say that we shouldn’t have brought the player to the site, but at the same time, why did the poker site allow the player to play at the site for 6 months before telling the affiliate? or however long? Affiliates have costs as well, especially incentivized affiliates. All that I asked from Cake was some sort of compromise in regards to the fraudulent transactions. We did not knowingly defraud Cake. We were defrauded as well. Why should we be responsible for the entire amount?
Then, not only did they lock our affiliate accounts, but they also closed all of our Cake player accounts, and notified the other affiliate managers of these fraudulent transactions, defaming us in the process. Would other affiliate managers have done this as well?
If this happened to a rakeback affiliate, and the payments were already made to the players, then would the rakeback affiliate lose all of their commissions? Ultimately, I think it’s the responsibility of both the affiliate and the site for taking on these fraudulent players.
This is why most groups do not allow incentivised traffic – because it attracts bonus abusers and fraud: people will do anything to get free money/stuff.. it’s like a magnet for people who are looking for it.
As I mentioned above, the chargeback situation must work both ways. I cannot tell you how many times I have read the following line:
“If I didn’t send the player to the casino, they wouldn’t have them in the first place”
True. So fulfill your side of the deal as a business partner, because that is essentially what an affiliate is, and take it both ways.
“If you didn’t send the player, the casino wouldn’t have to pay out the fees etc for the chargeback in the first place” – don’t you think that goes hand in hand with the line above?
Also, if it’s in the T&Cs that they remove the full cost of the chargeback, I guess this is what you are stuck with. You read the T&Cs right?
Also, what kind of incentives would you be giving the players with 1700 bucks!? Seems kind of over the top don’t you think?
Renee, incentivized marketing is not a bad thing, so long as it’s done correctly. And you are wrong that most sites don’t allow incentivized marketing, because they do. Maybe not casino sites, but definitely poker sites.
Fraudulent players are going to sign up wherever…regardless of whether the site is incentivized or not. And bonus hunters will always be part of the equation, whether the sites like them or not. The real problem is the fact that most poker sites don’t have the proper fraud detection system in place to handle these players. There are a lot of great sites out there that deal with fraudulent players very quickly, and then there are sites like Cake that take forever. My problems could’ve been avoided if Cake would’ve gotten back to me just a week earlier.
I have no problems paying Cake back for these fraudulent players. That is not the issue. My problem is if I pay them back for these fraudulent players, what happens 6 months down the road when they discover that we had another 20 fraudulent players from the beginning of the year. There’s no way that any affiliate can operate like this. The operators have to assume some sort of responsibility in detecting these fraudulent players in a reasonable amount of time.
You keep mentioning T&C’s, but both you and I know that the poker sites’ change these T&Cs fairly frequently, and they only cite these T&C’s when they don’t want to pay an affiliate for their work. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve not been paid by the date specified in the T&Cs.
As far as the $1700, incentivized marketing is not cheap. We consider it a marketing expense just like any other SEO or rakeback affiliate. why would it be “over the top” to spend that much? I don’t get it.
I am not that versed in the poker environment, in the casino section, incentivising is almost always forbidden since it tends to bring very low value players and bonus hunters only. This may be different in poker obviously rakeback is an incentive anyway.
Hello,
Cake Poker is now aware of this thread and will address the situation hopefully tomorrow. You will get a response here and we will do our best to help mitigate this issue.
@Renee 213613 wrote:
As I said, if you didn’t send the player, we wouldn’t have that cost right?
Just like if you didn’t send the player we wouldn’t be earning the money from their deposits/losses etc etc. I think it’s gotta work both ways. It might not seem reasonable but I think that is very short sighted. You can’t argue one way and not the other.That’s why I said “shouldn’t be paid entirely by the affiliate”. We learned to live with carrying the share of payment processing costs with some brands and the share of the chargeback as well, that is no biggie if it doesn’t turn into a regular thing. But deducting everything from the affiliate is still wrong in my opinion.
@gamblingbutler 213632 wrote:
That’s why I said “shouldn’t be paid entirely by the affiliate”. We learned to live with carrying the share of payment processing costs with some brands and the share of the chargeback as well, that is no biggie if it doesn’t turn into a regular thing. But deducting everything from the affiliate is still wrong in my opinion.
I can understand why you would think that, but take into consideration the other “costs” that go with being an operator…
For revshare – no negative carryovers.. no bundling etc etc..
Running costs, wages, bills, royalties.A player wins 40k on the last day of the month then drops it back on the first day of the following month… thats the operator paying the affiliate a commission on money that never came in from that player.
As I mentioned previously, where I can I take only the amount earned from the chargeback.. but I can absolutely see the side of the fence that would want to charge the whole cost of the chargeback.
The business partnership can’t just be there when one side wants it.. It has to be there all the time and if that were more heavily enforced, I think we would probably see less groups screwing people over. Noone wants to work with someone who only plays by their own rules.. I think we can establish that as the truth.
Hello,
Cake Poker has been in contact with this specific affiliate regarding this issue and has explained the situation in question. Cake Poker takes these matters very seriously as we know that affiliates are a huge part of our business. However, we would like to respect the affiliate’s privacy and feel this issue is something that should be dealt with in private between the affiliate and Cake Poker.
In regards to charge backs and fraudulent players/accounts, please refer to the sections below which are taken directly from our Terms & Conditions.
6.5 HOLDOVER FOR FRAUD TRAFFIC: In the event that, in Cake’s sole discretion, Cake suspects any Fraud Traffic, then Cake may delay payment of the Affiliate Accruals to You for up to one hundred and eighty (180) days while Cake investigates and verifies the relevant transactions. Cake is not obligated to pay Affiliate Accruals in respect of Real Money Players who, in Cake’s sole discretion, are not verifiably who they claim to be or are otherwise involved with Fraud Traffic. In the event that Cake determines any activity to constitute Fraud Traffic, or to otherwise be in contravention of this Agreement, then in Cake’s sole discretion Cake may: (i) pay the Affiliate Accruals in full, (ii) recalculate them in light of such suspected Fraud Traffic and/or (iii) forfeit Your future Affiliate Accruals in respect of Fraud Traffic (as appropriate).Justin Johal
Affiliate Program Manager
http://www.cakepokeraffiliates.com@JustinJ 213719 wrote:
Cake Poker has been in contact with this specific affiliate regarding this issue and has explained the situation in question. Cake Poker takes these matters very seriously as we know that affiliates are a huge part of our business. However, we would like to respect the affiliate’s privacy and feel this issue is something that should be dealt with in private between the affiliate and Cake Poker.
Justin, this problem could’ve been dealt with in private, but you guys did not respond to my emails. I gave you guys a deadline to respond to two separate emails and I didn’t get a response, so you left me with no other options.
@JustinJ 213719 wrote:
6.5 HOLDOVER FOR FRAUD TRAFFIC: In the event that, in Cake’s sole discretion, Cake suspects any Fraud Traffic, then Cake may delay payment of the Affiliate Accruals to You for up to one hundred and eighty (180) days while Cake investigates and verifies the relevant transactions.
Here’s another problem. There was no holdover. You guys paid me for all of these players. I checked the stats and they all looked like legit players. Obviously, you guys thought that they were legit players too, since I was paid for all of them. A month later, these players were deemed fraudulent, and now you want the money back. Why did it take so long to determine that these players were fraudulent? I think you guys have to assume some responsibility for taking so long to detect these guys.
Also, do these T&Cs allow you to close all of my player accounts on the Network, and defame us by telling other cake network affiliate programs that we were bringing in fraudulent players? FYI, we haven’t brought a single fraudulent player in the other affiliate programs, but one of our affiliate managers decided to cut ties with us anyways due to your email to them. That’s just not right.
I’ve been working with you guys for over a year and a half now. I think I deserved a little more respect than was given. Can other affiliates/affiliate managers chime in here?
