WARNING: Don't Work With ADAMO Ads

[andyvon]

I've posted this yesterday on another marketing forum already, but thought it might be worth it to spread the word here as well.

Please excuse my low post count, I've been in the industry for a while, but usually don't frequent GFY. If needed I'm sure I can get some people to vouch for me.

So this is gonna be a long story, TLDR summary at the end of this post...

Back in October 2014, Adamo had a promotion going on giving away uncapped 10 % bonuses on first deposits, so I wired ?5000 to take full advantage of the bonus. This was way more than my usual test deposits for new traffic sources and in hindsight quite a big mistake on my end, but Adamo had a big brand presence at the time, sponsoring trade shows, being nominated for industry awards etc. which made them appear legit to me. Plus my account manager assured me that a refund would be no problem if I wasn?t satisfied with the traffic quality.

I ran a couple tests for around ?500 with pretty bad results overall, so I decided to request a refund and focus on other traffic sources instead (around end of December 2014). That?s when an endless back and forth with my account manager, support etc began. There would be tons of excuses e.g. their accountant being sick, confusion about how to deduct the bonus from my refund, my AM trying to convince me to run more tests instead because ?everybody else loves our traffic, I don?t know what?s wrong", and most of the time just complete radio silence.

After a while rumours started going around the industry that Adamo was in a bad financial situation, owing money for sponsorships etc., so things started to look worse and worse. I also slacked off a bit because I?m just not the kind of person to blast someone with messages each day, make public allegations etc., so basically nothing happened for a couple months.

They seemed to recover though and at a trade show in September 2015 I met my AM in person who promised to take care of it ASAP. He told me to forward the whole email thread to him and the CEO which I did, but once again radio silence for a couple weeks.

Then my AM left the company and I got a new person assigned to me, so I tried again in the hopes that it was my previous AMs fault and that the new one would finally take care of it.

Same thing though, endless back and forth, him saying that only the CEO can decide and that she won?t respond to him, telling me I should just contact her directly. So I did contact her directly through various channels (E-Mail, Facebook, Skype...), but to this day haven?t gotten a single message back from her.

A couple weeks ago this AM quit as well and yesterday posted on Facebook and various industry forums that he is owed his salary, see the GFY thread here: <not allowed to post links due to low post count, it's in this subforum, quoted OP below>

Hi guys, I worked at ADAMO adult ad network and left the company starting from August.

After I decided to leave the company Judy Shalom CEO of ADAMO I suppose decided that she doesn't need me anymore and that can be the reason of not paying salary for last worked month. I see these actions as unprofessional and short-sighted thus just would like to share with you this case. Imagine if it's ok attitude inside the company what attitude is to clients, publishers and advertisers?

If you have similar story with this company please make it public, if you think I'm moron and don't have the right to write the truth, your comments again welcome. If Judy has anything to say, it's more than welcome also.

No black PR here or anything, just a story to warn others and bring up the true.

This made me angry, so I told my story shortly on Facebook to which he replied:

Yep, remember last year when I became your AM, I was shocked and told you that this issue will be solved? Judy unfortunately said that you're cheater, and that's why we won't refund you any money never. I told her, Judy what the fuck, he deposited his money and ok he'd like to get them back, what is the problem? Guess what after, pure no reply on that case, millions messages from my side, and again just not reply from Judy. As you guys can see and verify from this post. Is there any aka Judy Shalom aka CEO of ADAMO advertising here online? No!

So apparently I am a cheater for wanting my money back, alright... (needless to say, none of this has ever been communicated to me)

I don?t wanna start a smear campaign or anything, but since said CEO seems to spend endless amounts of time and money for self promotion trying to get people?s votes for various industry awards etc instead of actually interacting with her customers, I decided it was time to make people aware of my case so they won?t have the same happen to them as well.

Just to be clear, this wasn't a dispute over the exact refund amount or anything, in my first request I even sent them an exact calculation subtracting unused parts of the bonus etc which seemed to be fine. Plus, if they actually communicated with me I would've been more than happy with just forfeiting the whole bonus amount if necessary.

Another funny thing, a while after my first refund request, out of the blue they suddenly subtracted the full bonus amount of ?500 from my account, filing it under "refund" on the dashboard:

<not allowed to post links due to post count, happy to provide the screenshot to somebody who is>

Needless to say, I haven't actually received that money in any form, it just disappeared from my account. So if they come out of the woodworks now and say that I am a cheater trying to take unfair advantage of the deposit bonus, this should settle that point.

I can?t say for sure that the traffic is bad, it might even work for you, but in lieu of my bad overall experience I would strongly advise anyone against working with ADAMO.

TLDR:
- I?ve had a mid ?xxxx refund pending with Adamo since around December 2014
- Endless back and forth, 2 AMs quit in the process, one says the CEO refuses to pay his last month?s salary
- Apparently the CEO said to him that I am a cheater and that?s why they won?t refund me any money, ever
- In lieu of my bad experience I strongly advise against working with ADAMO ads

[CAHEK]

[C H R I S]

[Bladewire]

[rabbit]

they kept spamming me and i asked them to take me off their mailing list, since there was no unsubscribe. so they just closed my account lol idiots
but now i know better than to send money there...

[PornoPlopedia]

How can I transfer my bag of popcorn from the other Adamo thread ? this one seems more interesting ..

[Rochard]

Originally Posted by andyvon

I don?t wanna start a smear campaign or anything....

It seems you have started a smear campaign....

[wehateporn]

Judy is former IDF, she will be tough and ruthless

[andyvon]

Originally Posted by Rochard

It seems you have started a smear campaign....

Not really, just wanting to share my bad experience with other people so they won't get into the same situation.

If this were a smear campaign, I would've used way more profanities, trust me ;)

[Bladewire]

She has the strangest business twitter account I've ever seen @MadameJudy82 but it looks like she works her ass off

[CaptainHowdy]

That sucks ...

[Mediamix]

Judy is a cunt and a thief... Fuck her.

[andyvon]

Just for the record: this thread was definitely not meant as a personal attack on Judy who I’ve never talked to in person and therefore won’t comment on. Besides having heard quite a few less than stellar things from other people, I don’t think it’s fair to talk ill about someone who I haven’t dealt with personally, so I'll try to keep my posts as professional as possible.

My main goal of this thread is to share my bad experience with Adamo in order to raise awareness, with a small hope that somebody in charge there might finally communicate with me.

That being said, I can’t control other people’s opinions and what they decide to post here, just so you know that I don't encourage any insults, profanities, attacks etc.

[Bladewire]

Originally Posted by wehateporn

Judy is former IDF, she will be tough and ruthless

She's married to that Israli politician? Or is this Judy Shalom a different Judy Shalom?

[JFK]

Originally Posted by CaptainHowdy

That sucks ...

YUP

[wehateporn]

Originally Posted by Bladewire

She's married to that Israli politician? Or is this Judy Shalom a different Judy Shalom?

That's a different one

[suesheboy]

Wow.

Where there is smoke there is USUALLY fire.

[matuloo]

This sucks, hopefully you can get this resolved in your favor. I don't see a reason to refuse a refund. I thought Adamo was a reputable company, looks like I have been wrong.

[money biz]

People on the deep web will ddos a server for 24 hours for $100 however it is illegal and I do not recommend doing so.

[The Porn Nerd]

Your professionalism in how you presented your case and how you respond in this thread is impressive. If you exhibited this same level of respectful communication with Adamo and are still in this situation then I side with you. I hope this works out for you but either way thanks for the heads up.

[Rochard]

Originally Posted by andyvon

Not really, just wanting to share my bad experience with other people so they won't get into the same situation.

If this were a smear campaign, I would've used way more profanities, trust me ;)

When you make multiple threads on multiple boards.... It's a smear campaign.

[wehateporn]

Originally Posted by Rochard

When you make multiple threads on multiple boards.... It's a smear campaign.

That would only be the case if the accusations were false

[Bladewire]

Originally Posted by wehateporn

That would only be the case if the accusations were false

Good point

[andyvon]

Originally Posted by Rochard

When you make multiple threads on multiple boards.... It's a smear campaign.

Originally Posted by wehateporn

That would only be the case if the accusations were false

Thank you, I don't think calling this a smear campaign is justified at all when I am just stating facts in a professional, non-threatening manner.

Re making "multiple threads on multiple boards": not only is this is a bit exaggerated - I've made 2 threads total, one on a paid forum for media buying in general (STM) and one here, the main adult focused forum, 2 pretty unrelated places with very different target groups - I also don't see what's wrong with posting this on multiple channels in order to reach more people as long as it's not in a spamming kinda way, but if anybody disagrees with this please let me know.

As an aside, having seen Adamo plastered over the YNOT newsletters multiple times, I can't help but think that you might have a vested interest in this, but once again, I wanna keep this as professional as possible and don't even know if/how you are involved in that, just putting it out there because your attitude towards me is a bit surprising.

[JFK]

Originally Posted by andyvon

As an aside, having seen Adamo plastered over the YNOT newsletters multiple times, I can't help but think that you might have a vested interest in this, but once again, I wanna keep this as professional as possible and don't even know if/how you are involved in that, just putting it out there because your attitude towards me is a bit surprising.

That ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

[Dido]

Hi andyvon, I was only just made aware of this thread.

I'm sorry to hear of your bad experience with our account managers and the entire process surrounding your account. We always try to give our clients the best service possible, but obviously mistakes were made here and we would like to apologize for that.

I would like to solve this issue as soon as possible, as I was not aware of this before. Let's schedule a Skype call for Monday, I added you on Skype now.

Also if you are going to be attending the TES show in Prague, we would love to meet you face-to-face.

[ianmoone332000]

I feel you are totally justified making this thread and making other webmasters aware of whats been happening. Too many times you see someone have an issue with a company or person and the first thing they do is put up a thread before even giving anyone a chance to solve it. This has been going on since Oct 2014 !. Let us know if you get it sorted out on Monday. Personally i find it really bad practice that a company screws you over that long then looks to solve it because of a post like this

[rowan]

Originally Posted by Dido

Hi andyvon, I was only just made aware of this thread.

I'm sorry to hear of your bad experience with our account managers and the entire process surrounding your account. We always try to give our clients the best service possible, but obviously mistakes were made here and we would like to apologize for that.

I would like to solve this issue as soon as possible, as I was not aware of this before. Let's schedule a Skype call for Monday, I added you on Skype now.

Also if you are going to be attending the TES show in Prague, we would love to meet you face-to-face.

This smells like a stalling tactic to buy more time after being called out on the boards. This has happened time and time again.

If you really wanted to solve the issue you'd be asking him to confirm his bank account details, so you could wire the funds first thing on Monday. What else is there to discuss after nearly two years of waiting?

[Mediamix]

Originally Posted by rowan

This smells like a stalling tactic to buy more time after being called out on the boards. This has happened time and time again.

If you really wanted to solve the issue you'd be asking him to confirm his bank account details, so you could wire the funds first thing on Monday. What else is there to discuss after nearly two years of waiting?

This

[andyvon]

Originally Posted by Dido

Hi andyvon, I was only just made aware of this thread.

I'm sorry to hear of your bad experience with our account managers and the entire process surrounding your account. We always try to give our clients the best service possible, but obviously mistakes were made here and we would like to apologize for that.

I would like to solve this issue as soon as possible, as I was not aware of this before. Let's schedule a Skype call for Monday, I added you on Skype now.

Also if you are going to be attending the TES show in Prague, we would love to meet you face-to-face.

Thank you Dido, I appreciate you reaching out to me, let's settle this via Skype on Monday.

Not 100 % sure if I'm gonna be attending TES next month, if so I will let you know and would be happy to meet in person.

[matuloo]

Originally Posted by andyvon

Thank you Dido, I appreciate you reaching out to me, let's settle this via Skype on Monday.

Not 100 % sure if I'm gonna be attending TES next month, if so I will let you know and would be happy to meet in person.

Please confirm here if they actually send the refund to you.

[Brian mike]

Originally Posted by C H R I S

The old good days

[RandyRandy]

Originally Posted by Rochard

It seems you have started a smear campaign....

Would you have been ok with it if the OP was a former Marine?

[andyvon]

I had a Skype call with Dido yesterday, according to him it was an unfortunate case of miscommunication and everything got sorted quickly. Apparently the issue with my former AM not getting paid his salary has another side to the story as well, I’m not gonna comment on that though because I don't know any specifics and it's also none of my business.

It's really unfortunate that I had to post this publicly in order to get it resolved, but anyways, the refund has been processed and the money is already in my bank account, so consider this closed.

[EddyTheDog]

A GFY happy ending - That's something you don't see every day...

[plaster]

Fuck that.

You got fucked and had to use gfy to get paid.

[Brian mike]

Originally Posted by plaster

Fuck that.

You got fucked and had to use gfy to get paid.

Sad but true

[xXXtesy10]

[st0ned]

Lots of bad news surrounding Adamo lately. I honestly find it hard to believe that it had anything to do with your past AM. Having been in similar situations myself over the years it generally takes coming to the boards to get some of these companies to pay up that will ignore you every other chance they get.

I am glad that you finally got your money back though.