Adult Friend Finders new scam for old Affiliates
 

After being away for the last 6 months I logged into my AFF stats to find the following. Firstly that my special payout of 65%, since 2004 was gone as of Sept. 2nd and secondly the following errors were showing in stats.

http://txtmess.com/stats-1.jpg
Notice the difference in percentage, or no payout at all on sales, and the low percentage anywhere between 0% and 92%.. WTF right? So I email them.

The following is the gibberish I received as reply to my emails....

Intial email attached is the image of stats above...
"Hey Andrea

Long time no talk! I am back from my trip, it was a long time to be away but I had a blast!

Anyways I was looking at stats this morning and something is definitely screwed up.... I am supposed to get 65% of all sales and renewal but I am seeing some I didn't get credit for at all and some that are as low as 20ish%. Attached is a screen shot I took today, Sunday Sept 19th, it looks like the problem started around the first of Sept. Which would also explain why I had a $300 drop in the Sept 15th payout. Could you look into this for me?

Quick math tells me I have earned approx 376.09 for the month of September, but the previous pay out and todays balance reflect no where near that."

to which the response was she will get it looked at...

So today this is the response I received....

"Hi Melissa,
Starting at the first of this month our President has put a safety valve on all affiliate accounts that had a special payout. It seems as though we have continued to payout out special cuts to some affiliates who have slowed their promotions down.

The purpose to us rewarding affiliates with higher than normal cuts is because we wanted to thank them for their high volume of traffic (like when you were sending us 200+ members in a month).

We will still honor the special payout, but now with a safety valve, we require that the account must generate 5 or more new paid orders in a day, and then the special payout


Best Regards,
Andrea *****
Sr. Affiliate Marketing Manager
FriendFinder Networks"

The important parts here, there is no mention of this "safety valve" in their TOS.

Secondly, in all my time with AFF i only sent more than 200 new signups in two months well after this special payout was put into place in 2004, at no time in 2004 did I send over 200 signups. As you can see here.
http://txtmess.com/monthly_stats.jpg

This special payout was put in place in 2004 after I brought another affiliate related matter concerning payouts to their attention. The verbal agreement was I got 65% and kept my mouth shut as it would have been quite damaging at the time.

So throughout the day today I have been emailing back and forth with my Affiliate rep and getting no where, she's great but basically all I kept getting was gibberish forwarded from programmers that made basically no sense at all.

to which I finally posed one last question, So are you saying that the $36.98 I see in money owed to me and the $114.?? from the first half of the month is correct?

To which the response was yes. end of story, beginning of fight.

No where you have to send a certain amount of traffic to keep your rebill, and infact though I am not sending much I am sending new members so I guess I am missing the point.. Other than i worked my ass off to get those customers to begin with and now AFF is trying to get out of paying for them...

So be warned if you have a special payout arrangement with AFF, eventually you may not even get what a regular affiliate would!!

This should be an interesting thread.

Parking my sig :)

This sucks! I really dont understand why did they do that! If they dont want to continue with the Special Payout %, they must pay at least the basic 35% for each sale / rebill!
0% or 0.02% is not accepted!

i need my affiliate manager as well. anyone?

Hmmm interesting...

Thats what I am saying, but thats not what I am hearing!

might as well spill the dirt now that your special agreement was broken.

ouch,this thread should get good

+1 :thumbsup

Clearly this isn't affiliate friendly but they've always been funny with people who drop active promotion. I remember hearing stories somewhat like this in the past as well. Example, I thought I heard something about always having to send 100+ uniques a day to be guaranteed the full rate on rebills or possibly even get them at all if you were a big affiliate in the past? Something like that anyway.

I would be surprised if agreeing to send them 5,000+ uniques a day wouldn't be enough to sway them. Clearly you aren't sending anything now so they'd only gain by it. They won't compromise?

What happened back then?

I stopped promoting them last year. Same shit different day.

there is a bug in the stats, you will be getting the stardard payout that all our affiliates get. the stats should catch up and be showing the correct amount in two days. we are runing it now

Ahh, the old stats glitch excuse.

Hope it ocurrs!
I like AFF, I use it! but i need to say that everytime something weird happens with stats not always it went back to normal. I had 2 full days with 0 clicks, 0 profiles, 0 sales and 0 $$$ last month in AFF, Get It On and most of my active programs. After I reported it, it went to normal, but these 2 days are still empty!

who is your affiliate manager?

hi guys, sorry to butt in.. when is FFN payouts?

sorry to hear that...

.

You should probably talk to someone about that...

Last email to AFF

"So are you saying that the $36.98 I see in money owed to me and the $114.?? from the first half of the month is correct?"

and the response...

"I?m afraid so.

Best Regards,
Andrea *****
Sr. Affiliate Marketing Manager
FriendFinder Networks"

I've bought the stats glitch before, I am not falling for it again....

I'm saving that for later.... Ya know when they won't do the right thing.... :winkwink:

This is precisely what pissed me off this morning too.

I haven't been paid yet either, am owed around $4000 for the last 2 weeks.

Their biggest asset are there affiliates, and they are poisoning the waters all around us. First the sub affiliates fiasco, now this, going back on agreed payouts and deals that were made.

Let me know who you send your traffic too now instead please, I'm looking to try different sponsors.

:thumbsup :1orglaugh

Oops.. I still promote them. I better not laugh. :(

ouch :Oh crap

yes, strange, they always paid on time - now it is 21.sept already and no payment yet!

but I think the glitches and upgrades can occur - I had the same thing few weeks ago and stats went back to normal.At that time they announced the upgrade or smth will happen though..

on the other hand - although it sucks when you "special agreement" get cut I rather see this than company going into money problems like so many sponsors for paying out more than they earned and then closing aff biz and running with our money (adult-profit, rehab etc).So it sucks for you but i prefer this company stay in biz for long time..

Irish Pimp,if you are from AFF - when will the payment go out?

LOL @ 18145 male signups, 602 female signups.

why is it if you refer a whale, you still need to be active to get that referral?

why should it matter.

:2 cents:

It shouldn't that's my point and who says what is active? I still send traffic and I still sign ppl up, my ratio has been 1:49 for years.

They say "stats glitches", I've been around long enough, I know better than that!

im not hating on aff at all, Ive made tons with them but so i "hear" they have the oldest stat system ever. Others, also say they need to upgrade their system...

I know many of times Ive had problems and its not instantly fixed until I get ahold of someone, kind of weird right? bleh

zip zap ZANGO!

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Don't worry, it's only money:winkwink:

Its a glitch that caused a safety valve ???

we will be done propagating the database in less than 48 hours and the stats will normalize on rev share accounts.

as for the payouts being late, most of them went out on time with a few being late i think. feel free to hit me up or your affiliate manager tomorrow if you dont see anything.

its been an interesting month for affiliate programs and payouts. we have been a little busy finding new solutions for people who dont want a live check, bank wire, paypal, ach, or payoneer.

mmokkey :2 cents:

our stats are a little dated and we are working on a full redesign. sometimes we need our affiliates to tell us that there is a bug in the system. the fact is, we easily have to deal with 20 times the data most affiliate programs deal with. when you add our substats onto that, its a huge amount of data.

we will pay our affiliates more than 100 million dollars this year alone. not too many adult programs can claim that.

and on that same note, we are fully audited by a third party. our numbers are soild. we can legally prove it

GO STREAMRAY!!!

Anyone who wants to bank on cam girls like i do, please feel free to add me on ICQ, 104030, i am always willing to help NEW affiliates with their first Streamray website for free.

Thanks Sean, your one of the best Repps I had in my life!!

Exactly ppl are missing the point! It's them renigging on old deals!!!

ppl forget the glitch, read their responses in the first post or better yet I will post it again!

"Starting at the first of this month our President has put a safety valve on all affiliate accounts that had a special payout."

AND

"We will still honor the special payout, but now with a safety valve, we require that the account must generate 5 or more new paid orders in a day, and then the special payout cut will take effect.

and finally from another email I didn't post...

The cut is correct, the display is incorrect.

Irish Pimp, who is working on ICQ support for AFF ? I was sending him one simple question few times and no reply at all even when he/she was online.

You are surprised that AFF is fucking people? Seriously?

Nope not surprised at all, just making sure everyone possible knows about it... :winkwink:

Sausagefest. 1:30 :1orglaugh

Don't AFF selling a dating product that has very few or no women enrolled? Screwing surfers.

Don't they advertise on Tube sites sucking your traffic away from you? Screwing affiliates.

So surprise surprise they had a "glitch" in the programming.

If you swim with sharks you might get bit.

There was also some kind of involvement with Zango?

Fuck more AFF drama... something tells me I should have stayed away.

:2 cents::2 cents:

Paul, who said anything about a glitch, besides them, not me! This was all about their "safety valve" so they don't have to pay affiliates what they agreed to years ago

I almost made a post about this several days ago. If I didn't truly like Sagi I would have. I got fucked out of my arrangement as well. I'm testing other programs now to see who will make me more money.

Oh, and payments have NOT gone out. I switched my payout from epassporte to paypal. I haven't seen a dime from AFF in a month now.

I haven't dealt with Sagi a lot but I know Andrea has been great, but this isn't about the reps ability to their jobs and liking them, I've never questioned that. This is about AFF repeated ability to fuck affiliates and get away with it. And that alone is worthy this post.

Has them going public been completely taken off the table? If not stuff like this won't bode well for them...