PimpRoll Account Closed!
 

After promoting them for a few months, I tried to login to change some links, and for my surprise my account didn't worked. I tried to contact them about this, and after a few days I got a response from them :

I'm really pissed off! |angry| How is this my fault? It sounded like I was cheating or something. |bullshit|

At least they should have had the decency to send me an email and inform me about their decision to close my account. If I hadn't have noticed this, I probably would have sent them more traffic for nothing.

This really sucks! |banghead|

Let me hit up one of my contacts & see if they can stop by (I hate it when friends fight)

Thanks Greenie |smooch|

We did not accuse you of cheating, your account had 100% chargeback ratio and we can not accept traffic with cb numbers like this from anyone.

It also states in our terms of service that accounts can be closed at any given time at our own discretion and it is not our responsibility to inform them when we do.

100% cb ratio? What are we talking about here 1 sale and 1 charge back? or 20 sales and 20 charge backs? There's a huge difference.

This is not the way any program should treat their affiliates.

Next time I'll pay more attention and I'll choose only programs that treat their affiliates in a respectful, intelligent way.

One would think that there must be a way to state that same thing without coming off as, I don't know, like a prick, I suppose.

sorry, was not my intention in the least. I was trying to answer as to why we didn't get back to him about this. I think cracking jokes and trying to smooth things over wouldn't have came out any better in this situation though. ;)

Avoiding an answer?

fuck it I'm removing links :)

I wouldn't jump to a decision like that without more info. It's not as if PimpRoll gets called out by webmasters all that often. It sucks to have that happen to JD, but we don't know the facts.

That really sucks i have come across the same problem in the past with a diff sponsor but they worked with me and it all worked out so all were happy . If There was like one chargeback of course its going to be 100 % but i can see it if its 20 + but since no one is letting use know just what it is i guess we will never know . All i have to say its sad if a sponosor isnt willing to try work with thier affiliates. With out Us were would most sponsors be ? were is the incentive to want to promote sponsors that are so hard :)? wouldnt it come across much better with a sponsor trying to come to some sort of comprimise or something? were both sides come out on the winning side. Ahh well i just have to say it sucks and will also be much more carefull on whom i promote.

I guess it depends on who you're dealing with to your attitude?

Yah I'm jumpin I know I know.

I do know JD aint no cheater.

I just hate being pushed around by the man...

I doubt Pimproll is going to show us an (ex)affiliate's stats, at least, not without JD giving them permission to do so.
Me either - I know what you mean. But being impetuous can be bad for business, so I like to appear level headed once in a while to seem balanced. :)

Hi all, long time no post.

There are systems in place to help clean out some accounts that are simply bad, and we know that some good webmasters COULD get swept up by the system. But we need to obviously let it help find the actual bad guy's who actually are actively, intentionally, defrauding us.

We clearly want all of the good webmasters we can get every day. But we're going to have to let the system run and we know that some people will be contacting us asking us "wtf?" and we'll get it done and get it straight in time because we're in it for the long haul.

It's not a personal judgement of character, I absolutely can assure you of that!

There's no secret. I haven't sent them much traffic and I only made 3 sales since I promote them and I really think it's crazy to judge after only 3 sales. |crazy|

Maybe taking the time to investigate in future would save you any embarrassment. |thumb

Tom! |waves|
Glad to see you're still around.

We did investigate it, and nobody is embarrassed. We simply are giving an explanation as to what happened here.

I think you mean "We are simply giving" but anyway, we all get bad sales so maybe a bit more communication between you and your affiliates would help save you the trouble of rushing to the board in a panic.

I mean this in the nicest way possible: You're coming off like an asshole in this thread. That's the embarrassment portion comes in.


To me, in these circumstances, telling a webmaster this is unacceptable:
Obviously, I don't know if this was a portion of the conversation, but you're coming off as if these is no discussion to be had about this & that's no way to do business IMHO.

If a sponsor told me that I'd mother-fuck them up & down in public (and I have)

I can see your side of it too - believe me when I say that. But to cancel them without notice is just bad business. What happened to flagging someone's account, keeping an eye on him, looking into who you're dealing with? I don't know JD personally, but I can tell you that he is a valued member of our community & I think you know that does mean something.

When TGP's & Link Lists want to flush out a cheater, you know what the 1st step is? You contact them. The ones that reply are probably not cheaters.

If you don't do any research & just let the computer cancel people, your gonna end up finding yourself in shit situations, like this one, where you have canceled the account of a legit hard working webmaster.

I do love Pimp Roll. but I personally think your methods for what to do with suspected cheaters is flawed.

I thought Pimproll put webmasters on revshare if you had to many chargebacks. When did that change?

Hi Useless, nice to be remembered ;)

Guys n gals, Hitman is a much busier man than I am which is why I tried to jump back in here and help with a post about the situation. I have a little more time to sit and type and such, so I'll try some more.

I'm trying to say that the bottom line is we, like any program, want good webmasters all of the time, and thats not going to change. Thats a clue that hey, if you are a dolphin who got caught in the tuna net, please bear with it for the time being and let us know. If you write it in a ticket, I shall try to revisit the accounts when it's the right time and see where we stand.

PimpRoll and all of the sites/programs under the same company are in this for the LONG HAUL as always. Thats why we heard people about cross sales for instance and allow you to turn them off. Now I think his account got netted with a bunch of actual active fraudsters and I know it could be pure dumb luck with a few sales and all cb's. It can happen.

I can't sit here and flick a switch and turn accounts off and on, I dont have the information or the power or whatever. But if you can bear with us, I can only say again that we want all of the good webmasters we can find and that's not going to change.

Maj Stress, I think it's because it was 100% and, if I'm not mistaken, a FAIRLY new account. Dont quote me on that. I am guessing for this instance only and doing so without data in front of me.

That would seem fair to me.

I know JackDaniel's from submitting sites to me. He is a good site builder and has a lot of stuff out there. He is on my barely review trusted submitter list. It's a messy situation when a webmaster is forced to pull submitted stuff which is what PimpRoll is forcing him to do.

I had a sponsor force me to pull a bunch of submitted galleries and sites last year and at best it wasn't pleasant and at worst it may have gotten me banned at a few TGPs.

PR_Tom and Hit Man,with all due respect here...

If you were a webmaster that just got done reading this thread would YOU want to work with you?

I just mean you sound kind of harsh,thats all...

I am curious, why would a company hire someone like him for support? |huh

Well I guess it depends, Star Man.

It depends on what I want from a program, and what I expect from a program and so forth. I'm trying to deal with it straight on in terms that I can use. Realising that it's a private issue gone public else I wouldnt have in the first place. First thing I had to do this morning when I logged in and got an ICQ message was to inquire about it. I've posted my findings here in this thread.

Now I can tell you that at times, I've had to tell people they were terminated because of "fraud" and if you own a paysite, you know that sometimes thats what a third party processor tells you, and thats about it! Kinda hard to smooth that sort of thing over when relaying it to the affiliate and thats a fact.

What I would find much worse is a completely non-responsive program that wouldnt even visit the board to say hello or goodbye or anything else.

I have absolutely no reason to believe that it was anything other than pure bad luck that got JD's account in trouble. And I am saying I will personally try to revisit any accounts by good webmasters who send in an email that they cant log in. It's all I can do as I live and breathe.

It's every "Good" webmasters nightmare to have charge backs and it's a shame the CC companies don't do more to stop it.

Unless ofcourse it's a legitimate reason, you know like pre-checked cross sales. ;)

JD's account and what happened is obviously none of my business and I was hesitant to post in this thread.I only chimed in because I've had my share of chargebacks and if my sponsors came on the board and implied that I was a bad webmaster,I'd be pretty damn embarrassed.But hey,I don't know the details and you and Hit Man seem to be firm on your rather harsh stance.

PimpRoll's treatment of JD, an honest webmaster, is very similar to another sponsor's treatment of myself, check out http://www.greenguysboard.com/board/...ad.php?t=42624 if you've got some spare time.
After 4 or 5 pages of bad publicity for the sponsor involved, I received an apology for being falsely accused of fraud, thanks in a large part to the help of people in the biz who know me and know my character, and spoke up.

I'm not sure where that sponsor is now, but I'm still here.

As big as PimpRoll is, I'm not sure where they'll be in a couple of years if they treat honest webmasters as crooks, but I know JD will still be putting up quality porn sites and making an honest living doing so.

Not a lot ya can say after that SheepGuy! Speechless!!!

Sure does sound like some crap from an airline - they are never wrong, never issue apologies and their lawyers write crap to avoid admitting liability :-)

Just read that now Sheepguy.Thats some slander type stuff right there.She even admitted she could have messed up but just kept going anyhow.Shocking....

Problem with sponsors is that they seem to hire ex-airline staff for their support, or just have no idea how to do it right.
As far as I can tell, the usual reaction from a sponsor towards and affiliate that gets an "excessive" amount of chargebacks is: "omg we see more chargebacks on this account than is the norm. BALEETED!@#"

At this point, the poor affiliate is already considered guilty.

The "proper" way to handle it, as a sponsor, is if your system is telling you that someone's getting more chargebacks than normal, or there is some sort of suspicious activity going on, you contact said affiliate. You send them an e-mail, saying that your system has flagged their account due to , and could they please contact you within 3 days to discuss the situation, and so sorry but you won't be credited for sales while your account is flagged."

(However, you do keep a record of the sales the affiliate brought in when they are flagged).

If they don't respond within 3 days, you can release the BALEET! BALEET! monkeys.

If they do respond within 3 days, and give a good explanation as to what's happened (and a good explanation does include "how should I know? I just run a few sites"), you take it to the next level and put them on probation. This means that instead of being "potential fraud" flagged, they are now "probation" flagged. You release the earlier signups back into their stats, but with one change; if you pay twice weekly, you now pay this affiliate once a month. If you pay monthly, sales for the current month are not paid the next, but one month after.

This gets you 2 things:
1) An affiliate, who might not like the fact he's getting paid late, but is still getting paid
2) Better control because you can still bump the affiliate back into a flagged state
3) If seriously excessive chargebacks do continue, you can deduct this from the affiliate's payout. If it gets really out of hand, toss affiliate back to the flagged state.

Of course this would require that you use an affiliate management system with half a clue that offers the functionality to do this. NATS is not it (personal bias, just ignore it if you want :P)

Wow this is like a shooting gallery in here... I guess most of you don't know me so that's ok to take cheap shots at me right? One thing I can say about JD is he definitely has class. Even though it was his account that was closed, and this is his issue, at no point (even during our conversations on icq) did he feel the need to insult me or try to correct my grammar or say anything in anger at all. He merely posted his situation to find some answers, and that is totally understandable.

I work hard at helping webmasters find answers to problems--that is my job. Unfortunately some of the answers I have for them aren't a good thing. In this case specifically I let him know the situation, apologized that I could not be of more help to him. He then let me know the circumstances ie number of sales etc. So I looked into this further and found out there was nothing I could do in this situation.

We have made some changes lately and, like all new things, may need some tweaking to be done. JD I will try to find out if something can be worked out for you, you obviously have a lot of credit here and like Greenie said that is definitely worth something.

Hit Man, with all due respect, any policy that leaves no option but to terminate an honest and innocent webmaster is seriously flawed.

If the 3 sales are from a common source, and not linked to the affiliate other than by his ref code, how can he be held accountable? Did you read the thread that SheepGuy linked to above? In that case there were 5 fraudulent charges, and SheepGuy was completely innocent of any wrong doing.

PimpRoll needs to take a long hard look at how it handles these situations. As you have just found out, terminating an affiliate arbitrarily can have some major repercussions.

I think I worked more on this yesterday then I did my own work :)

I'm not sure what I can say & can't say, so I'm going to speak in very vague terms - just trust me.

After speaking via ICQ to Hit Man, Tom & David (The Pimp Roll Big Wig) I can say that I can see both sides very clearly. It's one of those situations where unavoidable mistakes were made. I say unavoidable because I know Pimp Roll doesn't have a better way of doing it. It's almost like fighting gravity. Every suggestion I threw at them was replied to with "Yes, we thought of that, but then this happens."

Does everyone remember the Zango thing where Jim & Sparky came up with the redirect? You put the code on your site, users with Zango toolbar were redirected to a page informing them of the spyware & how to get rid of it. This was all done in public. Zango then added a pop-up anytime there was a redirect, informing the surfer that we were basically full of shit.

Point is that when you let the cheater know how you caught them, they adjust & the process starts over again.

Pimp Roll is not going to tell any of us how they catch cheaters - and why would they?

David did tell me a lot of their methods in confidence, as well as a lot of the current methods being used by cheaters & I actually typed "WOW!" into our ICQ chat at least 2 times.

At the end of the conversation, we left it as this:
1 - JD's account was going to be personally looked at by David & more than likely he'll be reinstated.
2 - Pimp Roll is going to be altering one small part of their method so that a situation like this is less likely to happen again in the future.

I'd ask that no one hold any of this against Pimp Roll. There are very few sponsors that I truly have no problems with & they are one of them. They have one of the best programs out there, they have a ton of sites, they have great promo materials, they have great support (Hit Man was here within 12 minutes, regardless of if you liked his reply or not - lol), I trust them 100%

100%

|shake|

Maybe a little more black boxing before going live.|whisper|

I've had the opposite occur with sales(not CBs) at another sponsor a long time ago.

Because I trickle only sales to a lot of sites sometimes I will fluke and hit some extra sales. I've had scripts flag my account because it didn't like me making 3 sales on 10 hits.

Even after explaining to a rep that the script really needed to be modified to look at ratios over a much larger number of hits rather than just one period didn't seem to compute with them.

Guess they didn't want free stats/programming advice from somebody that's been at it since before they were born.|banghead| Guess they didn't want my sales either.

Thanks for the nice words, Greenie. And for taking the time out to check further about it.