Sponsor has accused me of fraud.
 

Has this happened to anyone else?

One of the smaller sponsors I use suddenly closed their webmaster area to me. I Emailed them to find out why and they said
'Your account was banned because of fraud warning received from epoch.com.'
I queried what they were talking about and they answered
'Epoch.com is our primary biller and according to them your signups are fraud.'

Basically I've had 3 smallish sales which haven't yet reached the payout threshhold. It can only be these which Epoch are saying are fraudulent.

Needless to say, the whole thing is bizarre, I haven't the remotest idea of what the fraud consists of or even if their story is true. I don't really know what to do now except pull my links and walk away. Anybody out there got any thoughts or advice?

Thanks in advance.

I've had it happen to me once before.

What happened was that I got a some signups on very few hits, it was 1:5 or something. They closed my account because it was impossible with that kind of ratio unless it was fraud.

The pages where it came from had a really good ad and was listed #1 under an obscure and very targeted keyword. It was just a perfect match.

I gave them all details they needed and showed them proof where all the traffic came from. After that it was all good.

Maybe that's the case?

Happened to me, see this thread
It's a long thread, but sometimes you have to defend yourself.

Might be best to challenge it or it might be seen by them as an admission of guilt.
Either that or you might get trouble with other sponsors with the same billing.

I had that happen and the sponsor didn't tell me. I just went to log-in, and my log-in didn't work. After a lot of phone calls to various people (I called the info on their domain registration, silly me, I couldn't find anything on their site as far as contact info)

Come to find out, I had one sale and the person charged back, so since I had a 100% chargeback ratio, the cancelled me.

I spent quite a lot of time pulling links (back in the day before dragon links). I finally got a letter about a week later....gee if I hadn't of logged in, they would have gotten free traffic all that time.

I used to convert them really well, but they were starting to do bad anyways, but I thought it was piss poor customer service all around the way they handled it.

SheepGuy, just read that thread, what ever happened in the end? I feel like I read 3/4ths of a story and didn't see the ending.

In the end they apologized, offered to increase my payout % and I haven't done business with them since. They weren't converting for me anyways.

Bangbrothers did the same thing to me - cancelled my account because I had a charge back and no sale that period to cover it - (at least thats the excuse they gave me) pretty stupid on their part since I had good sales (google traffic) before that and who knows what it was after since they wouldn't allow me to see my stats at all even after I asked to view them. They wouldn't discuss it so I dropped it. Perhaps I should have fought it on the boards, but when I am treated with that type of disrespect Id rather not do business with them.

Their loss - too many sponsors out there to choose from in my opinion.

This is a great board.

Thanks for the input everyone. That's given me some good ideas and direction.

That's an awesome thread SheepGuy!

I'm pulling my links to the sponsor and I'll keep trying to find out the stats and the reasons behind it. I'll post again with any developments.

I had the same thing happen once, added a few hosted free sites from a NATS sponsor to a link list category that was on 1st page in yahoo at the time.
Must have generated some dodgy sign ups via ppl searching yahoo, I don't know, didnt promote them in any other way.
So 6 months later or so, I couldn't log in, the rep said I was banned by epoch and I can open a new account and promote them again.
But it was ok to not tell me and keep the promo material up for months on end...

All I can say is, if you didn't do anything wrong, dont worry about it!
Just delete them and move on.

I am sure it is not easy being accused of something like this. I hope it works out for you man.

This happened to me with getcybercash. Thread

I tried everything to get in touch with them and got no reply. The links are gone and I'll never do business with them again. I have a message on my submit page saying I won't accept their content because they annoyed me so much by their complete lack of integrity and no contact attitude.

So i am not the only one with bb |loony| The same thing happened to me at least you got any info why your account was closed. They told me that they lost info about my account but once my account was closed i cant promoted them anymore sorry |huh i just drop them

I've had the same problem years ago: Thread

I had that happen once and I just moved on.

What was worse is when a sponsor had a charge back right after sending a payment and i could see how they thought it was fraud but instead of contacting me my ratios suddenly went from 1:110 to 0:10,000+. I stopped sending them traffic ASAP.

I'd rather have them contact me and cancel my account then just shave my hairy ass.

i got my accound closed by a dutch sponsor ...not for cheating but becaus i pointed the fuck head on the fact he owed me 2200+ euro, his responds he closed my accound, now if i was younger me would go nuts, but i know their company is about 20 minutes from my home...i wont even argue with them...i know they will have their share of shit (i should have known dutch are not to be trust bleeekkkk) and one time sexmoney confronted me (when i was a newbie) with the fact "i was spamming with email" hell i didnt even know how to that that and for real i dont even know, i am realy simple, so told them hell if you think that way close my accound........i couldnt answer differently, i didnt know how to fight that, but they didnt.......and my accound is still open there, but believe me that dutch one...soon dead:D ( my advice ...never trust a dutchie...oke except some well known tgp owners then and me:D)

You have to understand a sponsor programs position in situations like this. There are 2 kinds of fraud

a) Fraud detected by the processor (known stolen credit cards, fraudulent alogrithms, etc)
b) Fraud as determined by the sponsor program's in-house Risk management department

In cases involving a) there is little the sponsor program can do. When you use a 3rd party processor your business is completely dependent on maintaining that relationship. Also, the vast majority of the time it IS the webmaster who is directly reponsible for the fraud. There are cases where the webmaster can be a 'victim' - but ultimately - the webmaster should not expect to profit from the fraud. The best a sponsor program can do is compromise: remove the commissions from the fraudulent sales and open a new affiliate account for the webmaster.

Usually in b) cases, it is clear cut fraud. Not many programs I know will make decisions completely on their own... but if they do, they are fully confident that they no longer want to do business with the webmaster in question.