I've had around $54 in my sub-partner commissions for at least two months. All of a sudden that has gone down to $2, and this is all from the same sub-partner.

I've also had over $100 in my account for months and I've never been paid.

So one of my sub-partners either got over $500 in refunds in one go ( i get 10% of their commissions ), or the money has been taken from my account for nothing. I should have already been paid the money, I can't see how people can ask for a refund on their dating after so long.

I sent an email and got a reply from Laura asking me what sub-partners this happened to, and on what dates did I check my stats.

I answered this impossible question as accurately as possible, and I haven't received a reply after 4 days.

Can someone tell me what's going on?

Yours,

Jason

Hiya Jason,

I can't explain what happened to your subpartners commission but the payout for USD now is $150 which is probably why it hasn't been sent out.

Hiya Jason,


Have you ever been paid?, I ask this question as I had a similar experience to what you describe on my first payout.. i thought that I had been forgotten about for 3 months then i realised why I hadnt been paid.... I didnt add my address to my account, therefore no cheques could be sent.


Tomorrow is payday, so check your address details today.

Tony

I had $194 for ages. I contacted support at the start of this month to ask what was going on and they said I would be paid on the 1st of the next month. My commissions are now down to $142 because $52 have gone, so I'm still not going to get paid when I should have been paid ages ago.

Jason

Hi guys,

This is why we have this 30 days threshold - it says about it on the Remittance page:

"Due to Fraud screening and MasterCard and Visa rules and regulations monies gets remitted to your account 1 month after the customer made payment on the site"

Chargebacks can be made within 30 days from member payments, and that's why we pay the amounts that already cannot be claimed back by the bank.

$500 in chargebacks is a reality unfortunately because everything depends on the traffic that is generated. It happened in one go because chargebacks get processed altogether, once every week or so.

Regards,

Chargebacks are the curse of the net, I've been told and read elsewhere that they're alot higher compared to last year, if you go to any Webmaster board you'll see a fair amount of complaints.

I lost nearly $300 in one month but that's probably nothing compared to how much WDP lose a month.

I concentrate on targeting UK/EU traffic now which seems to be more reliable.

These are the chargebacks from ONE sub-partner...

2009.06.12_10:59:56 - $-80.24

2009.05.11_13:18:48 - $-80.24

2009.05.29_10:22:54 - $-77.16

2009.06.16_09:29:56 - $-86.42


How can one sub-partner get all of his members from people with stolen credit cards?

His commissions are now in the minus numbers for me, and I'm being chrged for that as it's come of my total.


Jason

It can happen if his traffic is random - it happens very often - as Robert mentioned, there can be even more chargebacks on one site if it popped up somewhere in search results and Nigerians and other scammers started registering there - they are very clever nowadays and sometimes even the best anti-fraud system can't block them unfortunately.

It's a common problem that we are fighting here, there even was a scam e-mail competition on Online Personals Watch recently.

Cheers,

So his traffic was so random that every single member had a stolen credit card. How is that random?

Also, why am I being charged over $8 in minus commissions for this sub partner. If his commissions are now minus ( for whatever random reason ), you should be paying that, not me. That minus $8 has taken my commissions under the $150 threshold so I haven't been paid yet again.



Jason

Jason,

If there is a scammer group and they find the site, they use it till they get noticed. That's why their activity look like an attack and when they get discovered there are numerous chargebacks in a row.

Regards,

That hasn't explained why I've had $8 taken out of my commissions for this sub-partner. If his commissions are below zero then you should be paying that, not me.

Jason

Generally, fraudsters use membership sites to test credit cards before moving on to do whatever else they do with them, i'd contact your sub-partners and find out where and how they're promoting.
If they're using things like Twitter then there's the problem as it's full of the very worst of scumbags, i block atleast 5 a day spamming or scamming some crap or another, infact one dirtbag yesterday i blocked for using Michael Jackson as a blind link to a cam site.


It's my opinion that the sub-partners should pay any fees or fines if it's their traffic at fault.

No one from support, or the admins on here are answering why I have been charged the $8.57, and the question has been avoided about 5 times now.

He must have been doing something wrong because every registration he had was created with a fraudulant credit card.

Jason

Maybe that IS the case?, strikes me as a fairly simple way of laundering stolen details and having a go at turning them to cash, obviously didnt work.. buy hey, he/she may have tried?

I still haven't been told why I'm being charged $8.57 for a sub-affiliate's minus commissions, either on this forum or by email.

Hi Jason,

You will get a reply soon, apologies for the inconvenience.

Regards,

I still haven't had a reply. How long does it take?

It's over 24 hours for an answer to a simple question.

Hi Jason,

It takes a bit more because we have to check why it happened in the first place, and it means checking all the calculation algorythms.

Sorry it took a bit, and I promise we will get this sorted out as of course you shouldn't have been penalised because of your sub-partner's fraudulent activity.

Regards,

It's now 5 days.

You can see the minus figure in my stats so you should give me that back then check why your algorythms are messed up.

I shouldn't be waiting for you to work it out before you give me back my commissions that you have taken.

I should have been paid already.

Why isn't something being done?

I'm being treated as if this is my fault.

Small beans.

If you haven't got anything constructive to say, then say nothing. Of your 5 posts on this forum, one of them is the most pathetic comment I've seen, and it's comments that get allowed like that by the moderators that make this forum as empty as it is.

Those "small beans" have prevented me from receiving a check. And it's the principle of the matter, not how much it is.

What you don't realize is, if the algorythms are not functioning properly then that means everyone is being paid the wrong commissions when they have commissions taken away for refunds on their sub-partners commissions.

Do you think it's my own personal algorythm?

It's now 6 days, and everything is running as good as Mrploughs dumb comment.

Jason,

As I said, at the moment the case is being investigated as the algorythm is correct and as the bank charges 5% for processing here is how this is calculated:

Let's say the payment of 100 was received, this is how the earnings are distributed:

WDP share - 30
Partner share - 60
Referrer share - 10

When there is a chargeback, everyone who received the money from the sale pays back 5% that bank took as a processing fee:

WDP pays - 1.5
Partner pays - 3
Referrer pays - 0.5

This is how the algorythm works and it is correct. At the moment we have submitted this issue to the board and they are deciding whether the algorythm needs changing.

Regards,

You're deciding whether the algorythm needs changing?

You must joking. Do you think I'm going to pay then?

Jason

Simple really Jason. Your partner pays the lot. That's a no brainer isn't it? If that takes your partner into negative equity, they get billed by WDP. Simple really! No need for algorythms. Would anybody disagree with this?

So anyone reading this thread who has had charge backs from their sub-partners commissions are just realizing that they have given back more than they actually got in their commissions.

I'm correct in saying this, right?

I only know this happened because it was all of the commissions my sub-partner earnt, so I now have a minus figure by that sub-partners username. And that minus figure is around 15% of the commissions I received.

Jason

Apologies, I was merely trying to make you lighten up a little after getting angry over a small amount of money. I've made over $200K commission from dating programs over the last 5 years, so it is small beans to me.

I'm sure these guys have it set up right to protect themselves and the future of their company, they've been running this business a long time now.

Plus you got a bump out of it didn't you?

I'm not getting angry at the amount of money. I earn more than enough myself with affiliate marketing. I'm not happy with the way I'm being treated. I only put this problem on the forum because I wasn't getting any replies to my emails.

I have 41 web sites with WDP and I have 97 sub-partners. I would guess that is more than 98% of the rest of the 20,000 members seeing as most of my sub-partners have just 1 site.

34 of of them have no site at all, and I have just over $2 in commissions from these partners. So if that is the average then a third of the 20,000 members don't even have a site.

I should be being treated a lot better.

Hi Jason,

I understand how you feel, but this is the algorithm that is in place and every affiliate and white label dating programme does the same. When the bank charges 5% for processing a refund and 15 GBP on top of that as a fine, WDP cannot be paying this on its own - otherwise the company would have gone bankrupt by now.

The charges are being distributed based on the % that every party got from the payment - we do pay our part of the fine as well as this chargeback is everybody's fault - WDP's for not preventing the chargeback (we physically can't do it in some cases when the bank accepts chargeback from the member automatically), partner's fault for generating bad traffic, and yours for recruiting this partner and not giving instruction about the traffic sources if he's a newbie.

My fault for recruiting the partner?

You are having a laugh.

Just tell me in plain English, am I going to get the $8.57 back or not?

You must get a lot of chargebacks if they would have made you bankrupt. You must be doing something wrong. I'm an affiliate with many other dating services, and chargebacks very rarely occur, and when they do I don't get charged for them.

Jason

Hi Jason,

Chargebacks very rarely occur in your accounts as you know what kind of traffic to recruit, but unfortunately many other affiliates don't.

I am afraid the answer is "no".

Regards,

In all honesty Jason, is it really worth all the fuss over $8?

Banks don't seem to be tackling fraud enough and as always, make everyone else pay the price.

If you want to quote other affilitate schemes, they probably shave traffic/convertions to cover things like this, that's a well known trick many of them play, as i said before, i've lost #100's through refunds and chargebacks and i know many other partners have.
It's just one of the risks we all take.

Yes it is.

If $8 wasn't that much it wouldn't have been taken from me.

By law WDP should be able to get the full amount from the subpartner. He's the one who's commited the fraud, and I'm now worse off than he is.

This company has no idea how to look after it's affiliates.

Jason, just to put this in perspective, here are my figures for one account with the most popular program out there:

Date Refers Sent Unique IPs Sent # Members # Orders $ Orders $ Bonus
Based on # Members Member order adjustments
/ Credits / Chargebacks Average
Percent Cut Your Cut
daily (orders + bonus ? charge-backs - member order adjustments) times daily percent cut
TOTALS 1593310 462664 11627M, 3306F 8700 $277517.71
$7797.15 $10230.88 54.4% $149687.21

The $10230.88 figure are my chargebacks, the final figure my commission. This is using keyword specific targetted high quality traffic, and even with that, I'm hit 10K. It's just part and parcel of the business.

No one seems to understand.

It's not the chargebacks, and it's not the $8.

It is what has happened, and the way I've been treated since I sent my first email to support.


I've had to send numerous emails and keep posting messages on this forum to keep geeting a little bit more information every time.

Support knew what happened with this sub-partner, and they knew that I would not be getting the money back, yet I was only told that in Lisa's last message, which was about 2 weeks after my first email.