A couple weeks ago we received a notice that HazeCash banned our account with the usual automatic email saying to contact the administrator with questions. I contacted the administrator twice and received no response. Finally by asking a contact of mine I was able to get a direct email from someone at BangBros who responded. He said the account was closed because of a high number of chargebacks like in the case âiowamanâ posted about a few months ago. Of course, if the traffic is coming from genuine paysites and blog networks like our traffic does there is no reason to penalize the affiliate for this by closing the account when they could just deduct the amount from any chargebacks. They owe us quite a bit of money and have refused to reopen the account, but have invited us to open a new one.
This seems like really poor practice and I wouldnât dream of treating affiliates this way. Has anyone else had problems with their account unexpectedly being closed and found Hazecash reps closed to dialogue about it?
It’s very poor practice but more common amongst the big Straight Programs to do that. BangBros and HazeCash are some of them of course. I had the same with Rainbow Revenue who again are really just a big straight program doing some gay sites. Pissed me off no end when it happened to me.
I’ve never had or heard of the same problems with a Gay (owned) Affiliate Program.
It’s strange if they refuse to pay you for your legitimate sales… I haven’t had any problems with hazecash myself but I’ve had a few other sponsors pull stunts like that before (changing payout from pay per trial to pay per active cough helixcash cough).
I do understand (as I’m sure you do as well) the need to refuse further traffic from affiliates that generate a high amount of chargebacks. For affiliates reading this, keep in mind that billing accounts need to comfortably stay under 0.75% CB, but it should be an amicable termination rather than a straight banning of the account. You also have to factor in the volume. 1 CB on 50 sales is 2%, but it’s also only ONE chargeback, so you they can use some common sense. I don’t know your volume so I can only speculate.
Some of our good affiliates will sometimes have a couple months with 1%+ chargebacks but you have to evaluate each case. Recently there was a long time affiliate that posted 3 straight months with 2.5% CB and I still never thought about refusing his traffic because we’re way under the CB limit and I know his traffic is good and it’s just a case of bad luck (a couple members chargebacking 4 months at a time skew the numbers quite a bit).
Every single trouble account comes by my desk so I can make a personal judgment but I’m not sure about the huge straight owned programs… I have a feeling the top management doesn’t get involved
I agree with you - I wouldn’t dream of treating affiliates like that hehe. I hope you get the money you’re owed…
[QUOTE=cashkaboom;89075]A couple weeks ago we received a notice that HazeCash banned our account with the usual automatic email saying to contact the administrator with questions. I contacted the administrator twice and received no response. Finally by asking a contact of mine I was able to get a direct email from someone at BangBros who responded. He said the account was closed because of a high number of chargebacks like in the case âiowamanâ posted about a few months ago. Of course, if the traffic is coming from genuine paysites and blog networks like our traffic does there is no reason to penalize the affiliate for this by closing the account when they could just deduct the amount from any chargebacks. They owe us quite a bit of money and have refused to reopen the account, but have invited us to open a new one.
This seems like really poor practice and I wouldnât dream of treating affiliates this way. Has anyone else had problems with their account unexpectedly being closed and found Hazecash reps closed to dialogue about it?[/QUOTE]
You know better than me that usually a CB costs to program owner something like $15 in fees (from my experience Epoch and DHDMedia charge $15 for each CB). So it’s quite understandable that a program would try to control a situation where the CB % is higher than average.
On the other hand they’ve proved to act in very bad way. But the most interesting thing that comes up in my mind is: who’s responsible for a CB? Affiliates who sends bad traffic or program operators that offer poor content/member areas?
Bjorn, I guess it might have to do with the size of the program, the larger ones coming up with blanket policies which donât always apply that well to individual cases.
Jay, I think youâre exactly right. Itâs because we send a very low volume of traffic with a high conversion rate that has triggered this response from them. However, Iâve explained why this is and where the traffic comes from so they know itâs genuine, but they donât seem to accept this. It is of course their decision and Iâd be happy to accept it and terminate our relationship if theyâd just pay the money they owe. Otherwise, it seems like a convenient way for them to save money.
Simon, everyone hates CBs but they happen and, as you say, there could be any number of reasons for it. Unless itâs an issue of fraud or the affiliate has made false promises about the siteâs content, I donât see that it has much to do with the affiliate who sends the traffic. Maybe if possible the billing companies could get more involved with providing regular feedback about high volumes of CBs so the sponsor can better deal with affiliates with CBs.
[QUOTE=cashkaboom;89095]Bjorn, I guess it might have to do with the size of the program, the larger ones coming up with blanket policies which donât always apply that well to individual cases.
Jay, I think youâre exactly right. Itâs because we send a very low volume of traffic with a high conversion rate that has triggered this response from them. However, Iâve explained why this is and where the traffic comes from so they know itâs genuine, but they donât seem to accept this. It is of course their decision and Iâd be happy to accept it and terminate our relationship if theyâd just pay the money they owe. Otherwise, it seems like a convenient way for them to save money.
Simon, everyone hates CBs but they happen and, as you say, there could be any number of reasons for it. Unless itâs an issue of fraud or the affiliate has made false promises about the siteâs content, I donât see that it has much to do with the affiliate who sends the traffic. Maybe if possible the billing companies could get more involved with providing regular feedback about high volumes of CBs so the sponsor can better deal with affiliates with CBs.[/QUOTE]
I thought about support too. If they reply to customers with the same diligence as they reply to affiliates, a HUGE number of CBs won’t surprise me.
i got your email this morning, and i’m going to look into it. we are a large program that does work off of ratios, thats why we’re always open to looking into accounts when they are terminated to see if it was a one time deal, if it was an error, etc. we’re always receptive to our affiliates, and i will be looking into it today.
bjorn-money is money, good business isn’t relegated to straight or gay person. so i think its irrelevant that we aren’t a gay own program.
jay-you were right with most of what you said, in regards to CBs, how important they are for us to monitor. but you were wrong with that top management doesn’t get involved. myself and a partner of the company go over the terminations every pay period. again we look at numbers which is why sometimes they are in error, but not much slips by us and our fraud team
again, eric, i got your email and i’m looking into it. i’ll reply to you on there, and would appreciate next time you wait for me to reply until taking it public and having to hash it out there. no offense to bjorn but this isn’t a board i frequent often, and i’d rather not have rumors flying around
Well, we did wait for a response after we first got an automated message informing us the account was closed. The first two emails we sent to your general email went unanswered. I obtained a BangBros contact’s info who informed me twice that you’d decided to keep the account closed, but I could open a new one. If you’re worried an affiliate sends too many chargebacks, why would you want him to open a new account and not have access to the original account that has stat history and money owed on it? So it felt like it’d be helpful to branch out and see how many other people experience problems with this.
We only contacted you personally Steve after an affiliate of ours suggested we email you. Thanks for looking into it and I look forward to your email.
i got your email this morning, and i’m going to look into it. we are a large program that does work off of ratios, thats why we’re always open to looking into accounts when they are terminated to see if it was a one time deal, if it was an error, etc. we’re always receptive to our affiliates, and i will be looking into it today.
bjorn-money is money, good business isn’t relegated to straight or gay person. so i think its irrelevant that we aren’t a gay own program.
jay-you were right with most of what you said, in regards to CBs, how important they are for us to monitor. but you were wrong with that top management doesn’t get involved. myself and a partner of the company go over the terminations every pay period. again we look at numbers which is why sometimes they are in error, but not much slips by us and our fraud team
again, eric, i got your email and i’m looking into it. i’ll reply to you on there, and would appreciate next time you wait for me to reply until taking it public and having to hash it out there. no offense to bjorn but this isn’t a board i frequent often, and i’d rather not have rumors flying around[/QUOTE]
Hello Steve,
could you provide us an email address with we’re sure to get a reply?
HazeCash and BangBros have always paid me on time every time and I’ve always been able to contact them via ICQ. I see them online and available has HC Program Support 3 on my ICQ now.
I can’t get them to stop with their email updates.
Bjorn is right. We’ve had affiliate accounts with some for years. Badpuppy, AEBN, and PrideBucks for example, we’ve had accounts for 7-8 years. Never any problems.
We promoted one site. They shut us off because they suspected we were “Content Thieving” on our blogs. (We weren’t, they didn’t like it that we used all images in their downloadable zips. They only wanted us to use up to 4-8 images) Thus, they banned our account.
What ticks me off is these programs offer all these great wonderful incentives, they want you to send them traffic, they want you to do this and this for them. Then they kick you in the nuts by doing this. How are you supposed to trust a program with your traffic that you work so hard to build up and they pull this crap.
Instead what they need to do is look at where your affiliate links are coming from, investigate them, if your in the wrong then can your account OR WARN YOU BEFORE HAND. Not just shut off your account like that. Give you a heads up first so that you can remove links and what have you. COMMUNICATION is key! There’s my 2 cents. lol.
[QUOTE=amadmedia;89162]I can’t get them to stop with their email updates.
Bjorn is right. We’ve had affiliate accounts with some for years. Badpuppy, AEBN, and PrideBucks for example, we’ve had accounts for 7-8 years. Never any problems.
We promoted one site. They shut us off because they suspected we were “Content Thieving” on our blogs. (We weren’t, they didn’t like it that we used all images in their downloadable zips. They only wanted us to use up to 4-8 images) Thus, they banned our account.
What ticks me off is these programs offer all these great wonderful incentives, they want you to send them traffic, they want you to do this and this for them. Then they kick you in the nuts by doing this. How are you supposed to trust a program with your traffic that you work so hard to build up and they pull this crap.
Instead what they need to do is look at where your affiliate links are coming from, investigate them, if your in the wrong then can your account OR WARN YOU BEFORE HAND. Not just shut off your account like that. Give you a heads up first so that you can remove links and what have you. COMMUNICATION is key! There’s my 2 cents. lol.[/QUOTE]
hey when did this happen? i’ve absorbed haze cash, the guy running it left a few months ago. i can look into what happened more and see if we can fix it. hit me up on email at [email protected] or on icq at 438528520
