This mistake involves dealing with Digital River, who owns the affiliate tracking platform Direct Track, that also owns the affiliate network Direct Leads.
This might be a little long, but I thought I should explain one of my biggest mistakes in AM to this date so others can learn from it.
Basically, I started off bringing in slow traffic to Direct Leads around September 2009 to November 2009. Slow traffic meaning I was careful not to bring in too much just in case they were planning to dick me. Constantly, my affiliate manager contacted me over and over about increasing traffic. I told him that the only way I would increase traffic is if he could guarantee me that I would be paid for all the leads I generated. My affiliate manager worked hard to get me this guarantee; he contacted Matt Haag, the director of Direct Leads, to discuss this issue with him around mid December of 2009. Matt pursues to call me (with a blocked number, shady from the beginning) to deal with this issue over the phone. Over the phone he tells me not to worry about not getting paid by them and to increase traffic as much as I can. He told me that Direct Leads had already been prepaid by the advertisers I was pushing and that I would be paid. He pretty much instilled this trust in me to bring him more traffic, which I did since I was under the impression I would be paid for all my traffic because of the prepayment. Verbal agreements were made between Matt and I during that conversation over the phone which led me to believe I could increase traffic and be paid in full. There are also emails and AIM conversations with my affiliate manager where you can see instances he talks about the prepayment and how it has been added and that I will get paid.
Well things were going good because I did get the checks mailed to me and everything was dandy in terms of getting my payments, I was beginning to trust them more and more and pushing more traffic.
Forward to early February 2010, the last days I hear from my affiliate manager. He assures me that payment is being processed and that I would soon receive it. I wait about 10-15 days and still no payment, during this time I try to get in touch with my affiliate manager but no response. I then proceed to contact another AM at Direct leads, Jessica Brown, who informs me that my affiliate manager had been “let go” and that she would look into my payment problem. She informs me that my check was sent on February 8th in the amount of $38,334.91 (screenshots of stats show more because I was prepaid for some amount the month before). I waited a week and still no payment, and then I tried to get a wire from directLeads in that amount. Over and over Jessica informed me that my wire was going out “today” but it never came. Then she proceeded to talk to Matt to get this resolved, who also told me that my wire was going out “today” but that never came either. Finally on Feb 24, accounts payable contacted me telling me I would get a wire today in the amount of $4,736.55, which I did receive but it was way under the amount I was actually owed.
I proceeded to ask Matt about the decrease in payment and he again called me to discuss this. He basically told me over the phone that the reason I was cut so short was because the advertiser had not paid them, the same advertiser I was informed already had prepaid directLeads, the same advertiser Matt called me about Mid December 2009 to instill trust in me that I would be paid. When I asked about this, Matt basically said “well we didn’t get paid Shaz, and we cannot pay until we have been paid.” I had asked him what had happened again and he said that my affiliate manager was not doing something correct with accounting and dealing with the advertisers and that he, as director of directLeads, had not been looking over the information my affiliate manager was giving him. This was a huge shock to me as it showed irresponsibility as the director of a huge company to not be looking over accounting information. When I asked where responsibility lies over not looking over my affiliate manager and the fact that I was falsely led to believe I would be paid, he responded “responsibility is with the advertisers” and tried to deter the responsibility from himself. I don’t understand how I could be “sent” a check on Feb 8th of the amount of $38,334.91, but then later wired an amount much less.
What makes matters worse is that I finally get my December check in the mail a week later for the full amount. If I knew that they were going to dick me out by sending a wire for a much lower amount, I would have waited for the check. But of course they inform me about the scrubbed amount after they stop the payment on the check and send the wire.
This raises a lot of issues with Digital River company as a whole. First, they allowed me to keep pushing traffic even though the advertiser had no paid them. They could have informed me about these problems just so I could save my ass, but obviously they do not care enough about me as their affiliate.
Second, Matt informs me that there had been many “fraudulent leads” coming from my account. Now I know that there is a lot of fraud that occurs in AM, but till this day Direct Leads has not sent me any type of fraudulent reports on which leads were fraudulent and how they were fraudulent. On top of that, every week I would ask my affiliate manager to make sure that my traffic was fine and that there are no problems, and every time he would tell me that so far it’s all good. In fact he told me that my fraud rate is only 2% and that’s very good. Why did I always ask about my traffic? Because the campaigns I ran were the rebill types and all those rebill type advertisers were doing some shady business. They also already technically paid me on this traffic by sending the December check.
Third, this really questions the ethics of Digital River. They pretty much took advantage of the fact that the post office made an error up on delivering my check. It looks like that they saw this as a way out of paying me so they cancelled the December check for the full amount, wired the lower amount to me, and then told me after about the scrubbed/held leads. I also asked around to see if all other publishers got their December payment in full, and almost everyone had received it. So it just adds to my thinking that they saw this as an opportunity dick me.
I’ve tried over and over again to mediate this issue, even telling them that if they send me my full December amount, the amount that was on the cancelled check, that I would be fine for now and will wait until their “lawyers” pursue the advertisers for the January total (over $40,000). But obviously that didn’t work out as “Direct Leads will only pay when they get paid.”
I finally got tired of waiting and getting the run around by Digital River. I contacted their “Business Development” coordinator Anthony Gozzo and of course he fed me the same bullshit. So I told him straight up that I’m going to inform others about how they dicked me and hope that no one else makes the mistake of trusting them the way I did because this has gone on too long. And all he did was tell me he’ll forward this to the lawyers so I can deal with them, but then hours later I try to log into my Direct Leads account and here is that I get, “Account for Affiliate ID: CD6xxxx has been denied. If you feel this is incorrect please email directresponse-directleads@directresponse.com.”
Real mature. Good thing I already got all the screenshots I needed a while back.
Right now I know I won’t get any payment from them, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let them get away with bad ethics. I learned a lot of valuable lessons from this mistake. These are the ONLY good things coming from trusting Digital River.
1) Don’t think that just because a company is public and big that you can trust them. Even if it is the company that has one of the largest and widely used affiliate platforms in the industry. Get everything on paper and writing, not over the phone.
2) As soon as you get the feeling that a company has payment problems, take screen shots. Without them there is no proof. And they can just delete/hold your account so that you can’t access your stats.
3) Try your hardest not to stress over money and make it the central point of your life. Losing $80,000 brought a lot of stress to my life, but it also helped me appreciate the finer things in life that we take for granted because we are so busy trying to find ways to increase our wealth. Wealth can be found in family, friends, and many other things. I rather lose this much money than lose a family member or a close friend.
Anyway, there is my $80,000+ mistake. Save your “what did you expect it’s direct track” comments. I’m sure most of you would have trusted them if they sent you prior checks. Here are some screen shots I took to prove all that I’m saying. There are more but here is what I think is necessary.
Here are my December stats (the check that was stopped and wired later for a much less amount). Again, I got prepaid for some of these amounts before which is why it is showing around $52,000.
Here is what I am owed for January, although I was only asking to get my December payment in full and can wait for the lawyers on this one.
Never got this payment but it shows in their payment stats that I did (the canceled December Check). And I have the check as proof but haven’t taken a picture of that yet.
This might be a little long, but I thought I should explain one of my biggest mistakes in AM to this date so others can learn from it.
Basically, I started off bringing in slow traffic to Direct Leads around September 2009 to November 2009. Slow traffic meaning I was careful not to bring in too much just in case they were planning to dick me. Constantly, my affiliate manager contacted me over and over about increasing traffic. I told him that the only way I would increase traffic is if he could guarantee me that I would be paid for all the leads I generated. My affiliate manager worked hard to get me this guarantee; he contacted Matt Haag, the director of Direct Leads, to discuss this issue with him around mid December of 2009. Matt pursues to call me (with a blocked number, shady from the beginning) to deal with this issue over the phone. Over the phone he tells me not to worry about not getting paid by them and to increase traffic as much as I can. He told me that Direct Leads had already been prepaid by the advertisers I was pushing and that I would be paid. He pretty much instilled this trust in me to bring him more traffic, which I did since I was under the impression I would be paid for all my traffic because of the prepayment. Verbal agreements were made between Matt and I during that conversation over the phone which led me to believe I could increase traffic and be paid in full. There are also emails and AIM conversations with my affiliate manager where you can see instances he talks about the prepayment and how it has been added and that I will get paid.
Well things were going good because I did get the checks mailed to me and everything was dandy in terms of getting my payments, I was beginning to trust them more and more and pushing more traffic.
Forward to early February 2010, the last days I hear from my affiliate manager. He assures me that payment is being processed and that I would soon receive it. I wait about 10-15 days and still no payment, during this time I try to get in touch with my affiliate manager but no response. I then proceed to contact another AM at Direct leads, Jessica Brown, who informs me that my affiliate manager had been “let go” and that she would look into my payment problem. She informs me that my check was sent on February 8th in the amount of $38,334.91 (screenshots of stats show more because I was prepaid for some amount the month before). I waited a week and still no payment, and then I tried to get a wire from directLeads in that amount. Over and over Jessica informed me that my wire was going out “today” but it never came. Then she proceeded to talk to Matt to get this resolved, who also told me that my wire was going out “today” but that never came either. Finally on Feb 24, accounts payable contacted me telling me I would get a wire today in the amount of $4,736.55, which I did receive but it was way under the amount I was actually owed.
I proceeded to ask Matt about the decrease in payment and he again called me to discuss this. He basically told me over the phone that the reason I was cut so short was because the advertiser had not paid them, the same advertiser I was informed already had prepaid directLeads, the same advertiser Matt called me about Mid December 2009 to instill trust in me that I would be paid. When I asked about this, Matt basically said “well we didn’t get paid Shaz, and we cannot pay until we have been paid.” I had asked him what had happened again and he said that my affiliate manager was not doing something correct with accounting and dealing with the advertisers and that he, as director of directLeads, had not been looking over the information my affiliate manager was giving him. This was a huge shock to me as it showed irresponsibility as the director of a huge company to not be looking over accounting information. When I asked where responsibility lies over not looking over my affiliate manager and the fact that I was falsely led to believe I would be paid, he responded “responsibility is with the advertisers” and tried to deter the responsibility from himself. I don’t understand how I could be “sent” a check on Feb 8th of the amount of $38,334.91, but then later wired an amount much less.
What makes matters worse is that I finally get my December check in the mail a week later for the full amount. If I knew that they were going to dick me out by sending a wire for a much lower amount, I would have waited for the check. But of course they inform me about the scrubbed amount after they stop the payment on the check and send the wire.
This raises a lot of issues with Digital River company as a whole. First, they allowed me to keep pushing traffic even though the advertiser had no paid them. They could have informed me about these problems just so I could save my ass, but obviously they do not care enough about me as their affiliate.
Second, Matt informs me that there had been many “fraudulent leads” coming from my account. Now I know that there is a lot of fraud that occurs in AM, but till this day Direct Leads has not sent me any type of fraudulent reports on which leads were fraudulent and how they were fraudulent. On top of that, every week I would ask my affiliate manager to make sure that my traffic was fine and that there are no problems, and every time he would tell me that so far it’s all good. In fact he told me that my fraud rate is only 2% and that’s very good. Why did I always ask about my traffic? Because the campaigns I ran were the rebill types and all those rebill type advertisers were doing some shady business. They also already technically paid me on this traffic by sending the December check.
Third, this really questions the ethics of Digital River. They pretty much took advantage of the fact that the post office made an error up on delivering my check. It looks like that they saw this as a way out of paying me so they cancelled the December check for the full amount, wired the lower amount to me, and then told me after about the scrubbed/held leads. I also asked around to see if all other publishers got their December payment in full, and almost everyone had received it. So it just adds to my thinking that they saw this as an opportunity dick me.
I’ve tried over and over again to mediate this issue, even telling them that if they send me my full December amount, the amount that was on the cancelled check, that I would be fine for now and will wait until their “lawyers” pursue the advertisers for the January total (over $40,000). But obviously that didn’t work out as “Direct Leads will only pay when they get paid.”
I finally got tired of waiting and getting the run around by Digital River. I contacted their “Business Development” coordinator Anthony Gozzo and of course he fed me the same bullshit. So I told him straight up that I’m going to inform others about how they dicked me and hope that no one else makes the mistake of trusting them the way I did because this has gone on too long. And all he did was tell me he’ll forward this to the lawyers so I can deal with them, but then hours later I try to log into my Direct Leads account and here is that I get, “Account for Affiliate ID: CD6xxxx has been denied. If you feel this is incorrect please email directresponse-directleads@directresponse.com.”
Real mature. Good thing I already got all the screenshots I needed a while back.
Right now I know I won’t get any payment from them, but that doesn’t mean I’ll let them get away with bad ethics. I learned a lot of valuable lessons from this mistake. These are the ONLY good things coming from trusting Digital River.
1) Don’t think that just because a company is public and big that you can trust them. Even if it is the company that has one of the largest and widely used affiliate platforms in the industry. Get everything on paper and writing, not over the phone.
2) As soon as you get the feeling that a company has payment problems, take screen shots. Without them there is no proof. And they can just delete/hold your account so that you can’t access your stats.
3) Try your hardest not to stress over money and make it the central point of your life. Losing $80,000 brought a lot of stress to my life, but it also helped me appreciate the finer things in life that we take for granted because we are so busy trying to find ways to increase our wealth. Wealth can be found in family, friends, and many other things. I rather lose this much money than lose a family member or a close friend.
Anyway, there is my $80,000+ mistake. Save your “what did you expect it’s direct track” comments. I’m sure most of you would have trusted them if they sent you prior checks. Here are some screen shots I took to prove all that I’m saying. There are more but here is what I think is necessary.
Here are my December stats (the check that was stopped and wired later for a much less amount). Again, I got prepaid for some of these amounts before which is why it is showing around $52,000.
Here is what I am owed for January, although I was only asking to get my December payment in full and can wait for the lawyers on this one.
Never got this payment but it shows in their payment stats that I did (the canceled December Check). And I have the check as proof but haven’t taken a picture of that yet.
Last edited by a moderator:
