AffUtd - admitted fraud

**FMecan** · 14 December 2014, 4:35 am

This is one of the postings I definitely hate to make, but I don’t see any other way. Excuse my long posting, but I would like to explain the whole story.
I am an affiliate since 2006 with some breaks when I worked for the industry side, but I am for some time back to be 100% affiliate. I was always mainly a sportsbetting affiliate but now with a lot more casino topics as well. The main focus country was always Germany.
I started promoting William Hill when they were still on the PT backend and had a betting offer in Germany. They were performing ok and I never had any bigger trouble with them, but knowing their image in the industry, they were also never pushed to be one of my top5 books. When the legislation in German changed, they dropped from the German betting market, but staid in Austria and Switzerland, the other two German speaking territories. On one of the conferences I agreed to give them exposure on my Austrian focused site and on our Switzerland focused site and on our roulette site. It was running slowly but nothing exceptional, so I didn’t look a lot into the account (around 5 new depositors per month, nothing really to celebrate).
Around one month ago I was checking the account and saw something surprising and this was a customer who lost in the 5-digit numbers. Checking the stats, he was from Switzerland and this made sense, because we had always nice results from this country and WH was listen on our Switzerland site. The month ended with 14k (euros) in revenue share for us.
Two days ago, I was actually checking for the overall stats in December when I realized that the November was marked with negative revenue share and when I looked deeper, the customer was simply not on the system anymore and the revenues from the previous month were…GONE.
I wrote an email to my account manager and the answer is in my eyes a 100% admitting of fraud from AffUtd:
“The answer is simple.
The customer been marked as arbitrage.
We pay affiliates for legitimate customer only. Therefore, we should not pay the affiliate for any activity of this customer.
Move this customer to a dedicated group only for 'fraud/arbitrage customers'
This should be the case in any similar future issues.”
This is something I simply can’t accept. We can only give exposure as an affiliate and we worked with the guys for long time and my name is very easy to google so people should know that I not the one-day-off-fraud-affiliate. We are not able to control all the traffic we get and to be very simple: these guys just go out and say “this is an arber, we keep all of his money and give nothing to the affiliate. This is a door opener to kill any customer who makes them big bucks. Yes, arbers should be closed and kicked out, but I am sure WH is not giving them their money back, so they EARNED money with the customer I sent over. THIS is fraud and we talking about the main sponsor of the affiliate conference.
I of course have the email exchange in original. If anyone wants to see my sites, they are partially in my profile and I am also happy to put my name public...any time.

**FMecan** · 14 December 2014, 4:41 am

Just to make clear how I was working with them. Around 1 or 2 years ago I bought a whole package of domains and of them was a misspelling domain like wiliamhill.es (I think it was this version). I contacted the company the same day and transfered the domain for free to them.

**gaffg** · 14 December 2014, 2:41 pm

Not surprising given the number of affiliate complaints over the years at gpwa and affiliate guard dog.

**FMecan** · 14 December 2014, 4:06 pm

First of their buddys already going for the "he is just crying on GPWA" strategy on facebook...just playing things down and talking about "not reading the TandCs"...what a nonsense. Spoke to at least two more German affiliates having issues with AffUtd at the moment.

**FMecan** · 15 December 2014, 1:30 am

Now there are three who are all having the same issue. very profitable accounts being crazy charged with bonus fees...so here they obviously have a different method then in my case.

**Sherlock** · 15 December 2014, 1:42 am

Originally Posted by FMecan

Just to make clear how I was working with them. Around 1 or 2 years ago I bought a whole package of domains and of them was a misspelling domain like wiliamhill.es (I think it was this version). I contacted the company the same day and transfered the domain for free to them.

That was very nice gesture from you. Unfortunately there is no one who can understand this on the other side. I can only repeat here I am so glad I do not promote them. And only because of threads like this. Someone has to wake up at WH.

Not to pay for arbitrage player makes certain sense if there is reset of the affiliate account, but even that can not justify what they did. Was your account at monthly reset mode of negative balance?

**FMecan** · 15 December 2014, 1:56 am

It was on negative carryover...and I somehow have a feeling that this "removing" of the customer would never happen it there would be a big "-" in front fo the number at the end of the month.

**Sherlock** · 15 December 2014, 2:22 am

Well that for sure would not happen. It is possible though he won in previous months and was reset. I do not know. I hate reset, because then it leads to those situations. Programmers offering reset are like the tricks for consumers "get this whatever for free". The resets must be paid by someone, always.

Still I am not telling this is ok. It is bullshit. If they can not spot arb player after 2-3 bets [which btw. WH is good at], they are idiots. And if they are idiots who want other people to pay for the idiocy, then it is impossible to do business with them. So many inconsistencies about WH. Now their chief of the affiliates will come here with obvious bullshit. This is not good way how to do this business honestly.

**FMecan** · 15 December 2014, 2:33 am

The thing is....they spotted him in time, while he was still profitable, so they made money with him. this is the only point for me. I NEVER asked them for a reset, because we simply don't bring fraud traffic, so in 99% the months end positive. the whole thing makes zero sense and the only logical solution is that they want to grab money that doesnt belong to them.

**Sherlock** · 15 December 2014, 2:39 am

Well, it is partly my fault. The debate should not go towards dilemma if he was or was not arbitrage player. That has nothing to do with the fact they must pay you. And they should be f**ing finally ashamed for their behavior.

**TomPregon** · 20 December 2014, 8:49 pm

Gee...
I sincerely hope you will get this one sorted soon and in full.

It shows just how important real partnership is.

Tom.

**FMecan** · 5 February 2015, 5:18 pm

To keep updated....they didn't pay anything up to now. They asked me for patience and some investigation time but nothing happened except they dropped from being a sponsor here so the thread where they tried to talk them out of the issue if not writeable anymore because they are no sponsor anymore. They will now get a one week timeline to give a final response and then everything goes to my lawyers on Gibraltar where the affiliate programm sits. Let's see the how that goes. Will ofc keep everyone updated...

**Sherlock** · 5 February 2015, 6:06 pm

Keep us posting. Good luck man. If you want to go on with th lawyers it is a free rid for everyone else, especially if you win! We all need good precedens.

**sweetbet** · 5 February 2015, 6:36 pm

I'm sure that the lawyers will do a better job than the affiliate managers

You should also charge them interest and legal costs. I wish you luck with getting your money from them.

**RacingJim** · 6 February 2015, 7:26 am

Why are all the Israeli programs seemingly so dodgy? Is ripping people off deemed ok out there?

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