FirstBookmark Payment

[russianromero]

OK, so I suppose I will make myself a liar for a bit...

I will respond to your garbage even thought I said I wouldn't...

The reason I won't take this public is because I know the lies you will post about me. They are the same lies you used to cancel my account. You will say you have proof and logs while I know that isn't possible because I also have proof to show otherwise. Why should I allow you to slander me?

It it is not becaue I cheated, but only becaue I know it would be pointless. I've read conversations between you and other posters and for the most part they are unintelligable (sp?) and full of mudslinging. This accomplishes nothing.

The only reason I posted good reviews of you is that I thought you were a good company. I guess I took the bait. I should have reserved judgement for a little longer. I wasn't doing it for any favors.

Here is my biggest problem with you:

I understand you have the right to cancel accounts at anytime with or without cause. That is your right and I am fine with that. But you didn't notify me when you cancelled my account. You left me to figure it out for myself even thought I kept sending you traffic. The only way I found out is that the checks stopped coming (I could still log-in and everything). If I was defrauding advertisers as you claimed, why did you continue to allow me to do this until I realized that I wasn't going to be paid? Wouldn't you want me to do this immediately? I think this proves that you in fact don't mind scamming advertisers (even though I never did) but only use it as an excuse to not pay people. I believe the no-notification practice is tacky and dishonest.

"but let me give you an advice, in life you will go much further by being honest and playing by the rules in the long term than trying to make an easy buck fast and hoping to get away with that."

I believe you should take your own advice. I am doing quite well with an honest business while you own a low-traffic PPC search engine with a diminishing reputation. I'm not the only one to think of you this way; the threads here and on GeekVillage are full of crap on you.

After Octav makes another post in an attempt to defend himself, I will consider this topic closed.

RR

 

[firstbookmark]

The reason I won't take this public is because I know the lies you will post about me. They are the same lies you used to cancel my account. You will say you have proof and logs while I know that isn't possible because I also have proof to show otherwise. Why should I allow you to slander me?

I am not slandering you but all the way around. You are slandering our program by making accusations and refusing of providing your account name so I look into the problem. Maybe in fact you never had any account with us in first place and post here just to please the competition, how will I know? If you say you have proof that you did not cheat, perfect lets see them. I play open cards with you and everybody else in fact. I will post right now here the evidence we have on you if any and let surfers decide by themselfs if is proof good enough or not. It seems that you don't like this way. Having something to hide again means in first place you know you cannot win and you are WRONG.

But you didn't notify me when you cancelled my account. You left me to figure it out for myself even thought I kept sending you traffic.

in your first post of 07/12/2002 you state on this board that you just received your check from us. That means you GOT PAID FOR THE TRAFFIC. so you were not sending traffic and not get paid!!!!

then on 07/20/02 exactly 5 working days later, you write that we cheat you and did not pay you. Now you say you figured out that we wont pay you not because we canceled you but because you did not receive the checks.... HOW WOULD YOU KNOW OR EXPECT to receive any check in a 5 business day delay, when we are paying every 7 days and take 3 working days to cut the checks out and takes another at least week or so to get our checks from our facility in Montreal, Canada to the US where I supposed you are located in or in case you are in russia (from your nick name ) it takes 3 full weeks for the postal service. So how would you know that you are not receiving your checks and we try to scam you when only 5 business days passed from the receipt of your last check? How could you claim that we never canceled your account but just did not pay 5 days later? are you some kind of Nostradamus or so? No, let me tell you how it was:
you were cheating from the beginning or not but cheating. we did not catch you and send your checks. 5 days after you received your last check on the 20th we canceled your account as we found it FRAUDULENT. and wont pay for the last pay period that you did not get paid. That is all.

No on another hand please note that we never caceled or stop payment on the check you received. Why, because if we issue payment is good as cash, you send traffic that we decided to pay for in first place, that was either our mistake that we did not catch you on time cheating, or actually you were not cheating in the begining and started cheating once you saw we pay good money! whatever your reason was, the facts are that WE PAID YOU and when we decided that you were cheating we canceled your account, but DID NOT SCAM you in any way or play games like stopping payment on your check.

So as you see to finish with all this waste of time, not only you dont want me to show proof of your cheating here but you also don't make any sense in the events described and the delays of your payments. So please do me a favor to end this discussion here. Unless you post your account name so I could investigate and show why you were canceled, I will consider this discusion closed.

Thank You

 

[russianromero]

Even though I really didn't want to bring this up again, I must because I saw this thread in GeekVillage about the 'punchline'. I'm not going to be taken for a liar when I am not.

Regardless of everything else...

I am US-based. My first check was sent on July 8 according to the check stub I have from FBM. I received it on the 12th. I found out my account was cancelled on or around July 20th. This means I wasn't paid for traffic sent to FBM from July 9 - July 20. The pay period ran from July 9 - July 16 I believe. I never received the check for that period even though the account wasn't cancelled until on or about July 20. I just believe that if a company is going to cancel an account for whatever reason (and they can pretty much do this whenever they want; I accept that as I know that is their right), they should do so immediately and notify the webmaster. Since my first check was sent the 8th, within 1 day of the pay period, my second check (I believe) should have been sent by the 17th. By July 17 FBM knew it had no intentions of paying me for that pay period's traffic, but didn't cancel me until July 20 (and didn't notify me when they did).

So that sums up my problem with FBM.

I know Octav will be back here to 'prove' that I am lying. I am willing to drop this argument as it really is pointless and it isn't going to get anything accopmlished, but I won't sit here and have some person that I don't trust convince the rest of the Internet that I am lying. I am not. That is all their is to it.

One more thing...

"take 3 working days to cut the checks out and takes another at least week or so to get our checks from our facility in Montreal"

That is a flat out lie, as I received my check in far less than 10 days, and I can prove it.

Make your decision for yourself, I suppose FBM might be a good company for some people. I was terminated for things I didn't do (I can prove this), but I was reported by other people to be doing these things. If I was FBM I would probably have terminated my account too, but I would have done it professionaly rather than in the unethical manner they did.

RR

 

[Jan]

Originally posted by russianromero
Even though I really didn't want to bring this up again, I must because I saw this thread in GeekVillage about the 'punchline'. I'm not going to be taken for a liar when I am not.

It seems Steve found good reason to remove the post by mikegaultier, RR. So anyone searching for this company in the future, please use your best judgement in determining if you use them or not.

 

[Celicaphile]

Whether they are reputable or not, I didn't appreciate the attitude I've seen here and would never give anyone my business if I see them treat people like this...guilty or not. Very unprofessional.

 

[neftha]

Originally posted by Celicaphile
Whether they are reputable or not, I didn't appreciate the attitude I've seen here and would never give anyone my business if I see them treat people like this...guilty or not. Very unprofessional.

On the other hand, it can be quite frustrating to see people posting bad stuff about you in relatively important forums (not saying here they are guilty or not, just a possible reason they reacted like this)

 

[nitroboy]

Originally posted by neftha


On the other hand, it can be quite frustrating to see people posting bad stuff about you in relatively important forums (not saying here they are guilty or not, just a possible reason they reacted like this)

yeah I wouldn't like that neither if it was my company
it would be nice that russianromero gave his username so that guy from firstbookmark would be able to give us the reason behind account cancelled.... (or did I miss something?)

 

[firstbookmark]

yeah I wouldn't like that neither if it was my company
it would be nice that russianromero gave his username so that guy from firstbookmark would be able to give us the reason behind account cancelled.... (or did I miss something?)

NitroBoy,

Thanks for your support and since I see that there are still honorable people reading the boards I will take the time again to explain everything.


So first of all I stopped replying for 2 reasons:
-russianromeo in his first post accepts that we were right to cancel him and he says that anybody else would have do it. He might have his own reasons of not saying plain and clear "I am sorry I was cheating" and that is all, we finish it there.
-then JAN posted his remarks again this is the 2nd or 3rd time he attacks my company and takes advantage of the fact that he is moderator here to influence the surfers of this board. Never had a problem with them, he never worked in my programs, it seems that he is just doing the dirty job of our competition. Well too bad that he is allowed to do so by this board other admins.
I mean the a moderator is NOT TO TAKE POSSITION for either party on the discussions on the board, but just to make sure everything remains within the terms and conditions of the board and not make a mess. Specially when you are moderator you try to keep away your personal opinion as your job does not allow it.
It seems JAN does not really care about that and acts in "GOD" on this board. This you might understand, along with the comments of another guy here, Celicaphile, made me say enough is enough, and I wont waste my time with this kind of behavior people this will go nowhere, so I stopped replying.

Seeing that there are some decent people on the board makes me feel that I was wrong to let it go and come back and explain fully the situation.

So here I am, we found this guy's russianromeo account name and how he cheated. I will give him 1 day notice to post his apologies here and to knowledge that he cheated and we were 100% right to cancel his account.

In case it does not happen, I will post here his account name and name along with how he cheated exactly so everybody could make your own idea/impression.

Since the guy did not want to let everybody know who exactly he was in first place, I will respect that and not post it right away, but seeing the way things gone on the board and the way russianrome accused us, we have to defend and in 1 day from now on I will reveal the mystery if nothing heard back from him.


Thanks everybody, or the few webmasters that are still fair in their judgment on this board.

 

[Celicaphile]

There's a difference between being upset & displaying it publicly in a forum like this, and being professional...
If his allegations are really false & slanderous, sue him. The ultimate defense against slander, libel, and defamation of character is the truth & if he is telling the truth, then it will come out, and if he's not, you'll get some money back and I'm sure that will shut him up...
it would be interesting to see his information and the reason why his acct was cancelled, but is that ethical (& legal?) w/out his permission? (no idea what your privacy policy states...)
I'm just curious how people are making money w/ firstbookmark...I think it's one that I tried some time ago & never made a cent...wasn't the first time that's happened to me & I'm not about to go accuse someone of cheating...

 

[firstbookmark]

If his allegations are really false & slanderous, sue him.

Celicaphile,

it is not that easy to sue somebody for a few posts on a board. It costs money and time and even that we might get a court injunction it will be useless. The few posts he made here are not hurting our business at a point where to really care. Then to recover any money from russianromeo, It will be very hard to collect. And on top of this my goal in life is not to sue people and make their life miserable. I just want to conduct my business in a peacefully manner and grow.

Already you saw that in less than a year that we opened we are now in the top 3 PPC search engine resellers programs as volume of traffic, and as you see on this board this is what drives crazy our competition and people posting bad remarks. Is not the fact that a guy was canceled for cheating or not that they care, they try to get any occasion to put us down. I would like to give them some advice, FIGHT WITH THE SAME GUNS: pay webmasters 75%, pay them every single week, pay them on time, and have the best deals out there. This will make your biz grow or damage mine, not bashing on boards


Peace!

 

[russianromero]

Alright Octav, you win. Here it is...

I CHEATED. I AM SORRY.

I'm not saying that because I'm scared of giving out information...I don't really care. Besides that, I doubt you know who I am or could even post it due to Privacy Policy restrictions. I am admitting to cheating to get past the point of WHY and to the point of HOW my account was cancelled.

You must understand that it isn't the cheating thing that I am upset about. You have the right to cancel any account anytime you want. My company's practices were fine according to how I interpreted your TOS, but they were not fine according to how you interpreted the TOS. Unfortunately it is your interpretation that counts and I am fine with that as you explained this to me and I can see how you would find my company's activities to be fraudulant.

I'm upset because of how the account cancelling situation was handled. You should have told me when you were going to stop paying for my traffic instead of allowing me to send you traffic and waste advertising money. This is why I feel cheated. My account was cancelled days after a check should have been sent to me. Where is that check? I doubt it is coming soon.

Like I said, I have plenty of proof of when the check was sent, when it arrived, when I cashed it, etc...So I doubt we will have too much debate on that. You know the facts just as well as I do.

Also, I'm not posting here to try to damage your business or something. Why would I waste my time when this board affects maybe .0000000001% of all webmasters?

Fight with the same guns? I have absolutely no desire to run a program with the revenue nor the ethics of yours.

RR

 

[Matt]

Dear me that endless, everywhere blinking is horrid on Firstbookmark.com. Turn that off and I think you'll get higher quality traffic. Emphasize links in other ways, such as link colour, italics, underlined/non-underlined, background colours, etc.

 

[firstbookmark]

I CHEATED. I AM SORRY.

RussianRomeo,

I accept your apologies for this mess over the boards and I appreciate the fact that you finally recognize it.

About your traffic that you said wasted on us, please note that as stated in your first email I have here on the 20th you said yourself that you cannot access your account as we disabled it.
So as I previously said, we paid you the first check and you got the money and cashed it already, and for the second check before mailing it when we verify all accounts for compliance we find your account in violation with our terms and conditions and I stopped the check that was supposed to go out to you and disabled right away your account. So it was no traffic going on and not paid we canceled as soon as we found it cheating. Being said your check was never send out respecting our policy of recursively not paid an account found cheating.

Again note that the first check you got we never stopped payment on it as we could have easily done as we thought that it was our problem that we did not find you cheating the first time and it is not right to cancel a check that you received already and that you might count on for the money.


I hope this clears up everything and puts an end to this thread concerning me and Russian Romeo. Again I appreciate your apologies and there are no hard feelings on my side with you.


Thank you

 

[Jan]

Originally posted by firstbookmark
-then JAN posted his remarks again this is the 2nd or 3rd time he attacks my company and takes advantage of the fact that he is moderator here to influence the surfers of this board. Never had a problem with them, he never worked in my programs, it seems that he is just doing the dirty job of our competition. Well too bad that he is allowed to do so by this board other admins.
I mean the a moderator is NOT TO TAKE POSSITION for either party on the discussions on the board, but just to make sure everything remains within the terms and conditions of the board and not make a mess. Specially when you are moderator you try to keep away your personal opinion as your job does not allow it.
It seems JAN does not really care about that and acts in "GOD" on this board.

For starters I am not a he.
You might be forgetting Octav that I have a bit more information regarding your somewhat shady past than most of the members here, so if I can alert a few to the possibility that something might go wrong, then I will.

I am not sure what you mean about me doing the dirty job of your competition, but if you are referring to SI, I can tell you I am in no way affilated with them.

There is also the matter of *mikegaultier* who posted a long thread here yesterday with the intention of severely damaging the reputation of another BB. Not many would have seen that, but I know you are aware of the existance of it. I will say no more on that matter at present.

 

[firstbookmark]

For starters I am not a he.
You might be forgetting Octav that I have a bit more information regarding your somewhat shady past than most of the members here, so if I can alert a few to the possibility that something might go wrong, then I will.

I did not want to repeat myself but it seems that you did not get the message first 2 times (and during our private emails about 6 months ago). I will write it clean here again:
IF You have something against me or my program please state your personal reasons public as a surfer. From what I remember you never worked for any of my programs and therefore I don¡¦t think there is any feedback or opinions you should express here or on any board about us. What you read on other boards or what other people might have asked you to believe is your personal problem not a public one. I would ask you to judge by the facts and WRITE plain and CLEAR what is your problem if you have any and I will be very happy to help you solve it.

ON the other hand I write again clear my message that you seemed not to get. You are a MODERATOR HERE. your job is to make sure this board runs smoothly and nobody abuses of it. That is all. As a moderator you are in Conflicts Of Interests by taking position for a company or individual over another. To make it even simpler so you could understand: a judge in a legal action is there to make sure everybody gets a fair representation by the rules. he does not make any decision or takes any position, the JURY does it. In this case the judge=you , the jury=surfers of this board, the case=Rusianromeo against ME. Meaning that you have no business to post anything or express any opinion biased as EVERYBODY SAW in this thread.

You took for RussianRomeo from the beginning without anybody asking you anything, and without having all the elements of the discussion. Now RussianRomeo agreed that what he did was against our terms and conditions and what YOU do is continue posting dirt on us. Any 12years or older kid would just apologize for being wrong and judge too soon , or will just shut up and let it go. No what you do you continue acting like if firstbookmark.com was wrong and continue to OVERPASS your moderator job and make subjective remarks and opinions on this board.

I am not sure what you mean about me doing the dirty job of your competition, but if you are referring to SI, I can tell you I am in no way affiliated with them.

it is at least the 3rd time that I see this , I did not named anybody or any company, so why do you always have to defend yourself over it and get so defensive

There is also the matter of *mikegaultier* who posted a long thread here yesterday with the intention of severely damaging the reputation of another BB. Not many would have seen that, but I know you are aware of the existance of it. I will say no more on that matter at present.

yes indeed , I wanted to ask you about that as well. I did not see that post here or on geekvillage.com as I supposed it was again "screened" by you. I know mikegaultier posted something as he emailed me this morning asking if I could help him talk with the admins here as why they act like that and delete his post. Unfortunatelly I cannot help with it and he will have to sort that problem with you guys as it is his problem with you and geekvillage.I wish I could help as the guy tried to defend my programs and as a reward he got kicked from this board and from geekvillage.com ƒ¼
But I am curious to know as well what the owner of this board thinks of you deleting the posts webmasters post on his board just in the goal of defening or hiding your interests/geekvillage.com interests???? OPEN QUESTION....


Well this is a long thread, to finish with I only wish JAN to stop and change his posting/administrating behaviors on this board. As of the rest I don¡¦t care how professional he wants to look by doing what he does but he sure does not act in the interests of this board anymore....


Peace out Everybody

(the editing was that I press the "post" button by error without finishing the post), sorry about that

 

[Hobo]

Your <removed personal attack> you blew it totally out of proportion. All he did was post a thread and then warn people based on his views to be careful when choosing an ad company......in this case it was yours

 

[Jan]

Originally posted by firstbookmark
But I am curious to know as well what the owner of this board thinks of you deleting the posts webmasters post on his board just in the goal of defening or hiding your interests/geekvillage.com interests???? OPEN QUESTION....

On closing this thread, I would like to state that any moderator on any forum would have removed that thread, which was posted as a direct attack on another BB. Extremely unprofessional!

I removed it because it was posted just before I arrived home, so I was the first to see it.