Revenue Pilot :( Help!!!

[Kap]

Hi,
I own www.dollspot.com, a very large AIM buddy icon site. I recently tried out revenue pilot for about 2 weeks. It was probably the best program I have ever used in all my days of being a webmaster. I was making between 10-60 cents per click. Unfortunately just a few days ago it took a turn for the worst. First off they decided to disable all premium advertisements from my site, dropping the pay to around 1/2-3 cents a click. I contacted them immediately about this because I felt this change was not warranted. Their reasoning was that the keywords I had selected for my banners did not go with my site. I then went on their site and tried to find this in text. I discovered to no surprise, there was no rule on this issue. All it said was to select a keyword that might INTEREST some of your visitors. I later decided to try to pick some better keywords that went with my site. I emailed them back on the issue asking them kindly to please re-enable premium advertisements on my site. To my shock they replied back with news that my account had been suspended because my site was down. I called them up as soon as I could because my site was in-fact never down. I left a message with one of their secretaries. They emailed me back later that day telling me that the real reason was because I have some popup downloader thing on my site and they said they could not reach my site because of it. It really confused me because anyone can plainly see all you have to do to bypass these pop-ups is to X them out of simply click no when it asks if you want to install the software. Even if they couldn't access site because of these popups, they aren't paying me for impressions. I am only getting paid when someone clicks the banners under their own free will. If Revenue Pilot could straighten this all out I would gladly go back to using them, and I would also like to know whether or not I will be compensated for the commissions I was owed up until my account's suspension. If you see this "Revenue Pilot" could you please fill me in as to if I am going to be paid, since I can no longer log into my account. It wouldn't be such a big deal if it was like $20-$30, but we are talking about almost $1000 and I am depending on this money to cover all of my server fees. :confused2

Thanks, Kyle

 

[Jan]

Maybe they should make up their mind why you were actually terminated. I have just been reading the TOS http://www.revenuepilot.com/terms.html and there is a section that mentions the higher bids.

RevenuePilot reserves the right to limit or annul Affiliate’s access to premium advertisers with higher bids. Failure to comply with the search and click standards may result in termination of Affiliate's participation in the RevenuePilot Program and in the forfeiture of all monies owed to Affiliate by RevenuePilot.

 

[WabbyTwax]

interesting post

I have heard some negative things about Revenue Pilot and situations like this before. There is a guy from Revenue Pilot that posts here, he should see this and give you a reply. Hopefully they will pay you what they owe because it seems that would be the right thing to do. There are too many ad companies like this that cancel their accounts for rediculous reasons then pocket the money that is owed to the webmaster. Good luck though and keep trying to get in touch with someone at Revenue Pilot that can help you!

 

[Kap]

Originally posted by Jan
Maybe they should make up their mind why you were actually terminated. I have just been reading the TOS http://www.revenuepilot.com/terms.html and there is a section that mentions the higher bids.

RevenuePilot reserves the right to limit or annul Affiliate’s access to premium advertisers with higher bids. Failure to comply with the search and click standards may result in termination of Affiliate's participation in the RevenuePilot Program and in the forfeiture of all monies owed to Affiliate by RevenuePilot.

Yes, I have also read this, but all the search and click standards have to do with is fraudulent clicks, and stuff like that, but I have not broken any of those rules. All my banner clicks were legit. My site gets 4-6 thousand unique hits on weekdays and 8-10 thousand uniques hits on weekends, which can explain the large number of clicks on my banners.

Thanks, Kyle

 

[Jan]

I haven't seen Anatoliy on line for a while, but try emailing him anatoliyt@revenuepilot.com with a link to this thread.

 

[RevenuePilot]

Hi Everyone,

After having a long discussion with our anti-fraud team I would like to share with you what actually transpired:

We received a number of complaints from advertisers regarding the traffic quality coming from dollspot affiliate account. As soon as the complaints came in, an internal investigation was immediately launched by our anti-fraud team, and dollspots access to search listings of advertisers who complained was blocked. Please note that at that time we didn't suspend his account since we didn't yet have a chance to closely analyze
the traffic that was being sent. While analyzing the past traffic, our anti-fraud team also tried accessing affiliates site, but it was
inaccessible. Subsequently, it became clear that the traffic was
completely fraudulent. Furthermore, dollpsot started sending traffic (the same fraudulent traffic) from another url, thus trying to bypass our filters.

Kyle: Eventually, when you changed the keywords on your site, it seems you also added some kind of a spyware download to your site and if your site visitor with an Internet Explorer browser choeses not to download the spyware and clicked NO he gets asked again and again until the pop up shuts down his browser or until the browser freezes. Since at that time our analysts became certain that your traffic was fraudulent we immediately canceled the affiliate account.

Please note that we only make money if our affiliates make money and it is in our best interest to have as many affiliates as possible and to build long lasting mutually beneficial relationships. In fact, we currently have thousands of active affiliates; some of them are working with us for quite a while and are very satisfied with the results. However, we will not tolerate any fraudulent traffic since it hurts everyone in the industry. We are 100% committed to protecting our advertisers and insuring best quality of traffic. If we would let people abuse our system we would lose our advertisers and the vast majority of honest webmasters would be hurt, advertisers and affiliates alike, since our bid prices would go down. Kyle, you will not receive any money from this traffic since it was fraudulent and we were obligated to refund all our advertisers for the clicks coming from your account.

As a side note: personally Im not sure how a site which auto-installs spyware and crashes browsers can have so many users!

regards,

 

[Kap]

Wow this is the biggest pile of crap I have ever heard. How is my traffic fraudulant? Is this what you do to everyone, just call their traffic fraudulant? I haven't forced anyone to click your banners, every click was legit. Why don't you go and check my sites traffic statistics http://www.mvtracker.com/stats.php?l=dollspot1 .Looks pretty real to me. :confused2 I just hate how some of you advertising companys can't pay their members and make up all this bullshit to get out of it. I'll be sure and spread the good word about this scam your company is running. Also could you give one piece of legit proof that says my traffic is fraudulant?

Below I have posted a copy of all emails that where exchanged with revenue pilot.

I said:
"Hey,
I just read you email about your explanation of why my clicks arnt
paying hardly anything anymore. I am a little confused still. How can I
go from getting like 50 cents a click to getting almost 1/2 cent a
click. This does not sound right. Also can you provide me with some
information as to why my account level was lowered because I just dont
understand how one day it was fine and the next day you do this. One of
my friends said you did the same thing to him so I dunno if this is what
you do to everyone. So if possible could you please check and find out
exactly why my account status was lowered because I feel I have done
nothing wrong.

Thanks, Kyle"

They Said:
"Hi Kyle,

Your domain has been blocked for our premium advertisers because your
web site has nothing to do with gambling, casino or poker and displying
such advertisements leads to very low quality of traffic for our
advertisers. We preffer that our affiliates use keywords that are
related to their sites so this way there will be more clicks for you
since visitors are interested in those ads and this way there will also
be better quality clicks for our advertisers."

I said:
"Hey,
I was wondering if you could please reupgrade my account level back to
premium since you said you would in a previous email if I selected some
better keywords for my ads and did everything you asked me to do.

Thanks, Kyle"

They said:
"Hi Kyle,

Your account is being upgraded and downgraded automatically by our
programs. It may happen few times a day or not at all. But rest assured
because our programs are trying to send as much of your traffic as
possible to our highest advertisers."

I said:
"Hi,

I dont think you followed my last request to get my account reupgraded
to premium. Here is a copy of the first email you sent me.

"Subj: RE: Support - Other
Date: 11/12/2003 3:52:25 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: "Support Team" <support@revenuepilot.com>
To: <k13kyle@aol.com>
Reply-To: <support@revenuepilot.com>
Sent from the Internet (Details)




Hi Kyle,

Your domain has been blocked for our premium advertisers because your
web site has nothing to do with gambling, casino or poker and displying
such advertisements leads to very low quality of traffic for our
advertisers. We preffer that our affiliates use keywords that are
related to their sites so this way there will be more clicks for you
since visitors are interested in those ads and this way there will also
be better quality clicks for our advertisers."

I replied back yesturday.
"Hey,
I was wondering if you could please reupgrade my account level back to
premium since you said you would in a previous email if I selected some
better keywords for my ads and did everything you asked me to do.

Thanks, Kyle"

Then you replied with this.

"Hi Kyle,

Your account is being upgraded and downgraded automatically by our
programs. It may happen few times a day or not at all. But rest assured
because our programs are trying to send as much of your traffic as
possible to our highest advertisers."

Sounds like I got you confused I just wanted my account unblocked from
premium advertisers. Since I changed all my keywords to better ones.

Thanks, Kyle"

They said:
"Hi Kyle,

Your web site is currently inaccessible and therefore your account has
been suspended."

I said:
"On 11/18/2003 2:30pm, Affiliate (ID 7753) called to inquire about his
"suspended" account status and if it can be removed. Also asked if it
would be possible to update listing feed to PREMIUM status. Please
respond
promptly to:

k13kyle@aol.com

Regards,

RevenuePilot Info Center
info@revenuepilot.com"

They said:
"Hi,

There is a problem with your web site and anyone using Internet Explorer
can't enter your web site unless they download some spyware. We tracked
the problem to this Javascript:
http://www.NetpalOffers.net/NetpalOffers/DM0/confirmd0llsp.js

Since we don't want to download that software we can't view your web
site. So far your traffic quality isn't that good and we can't update
your account to premium advertisers."



After reviewing all of the emails we have exchanged I do not see anything about fraudulant clicks. It seems to me that you are just trying to get out of paying me by making up all this bullshit.

Thanks, Kyle

 

[WabbyTwax]

I believe that regardless of what crap downloads from his site you should still pay him for the traffic he sent. I don't believe for a minute that he sent fraudulent clicks. Why don't you tell us, revenuepilot, how much you earned from the time he used your site vs. how much you would have to pay him. You shouldn't leave people on your network for so long then all of a sudden cut them off and label them as fraudulent while keeping any share of funds that may have been owed to them. These websites arent cheap to operate with the amount of traffic and bandwidth a site like that does. Due to the drop in advertising market in the past 5 years large scale sites are forced to place just about any type of ad to receive the necessary funding. I hope you find at least some middle ground here and compensate this guy for something. By just simply denying he didnt earn you any money at all you are basically committing theft by deception. Even if its the legal thing to do I would hope to see an ad company like revenuepilot do the moral thing. I have been mislead by too many ad companies in the past year to believe that they all wear halos.

 

[Kap]

Oh ya also I forgot to mention, I have had those downloader popups on my site for less then a week. I was forced to put them on to cover the site fees after you blocked my site from all premium advertisers.

Thanks, Kyle

 

[leamhost.com]

cruel

This is the cruelest story I have heard. I would take legal action.

 

[RevenuePilot]

Kyle,

While you posted your email conversations with our staff, some of the correspondence is clearly missing. The reason you were not told about any fraudulent traffic in your conversations with our support that youve posted above was because you were talking to our support team and not the anti-fraud department. Our Support team does not assume that everyone contacting them is sending us fraudulent clicks and it had no idea why your traffic quality was low therefore it followed simple procedure and gave you one of a few logical suggestions, which was to change the keywords being used so that it would be more relevant to your visitors.

You also conveniently missed including an e-mail from us in your above post that addressed you willfully trying to bypass our filters by sending us the same traffic from an empty domain. At around the same time it appears that you added your pop-ups which made your site inaccessible and cast doubt on the validity of your traffic. As soon as our anti-fraud team became certain that your traffic was fraudulent we did notify you right away regarding the termination of your account.

regards,

Originally posted by Kap
Wow this is the biggest pile of crap I have ever heard. How is my traffic fraudulant? Is this what you do to everyone, just call their traffic fraudulant? I haven't forced anyone to click your banners, every click was legit. Why don't you go and check my sites traffic statistics http://www.mvtracker.com/stats.php?l=dollspot1 .Looks pretty real to me. :confused2 I just hate how some of you advertising companys can't pay their members and make up all this bullshit to get out of it. I'll be sure and spread the good word about this scam your company is running. Also could you give one piece of legit proof that says my traffic is fraudulant?

Below I have posted a copy of all emails that where exchanged with revenue pilot.

I said:
"Hey,
I just read you email about your explanation of why my clicks arnt
paying hardly anything anymore. I am a little confused still. How can I
go from getting like 50 cents a click to getting almost 1/2 cent a
click. This does not sound right. Also can you provide me with some
information as to why my account level was lowered because I just dont
understand how one day it was fine and the next day you do this. One of
my friends said you did the same thing to him so I dunno if this is what
you do to everyone. So if possible could you please check and find out
exactly why my account status was lowered because I feel I have done
nothing wrong.

Thanks, Kyle"

They Said:
"Hi Kyle,

Your domain has been blocked for our premium advertisers because your
web site has nothing to do with gambling, casino or poker and displying
such advertisements leads to very low quality of traffic for our
advertisers. We preffer that our affiliates use keywords that are
related to their sites so this way there will be more clicks for you
since visitors are interested in those ads and this way there will also
be better quality clicks for our advertisers."

I said:
"Hey,
I was wondering if you could please reupgrade my account level back to
premium since you said you would in a previous email if I selected some
better keywords for my ads and did everything you asked me to do.

Thanks, Kyle"

They said:
"Hi Kyle,

Your account is being upgraded and downgraded automatically by our
programs. It may happen few times a day or not at all. But rest assured
because our programs are trying to send as much of your traffic as
possible to our highest advertisers."

I said:
"Hi,

I dont think you followed my last request to get my account reupgraded
to premium. Here is a copy of the first email you sent me.

"Subj: RE: Support - Other
Date: 11/12/2003 3:52:25 PM Eastern Standard Time
From: "Support Team" <support@revenuepilot.com>
To: <k13kyle@aol.com>
Reply-To: <support@revenuepilot.com>
Sent from the Internet (Details)




Hi Kyle,

Your domain has been blocked for our premium advertisers because your
web site has nothing to do with gambling, casino or poker and displying
such advertisements leads to very low quality of traffic for our
advertisers. We preffer that our affiliates use keywords that are
related to their sites so this way there will be more clicks for you
since visitors are interested in those ads and this way there will also
be better quality clicks for our advertisers."

I replied back yesturday.
"Hey,
I was wondering if you could please reupgrade my account level back to
premium since you said you would in a previous email if I selected some
better keywords for my ads and did everything you asked me to do.

Thanks, Kyle"

Then you replied with this.

"Hi Kyle,

Your account is being upgraded and downgraded automatically by our
programs. It may happen few times a day or not at all. But rest assured
because our programs are trying to send as much of your traffic as
possible to our highest advertisers."

Sounds like I got you confused I just wanted my account unblocked from
premium advertisers. Since I changed all my keywords to better ones.

Thanks, Kyle"

They said:
"Hi Kyle,

Your web site is currently inaccessible and therefore your account has
been suspended."

I said:
"On 11/18/2003 2:30pm, Affiliate (ID 7753) called to inquire about his
"suspended" account status and if it can be removed. Also asked if it
would be possible to update listing feed to PREMIUM status. Please
respond
promptly to:

k13kyle@aol.com

Regards,

RevenuePilot Info Center
info@revenuepilot.com"

They said:
"Hi,

There is a problem with your web site and anyone using Internet Explorer
can't enter your web site unless they download some spyware. We tracked
the problem to this Javascript:
http://www.NetpalOffers.net/NetpalOffers/DM0/confirmd0llsp.js

Since we don't want to download that software we can't view your web
site. So far your traffic quality isn't that good and we can't update
your account to premium advertisers."



After reviewing all of the emails we have exchanged I do not see anything about fraudulant clicks. It seems to me that you are just trying to get out of paying me by making up all this bullshit.

Thanks, Kyle

 

[RevenuePilot]

We did not make any money from his traffic since we had to refund all monies to our advertisers. True, sites are not cheap to operate, but advertisers should not pay for fraudulent traffic. Sending fraudulent traffic is tantamount to stealing, since advertisers pay money but get nothing in return. Also, please notice that we started getting traffic from his account on October 30th and cancelled the account on November 19, well before we had to pay him since the official payment terms are net 60.

According to you, if we were deliberately not paying him we would keep him as an affiliate for at least another 2 months. But as you can see the account was cancelled as soon as we became aware of the fraudulent activity.

While you may have had bad experiences with some advertising companies, I would like to point out that we have thousands of happy affiliates who have been with us for a long time. Webmasters sending us legitimate traffic always get paid for it in our affiliate program. In fact, it is in our best interests to receive as much quality traffic as possible.


regards,

Originally posted by WabbyTwax
I believe that regardless of what crap downloads from his site you should still pay him for the traffic he sent. I don't believe for a minute that he sent fraudulent clicks. Why don't you tell us, revenuepilot, how much you earned from the time he used your site vs. how much you would have to pay him. You shouldn't leave people on your network for so long then all of a sudden cut them off and label them as fraudulent while keeping any share of funds that may have been owed to them. These websites arent cheap to operate with the amount of traffic and bandwidth a site like that does. Due to the drop in advertising market in the past 5 years large scale sites are forced to place just about any type of ad to receive the necessary funding. I hope you find at least some middle ground here and compensate this guy for something. By just simply denying he didnt earn you any money at all you are basically committing theft by deception. Even if its the legal thing to do I would hope to see an ad company like revenuepilot do the moral thing. I have been mislead by too many ad companies in the past year to believe that they all wear halos.

 

[Kap]

Originally posted by RevenuePilot
We did not make any money from his traffic since we had to refund all monies to our advertisers. True, sites are not cheap to operate, but advertisers should not pay for fraudulent traffic. Sending fraudulent traffic is tantamount to stealing, since advertisers pay money but get nothing in return. Also, please notice that we started getting traffic from his account on October 30th and cancelled the account on November 19, well before we had to pay him since the official payment terms are net 60.

According to you, if we were deliberately not paying him we would keep him as an affiliate for at least another 2 months. But as you can see the account was cancelled as soon as we became aware of the fraudulent activity.

While you may have had bad experiences with some advertising companies, I would like to point out that we have thousands of happy affiliates who have been with us for a long time. Webmasters sending us legitimate traffic always get paid for it in our affiliate program. In fact, it is in our best interests to receive as much quality traffic as possible.

regards,

Could you give me an explanation of why my traffic is fraudulant or at least some proof that it is? Its so ovious you are just trying to use this as a lame excuss so you don't have to pay me.

-Kyle

 

[Precision]

This is seriously one of the worst affiliate programs out there. Firstly Revenue Pilot does not have anything on their website that states keywords must be related to the website. Second since they say dollspot.com's traffic is "low quality" what stops them from saying someone else's traffic is low quality and suspending/canceling their account with out sending them due payment for the real traffic that was sent to the advertisers. I understand that you canceled the account but what I do not tolerate is you (Revenue Pilot) not paying the affiliate for the due traffic that was sent. Another thing is you say the traffic from dollspot.com is "fraudulent", wow how profound. Did your team of "experts" figure that out. If you look at the amount of traffic dollspot.com gets, it is no wonder it averages around 150 clicks a day. And these download popup on dollspot.com, I have read your rules and all that crap, no where does it state that code like that is not acceptable unlike on the google adsense terms of use which CLEARLY states it. What proof do you have that this download installs spyware which creates fraudulent clicks? All the clicks coming from dollspot.com have referrers and an IP. Did you actually install this software to see if it generates fraudulent clicks from the computer it was installed on? Probably not since you guys are too busy saying that the clicks are fraudulent without proper investigation. Just to let you know, monkeys in suits don’t count as a proper investigative team. This excuse of "Fraudulent Clicks" is just another lame --- reason not to pay an affiliate and another reason to keep the GRAND we earned to yourself. I hope you guys get sued pretty soon for your greedy, idiotic, deceiving actions.

- Fahim
Co Owner of Dollspot.com

 

[WabbyTwax]

Well at least you werent lead on for months before they decided not to pay you. Just move on and stay cautious of ad companies like this.

 

[RevenuePilot]

On a final note I would like to say the following:

First, we never said that fraudulent clicks were coming from the spyware software that you force-installed on your visitors computers. Second, we never insulted you or your partner and would expect you to at least adhere to the simple manners of conversation. You attempted to cheat our system and got caught, as Ive previously mentioned, as soon as we became certain
of the fraudulent nature of your clicks we cancelled your account
immediately, way before the payment due date. And last but not least, our rules that are outlined in the TOS are not crap as you so deride them, but they are firmly followed and were put in place simply to protect the honest advertisers and web publishers who USE (not abuse) our program the way it is supposed to, and not try to cheat the system the way you have tried.

Originally posted by Precision
This is seriously one of the worst affiliate programs out there. Firstly Revenue Pilot does not have anything on their website that states keywords must be related to the website. Second since they say dollspot.com's traffic is "low quality" what stops them from saying someone else's traffic is low quality and suspending/canceling their account with out sending them due payment for the real traffic that was sent to the advertisers. I understand that you canceled the account but what I do not tolerate is you (Revenue Pilot) not paying the affiliate for the due traffic that was sent. Another thing is you say the traffic from dollspot.com is "fraudulent", wow how profound. Did your team of "experts" figure that out. If you look at the amount of traffic dollspot.com gets, it is no wonder it averages around 150 clicks a day. And these download popup on dollspot.com, I have read your rules and all that crap, no where does it state that code like that is not acceptable unlike on the google adsense terms of use which CLEARLY states it. What proof do you have that this download installs spyware which creates fraudulent clicks? All the clicks coming from dollspot.com have referrers and an IP. Did you actually install this software to see if it generates fraudulent clicks from the computer it was installed on? Probably not since you guys are too busy saying that the clicks are fraudulent without proper investigation. Just to let you know, monkeys in suits don’t count as a proper investigative team. This excuse of "Fraudulent Clicks" is just another lame --- reason not to pay an affiliate and another reason to keep the GRAND we earned to yourself. I hope you guys get sued pretty soon for your greedy, idiotic, deceiving actions.

- Fahim
Co Owner of Dollspot.com

 

[Precision]

Remind me again how we created "fraudelent clicks" because fraudelent clicks are clicks that are not real. Meaning they are not real visitors. I'd like to hear your reason for our "fraudelent" activity because I remember us doing nothing to create "fraudelent" clicks.

 

[Precision]

Also you have not answered many parts of the argument you replied to, instead just skipping it. Fully explain your actions.

 

[nitroboy]

actually I'm quite impressed people can send "fraudulent" clicks for about 3 weeks until they get caught

 

[Precision]

Yes, I don't think they know the definition of fraudelent. Please scrounge up enough money to get a dictionary Revenue Pilot!