Evolve Media / Gorilla Nation / Crave has stopped paying

Update: On Jan 3, I received a check for June and July 2016 earnings (I suspect they wanted to be able to include these payments on my 1099 for 2016). I emailed my rep early last week inquiring about when I can expect the next payment and when we'll get caught up to 90 days payment, per our contract. He emailed right back and said he'd forwarded it to the finance department. It's over a week later and I still haven't heard back.

 

Exact thing happened to me Peon...

 

Promised by a person in "Business Relations" that the CEO supposedly passed by and said all payments will be made current by Dec 2016 - Jan 2017, nothing was ever received. I am months behind on payments from Evolve Media. My contract has a NET 90-day agreement at line 5b which they are not complying to. They want publishers to keep their tags live and not payout publishers at the same time for months, what kind of thinking is that?

 

I got 3 payments last month, was still 2 behind for Dec and Jan, asked about those and was told that those checks were being sent out this week.

 

Congratulations. Glad to hear somebody's getting paid. Are you net 30, 60, 90 or ?

 

More promises, believe it when the check clears in your account.

 

Net 60

Yup

 

Our last payment was in October, not had anything since. Even October's payments were late payments for two months previous. Been given the same bs in emails every month since. Attempted to ring 10+ different numbers associated with them, all went to full answer phones or went ignored. Didn't expect a company of that size to screw us around so badly. Thankfully our contract is up now but not getting what we're owed is causing big financial concerns.

 

Has anyone received any promises or payments lately? I see via LinkedIn that they were hiring for an Accounts Payable Specialist a few weeks back.

 

Last I heard was about a week ago. We were told that all our payments would be settled by the end of this month. Fingers crossed.

 

Hey guys, having the same issues. Any alternatives to evolve I could look into?

 

Just thought I'd update for anyone still having problems. No payment by the end of February as promised. They have offered 0 explanation as to what's causing the delays and they can't even tell me how much we can expect when a payment finally comes through. No idea how they have been in business operating like this, it's appalling.

 

I received a check yesterday for October earnings.

 

I don't know how it is for everyone else, but the pattern I've noticed is that I'll receive a payment sometime within every third month. Normally they will combine two months worth of revenue into one big payment, but the last payment I received was for only one month. I'm not sure why they didn't combine payments like in the past. It seems like the only consistent thing right now is that I'll receive some kind of payment every third month. So by that logic since I received a payment in May (for December's earnings), my next payment should be sometime in August.

I've pretty much given up trying to get any info from my Publishing Manager since they always reply with the same ol' "we're putting the pressure, there's not more we can do" routine. It's obvious at this point that the company simply doesn't care what they're doing to us.

 

I've been receiving regular payments at the start of each month. My last payment was for December so I only have a couple left. I jumped ship in February. Interestingly, I received a solicitation email from someone at Crave a week ago. It seems the person didn't realize that I had previously been a client for many years. It seems like they're getting their act together but I won't be going back.

 

Looks like Crave/Evolve is officially going Net 120 soon and will apparently stop doing business with publishers still on the old Net 60/90 contract. Here's what I received via email earlier:

"I'm reaching out to discuss our current payment terms. Due to increasingly late payments from our clients, averaging 150-180 days, it has become no longer viable for us to pay our publisher partners on a Net 90 payment term. Despite our best efforts to cope, paying our publishers nearly twice as often as we receive payment from clients has proven to be an impossible feat.


For this reason, we are asking our publishers to accept a Net 120 payment model. This will make it easy for us to provide you with consistent, on-time payments. Accepting the Net 120 model will also keep you high on our list of publishers as we decide which sites to allocation impressions to, likely netting you more revenue over time.


We will be ultimately forced to stop working with pubs who choose to remain on a Net 60/90 format, as it is simply impossible for us to abide by. I hope that we can agree to the new Net 120 payment terms and continue to do business together."

Might be a good time to simply call it quits. Though from what I've googled it seems that Net 120 is becoming a more common thing now? I dunno, I'm not really familiar with how other publishers do it since I've been with these guys 15+ years and never really needed to look elsewhere. Anyone else receive something like this? What've you ended up doing?

 

I have been emailing Evolve/Crave constantly since my last message, getting nowhere. They claimed they were unable to send a bank payment as I never gave them a sort code, despite the fact that the last payment they had sent me was via bank transfer. I gave them all the information 5 weeks, nothing.

They are trying to claim that they have paid us everything we are owed. They have not. I've had emails from my old publishing manager asking why impressions have dropped on the site and what they can do to help. I've put up with a lot of shit over the years but I have never seen a company run in such a poor manner. Avoid them like the plague.

 

Just thought I'd post another update

So my original contacts have been taken off the case completely. I am now speaking with the Vice President of Business Development and funnily enough, still getting nowhere. They are now claiming that they have no idea if/when they can settle the outstanding balance. They are focused on paying current publishers, as opposed to ones they owe money to and are no longer under contract.

They offered to pay 10% of what was owed to clear the books entirely. This company is a sham and should be avoided at all costs.

 

I'm surprised there are publishers still with them. If they're still with them that means they would've had to sign the new Net 120 contract, unless they only tried to get specific sites to sign it. Either way, they must be shoveling some kind of BS to these other sites for them to stick around this long. I doubt I'll ever see another payment from them despite what they owe me. I think I left them shortly after I sent my last message. Even after I removed all their ads my publishing manager had the balls to email me a week later asking if I'd put the ads back up just for a takeover that was coming up. I told him I'd put the ads back up if they paid me what they owed first. That was the last time I heard from him.

 

Is anyone taking legal action? I'm considering it.