I'm really glad we were able to get this solved. I did just like I said I would in my previous post, I removed the emotion from the situation and put myself in raisuras' shoes. He did not purposely intend to violate our TOS. We learned a lot from this situation and how to handle our customer service moving forward. Thank you all for helping make CPAlead a better company.
Good job Robert at coming to a solution. You handled this as a good CEO should in the end. Congrats to the OP as well.
Regardless of the outcome of this particular situation, CPAlead still stands on very dodgey grounds and business ethics. Personally, I see it as no coincidence that many publishers who decide to request a payment (that have violated the terms) get their account suspended when they decide to withdraw. It makes perfect sense from a business model point of view to allow offending websites to continue to generate revenue, until eventually they will be suspended, and all commissions retained by CPAlead. I think it's rather unprofessional for CPAlead to assume anyone would be naive enough for anyone to believe otherwise, so I'm not sure why they have stated this isn't true. What's more, several other things stand out from this situation. From both the chat logs posted, and some of the replies in this thread, CPAlead lacks a distinct sense of professionailsm. Replies such as those made personally to the OP (which reading over this, I believe were not fabricated), and some made by CPAlead staff on the forum would not come from a professionally run company (Tradedoubler, Tradetracker, Affiliate window, Maxbounty, etc). Secondly, and most importantly, the fact that the terms and conditions state that accounts can be terminated for no reason at all is effectively saying, hands up, we retain the right to mug off our publishers should we wish to do so. It's not something a company that valued it's customers would state, and probably something that CPAlead wouldn't get away with if they wanted to be registered with bodies such as the BBB. What's interesting is how both of the two above points, preiviously brought up in the thread have been ignored by any CPAlead employees (I say employees rather loosely) in this thread. Speaks for itself really. Clearly many publishers make good money with CPAlead, and to say they are a "scam" I think is pushing the boundaries. However to say that CPAlead is an ethical, legitimate company that treats it's publishers in the best ways possible, is far beyond the truth. As incentive leads generate more poor quality data than naturally generated leads, clearly the networks are going to shave a certain amount of leads as the third party companies (such as IPT ltd) will pay less as the data validity will be less. However, CPAlead will still try to reassure their affiliates they do not shave. Simple tests completing offers will prove this initial statement true. In conclusion, yes, CPAlead do payout, and you may be a lucky publisher that gets a good payment. But at the same time, they do knowingly allow users to generate leads through means which will eventually get them suspended (because it's laid out in the terms and conditions), to help maximise their profits. One last thing, there really is nothing worse that having employees bringing personal feelings into consumer communications. Past conversations shown on this thread from CPAlead employees I personally think are atrocious, and key to maintaining an amateur, childish business presence. Hopefully whoever is CEO will mention to the other staff working for this "company" that such responses to customer queries are far from productive in the long run.
I don't think anyone would forget about this post. But cool and upcoming post anyway. Good to see others sticking to the topic. Hah
I agree with you 100% that some of the posts and communications have been unprofessional in the past. I addressed this specifically in this thread personally. Moving forward, we will do everything in our power to maintain a friendly tone and respect all publishers, even those who are less than ethical. To address why so many people complain that we catch them right before payday is very simple, and not at all evil like so many claim. We have a security and compliance procedure, where we review accounts to be paid, to avoid paying out frauders. Sometimes, we cannot catch all accounts that are violating our TOS. We have 130,000 live accounts on CPAlead, so we cannot always catch everyone in the act. When we are due to pay someone a large amount, we have a compliance team who reviews the referral analytics and traffic sources of the publisher. That is why many complain about being terminated right before payday. So hopefully that will put all the silly rumors to rest on that issue. While many claims are true and correct where we have room to grow, there are also many out there who knowingly broke the rules, yet will go to very extreme lengths to defend themselves as innocent once they are caught. So again, thanks for the constructive criticism and helping make CPAlead a better network. We will always listen and work harder for our publishers.
Thanks for taking the time to reply Robert. It is good to hear that you've addressed the communication problems, because IMO that is definitely a major issue. What about the issues you've laid out in your TOS? The fact you can "terminate a publishers account for no reason at all"? Would be interested to hear the reasoning behind that.
As far as I can see, this ban was reasonable. After reviewing the chat log, I found important facts which were overlooked. Quotes from http://cpaleadscam.do.am/chat-with-john.html Terms of service violated. Notice the statement "We reserve the right to terminate and revoke earnings for any reason or no reason at all", meaning that bans may be administered at their discretion. If you do not like those terms, then do not do business with them. Facts were overlooked Failure to understand terms of service Failure to understand good reason behind punishment. A wrongdoing was committed according to the terms of service, therefore, justifying the punishment. Earnings were generated through a policy violation, and therefore, they do not deserve to be paid. In conclusion, this appears to be a ban due to a violation of terms of service, not monetary theft. Again, if you disagree with the terms of service, choose another company.
I disagree with that entirely. Promoting adult content (videos, pictures, web directory, etc) I can see why his earnings would have been held or not paid out. However a simple auto generated text link relating to adult content can hardly be described as "promoting adult content". Lets face it, the only reason adult content is banned on this network is due to the poor quality leads that it would generate. Clearly users of this website were not there surfing for porn, hence the leads were not going to be of a poor quality in comparison to that of an actual porn site. So to ban the user and keep the $12k revenue was simply a tactic to make a bit of cash, masked by saying it was a terms of service violation. I guess it was being banned for "no reason at all", which still has not been addressed funnily enough. Pathetic.