MaxBounty Pulls the Rug out from Under its Publisher Base

MaxBounty, Inc. (www.MaxBounty.com) - This affiliate / sponsor network's administration (Steven Sauve) recently unexpectedly announced sudden sweeping changes resulting in the arbitrary unilateral suspension of a large number of its incentive site ad publishers (effectively pulling the rug out from under them due to no fault or expressed breach on the ad publisher's part.)

They are currently withholding payment indefinitely without just cause. This decision smacks of greed and poor ethics because they are keeping all of the profits from leads and conversions made months ago (instead of paying what is owed, clearing the slate, and THEN suspending the publisher accounts.) Very bad business practice in my opinion.

I know fellow webmasters who have lost thousands due to MaxBounty's sudden decision to withold payment.

By their own admission they are not witholding payment due to ANY wrongdoing of the publisher, only they have unsubstantiated issues with the main stream and very popular web site script sources the publisher may be using (so they throw the baby out with the bathwater and keep all the profit.)

I would recommend that you steer clear entirely of MaxBounty because they have proven unreliable, greedy, a definite scam, and an overall waste of time in my opinion.

 

TechTap,

Had you read this post first:
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=410662&highlight=maxbounty

You would have read that we are not holding payment indefinitely, but only until we receive payment from the merchants. This was not hidden and explained clearly in the post linked above.

Based on your post count, I figure you are an affiliate who has had their account suspended who is naturally upset with the turn of events. If you'd like information or status updates, your best bet is to contact us directly and not post with an anonymous profile. I cannot tell who you are simply by the handle "TechTap".

Thank you.

 

I have used maxbounty for over a year now and can say i have been more than pleased with the service and i am guessing this will be sorted out ASAP

 

I know Steve already addressed this post, but I can't let this go by without putting my own frustrated 2 cents.

Albeit not knowingly in many cases, the subset of publishers using incentive scripts like Shift Code and others have generated a high volume of fraud leads. Up to 80% bad in some cases. See the DigitalPoint link Steve posted for the nature of the fraud, but you should walk away understanding that some sponsors suffered huge merchant account penalties due to these fraud leads. I’m not just talking about lost cash, but even some cases where merchant accounts were completely closed down due to too many bad charges… and to add insult to injury, many of these merchants shipped physical product to thousands of bad addresses. Can you imagine their cost?

Accounts were suspended so merchants can review which leads are good and which are bad, as well to await payment on the good leads. (Surprise surprise - a merchant getting 80% fraud might not be so eager to pay for your good 20%.) If you were part of this suspended group, the end result of your traffic was mostly credit card fraud. Merchants have lost staggering amounts of money due to this fraud. The network has lost huge sums due to this fraud. Suspended doesn’t mean terminated. Most suspended affiliates in this group will eventually end up seeing some of their earnings, specifically because we aren’t a scam network. Reversals will be stiff, but honestly these publishers should feel fortunate to get any of their earnings considering the widespread nature of the problem and where the bulk of their traffic came from.

TechTap - Forgive me if I don’t feel sympathic to your post where you call us a scam because there’s a delay for these merchants to validate the minority good leads you generated among your majority fraud traffic.

 

If you will notice many networks are starting to take more and more stands about incentive publishers. not that the nature of the beast is bad but that those few bad apples ruin it for the bunch. I wouldn't be surprised to see more of it... where if you are incentive publisher that your payments be held untill the netowrk is paid because there is more risk with it.

 

I'm not a fan of incentive offers. Too much "incentive" for publisher fraud. And too much risk of merchant fraud as well where they will just say all your leads are bad and not pay.

It must be a royal pain for the networks who have to go through thousands of leads to validate them, and then fight with the publishers who are doing wide scale fraud. Is it really worth it to carry these offers?

 

Still nothing from Maxbounty

I have roughly $350 in my account, it isn't much, since I only
used 1 0ffer on Maxbounty (Thank God) and the rest on Instantdollarz.