Fraud and Chargebacks at FTP

When I first started promoting FTP, I was new to the seo/sem world. Meaning, I wasn’t very good at it. However, even as a novice promoting FTP, I was making about $4,000 per month in commission. Over the past 4 years, with lots of practice and great mentoring, I’ve gotten a whole lot better. To date, I have sent to FTP players who have deposited into their player’s account amounts now approaching $800,000. And yet, now days, I’m lucky to pull a couple hundred dollars per month. I would think that FTP would value me as an affiliate partner. But it appears that they really do not.

I Will Not Promote this Brand Anymore. Here’s why:

When FTP made changes to their affiliate agreement and started cutting players that sign up under an affiliate code who do not make a deposit within two months, I saw my monthly commissions begin to drop.

Now, 4 years later and much better at the seo/sem game, although I’m making excellent money with the other affiliate programs I promote, my commissions with Full Tilt are virtually non-existent.

Lately, all my stats reports show an unbelievable amount of fraudulent player activity (according to FTP). Most of them seem odd to me that they would be tagged as fraudulent. For example: I had players that had signed up almost 4 years ago, who had amassed over 30,000 FTPoints, and deposited over $14,000. So, how, after all this time did this consistent player all of a sudden get tagged as fraudulent? I didn’t make any sense. There were many long-term players like this in my account who I got penalized for. I can understand a new player who signs up… but a long-term player who has consistently played and deposited? Even if they did something recently that appeared to FTP as fraudulent, over this amount of time, ostensibly, FTP has made money from this player. If so, then so should I.

I wrote to four FTP staff members with whom I had had prior communications. I receive NO reply. I wrote them each three times. That’s a total of 12 emails sent, and not one single reply. This is completely unacceptable. Sorry folks, you’re either incompetent, you don’t really care, you’re lazy, or all-of-the-above. In any case it doesn’t work for me.

Finally, after writing to the generic support page within the affiliate website, I received a very generic response to my very specific questions. The response was something like “We do not pay commissions on fraudulent activity”. Well… thank you very much. As if I didn’t know that. And still no answer to the question of why my long-time, big depositing players were being called fraud, and why I was getting penalized $75 each time, costing me many thousands of dollars.

The FTP Commissions Disappearing Act

The past few months have been awful. My stats have shown a decent amount of new player sign-ups and commissions, then almost all of it will be taken away by the end of the month due to alleged fraud.

And now, on top of all this, the new stats reports no longer show the amount of Player Points, so if you have a problem like I’m having, you have less evidence to support your inquiry.

So now, rather then fighting just to get an answer from the people at FTP, I’ve decided that FTP is not worth the time, frustration, nor effort. There are much better companies out there who value their affiliate partners much more than FTP. I’ve spent the past few days changing all of my links so that all the traffic I had been sending to FTP will be going to their competition, companies that I have found to be more forthright in their dealings with their affiliates.

To Earn, or Not to Earn…

I’m here to make money. Plain and simple. This is what I do for a living. If FTP turns their act around and gets rid of their predatory terms of service, and I read in the forums that affiliates are once again happy with their affiliation with this company, I’m more than happy to promote them again. I don’t discriminate unless there’s good reason to do so.

I hope this message helps FTP realize the damage they are doing, and affiliates to be careful in who they choose to promote.

Thanks for listening.

H2M