OnlineCasinoReviewer's legal challenge against Affiliate Edge

**iGamingWriter** · 20 February 2018, 11:44 am

Hi All,

For those who were not aware Dave Sawyer, owner of OnlineCasinoReviewer.com recently challenged the retroactive application of a Minimum Activity Quota by Affiliate Edge in the UK courts. This was a bold action that I was personally very impressed by. The justification for the application of this term was a fairly standard 'we can change anything at any time and there's nothing you can do about it other than close your account and forfeit your historic earns' clause. I personally have always been sceptical about whether these types of terms would stand up to legal challenge due to the imbalance in power they create. Practically there is no such thing as a contract for the affiliate while that type of term is in place.

Unfortunately at the end of last year Dave's efforts came to an unsuccessful conclusion. The court effectively declined to hear the case based on an arbitration clause contained within the contract requiring arbitration before litigation. The unfortunate consequence of this is that Bath Rock Media Limited has been forced to pay a significant proportion of Affiliate Edge's legal fees (~£12k out of over £20k they wanted to defend them from paying a balance of ~£5k).

I know that there will be affiliates here that have been impacted by the rogue activities we've seen this program engage in over the last year and I hope many of you will be as morally offended by this outcome as I am. Dave fought for the right reasons and lost for the wrong ones.

When I heard about this the decision was made to make a contribution to help Dave meet these legal fees. Turns out that I wasn't the only one to think this way. Casinomeister stepped up to the plate with a donation that made ours seem paltry. And both http://casinobonusesnow.com/ and http://fastpayingcasinos.com/ came through with their own contributions. Between all of theses sites and Dave's own payments all but £5.9k of the balance has been covered.

It is my hope that other affiliates will take a similarly community minded approach and that the rest of this balance can be covered by us all pulling together. For those who would struggle to justify making a contribution simply to help right a wrong - financially times aren't easy and money has to be spent wisely - ThePOGG.com, Casinomeister, and OnlineCasinoReview will all be offering a fully credited link within their articles on this topic to any affiliate who contributes £500 or more. (Articles are linked in the site names in the previous sentence).

Truly this is an opportunity for affiliates to come together and make a clear statement about programs that choose to apply these types of terms by supporting an affiliate that tried to stand up and get a court ruling that could have benefited all of us.

TP

**PROFRBcom** · 20 February 2018, 12:01 pm

As someone who has been screwed over by multiple affiliate programs in the past (thankfully not this one), I can empathize with everyone's plight. Given that this is the first legal challenge I have witnessed, I am definitely willing to support it financially, and I will write an article about this bullshit on my site as well as giving a link back to OnlineCasinoReviewer for having the balls to take action.

Furthermore, I would be happy to contribute financial support. Pogg, I will be PM'ing you shortly to discuss how I can contribute.

Thank you for making this post.

**bossrm** · 20 February 2018, 11:20 pm

I recently screwed up by affiliate program in Asia too.You are the man Dave!What you have done will inspire others including me to take action against the rouge activity.Even though I can't afford the £500 but I will contribute as much as I can afford for Dave's brave.I hope this will inspire us and change something

I will PM you the Pogg

**wolfie** · 21 February 2018, 3:01 am

I will be happy to help as well. Dave did something not a lot of affiliates would dare to do. I will PM you as well.

**Webzcas** · 21 February 2018, 3:17 am

I'd just like to say a big thank you to ThePogg, Casinomeister and CasinoBonusesNow. But seriously ThePogg you have been a rock.

Unfortunately I cannot say anymore than what has been posted here or what I have written on my own site which TP linked above. But a big thank you to all of the community and my peers, especially to those that have chipped in to help.

**iGamingWriter** · 21 February 2018, 6:53 am

I'm just contacting everyone to gather invoice details which I'll then pass to Dave as a single file.

I genuinely cannot believe the response we've had to this! Already we've already gathered £4.6k and we're not even at 24 hours!! Many people like to represent affiliates as selfish and self-serving. That may be true for some within the industry, but imo this sort of showing demonstrates that there are many good people working as affiliates.

I want to give a deep and genuine 'thank you' to everyone who's contacted so far.

Taking this in mind I have some thoughts about an 'affiliate union' type of arrangement. I'm not going to derail this topic with that conversation so I will start a new thread and edit this post with a link to it. Got it to work there would have to be a lot of conversation.....

TP

**Juan Roman** · 21 February 2018, 7:23 am

While I haven't experienced similar issues with affiliate programs having recently started my first site, I can definitely relate to Dave's problems and all the others who have been cheated out of their hard-earned money.

I'm afraid I cannot afford the £500, but I will be happy to contribute as much as I can, while also publishing the story on our site with backlink to OnlineCasinoReviewer. Please PM me with instructions on how to send the cash.

**iGamingWriter** · 21 February 2018, 8:06 am

Originally Posted by Juan Roman

I'm afraid I cannot afford the £500, but I will be happy to contribute as much as I can, while also publishing the story on our site with backlink to OnlineCasinoReviewer. Please PM me with instructions on how to send the cash.

That's really good of you and any contribution would be warmly appreciated!

TP

**Luke Affalliance** · 21 February 2018, 8:25 am

Oh wow, It's shame that the court made such decision. I've been following the case from the very beginning and honestly, I thought that you've had all chances to win. Please hit me a pm. I might be able to help you out.

**MichaelCorfman** · 21 February 2018, 8:46 am

Anthony just brought this thread to my attention. We always try to help fellow webmasters. Toward that end Anthony made this thread sticky so that it will be more easily seen by webmasters here, and the GPWA will make a contribution to help cover the legal fees.

Michael

**iGamingWriter** · 21 February 2018, 8:58 am

I'm REALLY happy to read your post Michael. Assuming that everyone honours the amounts that they've communicated then GPWA's contributions should put us over the line. I think it's a great note to end on.

As such I'm going to ask that no-one else makes an offer for the time being. I very much appreciate everyone's generosity but it would be unethical to take a penny more than was needed under the pretences. In a few days time once we can confirm whether the full amount has been met I'll make another post either confirming victory or detailing any remaining balance.

Thank you to everyone and I'm hoping to make a post about some type of affiliate union for you all to think about later today (Michael - I've PM'd Anthony an outline of my thoughts and would very much appreciate your input.)

TP

**WBM** · 21 February 2018, 9:32 am

Really sorry about the outcome of this.

Fair play to you Dave..you did what almost every affiliate has wanted to do but never had the guts

**RacingJim** · 21 February 2018, 9:51 am

Absolutely gutted for OCR, I assumed wrongly that it would be a clear win for him. Shows what we all know about the law. These companies always seem to find a way to wriggle out of things with their big budgets and top lawyers - it's a sick world and indeed a sick industry when these guys can live in a £3.5m gaffe in Hale and be immune to paying out an affiliate £5k that they owe him and then smash him with owing their very expensive legal fees.

I was just wondering with regards this:
"The court effectively declined to hear the case based on an arbitration clause contained within the contract requiring arbitration before litigation."

What does that actually mean in lay man's terms? Who would have carried out such arbitration, how could that have even been done?

**RacingJim** · 21 February 2018, 9:53 am

PS, just thinking what they'd do if you'd won, they would probably have gone to ground, not paid you and eventually liquidated the company and re-opened it or something equally disgusting. I'd think about doing the same to them. I'd certainly not be handing over £12k of my money to those twats without some serious battling on their part.

**RacingJim** · 21 February 2018, 10:20 am

Happy to chip in a few hundred quid towards this by the way, if anyone can't make their payments.

**iGamingWriter** · 21 February 2018, 11:39 am

Originally Posted by RacingJim

I was just wondering with regards this:
"The court effectively declined to hear the case based on an arbitration clause contained within the contract requiring arbitration before litigation."

What does that actually mean in lay man's terms? Who would have carried out such arbitration, how could that have even been done?

What that means is that due to a clause in the contract that requires disputes to be resolved via arbitration and because the parties had not engage an arbitrator, the court ruled that it was not the appropriate forum to address the dispute. Normally this would be a 3rd party approved by both parties, but it likely would have been expensive (though less than the costs have been here) and it could prove difficult to find a party willing to take up this case that both would agree to. Also - to my knowledge - no efforts were made by either party to engage the arbitration process.

------ This next section is entirely my opinion and I am NOT a lawyer ------

I suspect that the court may have been in error to make this ruling or at least would have taken a different view had the following been presented in an appropriate manner. OCR were asking for a ruling on a point of law. Specifically whether term 8.5 would be considered legally valid (the term that allows the operator to change any term at any time and the affiliate has no recourse other than to close their account and forfeit historic referrals). An arbitrator cannot to my knowledge give such an ruling and based on the course I've taken with the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators, I believe that this would be solid ground to view the arbitration clause as non-valid.

TP

**RacingJim** · 21 February 2018, 1:11 pm

I guess overall it probably was one for the contract lawyers to look at and was beyond the expertise and scope of the small claims court, i.e. not a simple X owes Y money and hasn't paid it.

**Webzcas** · 21 February 2018, 1:52 pm

Just want to thank everyone, I am truly grateful.

**iGamingWriter** · 21 February 2018, 3:11 pm

Originally Posted by RacingJim

Happy to chip in a few hundred quid towards this by the way, if anyone can't make their payments.

Sorry - I meant to respond to this earlier - that's fantastic of you to offer. I have a short list of people I'm considering 'first reserves' and I'll keep you on it in case something goes wrong!!

**CasinoBonusMaster** · 22 February 2018, 3:35 am

Just came across this thread! Please add us to the 'first reserves' as well!

Good job Dave! That's a fight worth fighting!

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