Programs Lack of Transparency Make Affiliates Suspicious

[cass]

Affiliates have been and will always come off second best until the programs we promote become transparent.

Most operators with the exception to Guts Casino (maybe a few others too) refuse outright to disclose the names of their managers or owners. How many of us know the prominent players behind the brands we're promoting?

A major step in the right direction would be:

1. Disclose the names of your managers and owners. Don't give me the same **** and bull story that the managers of the casinos prefer to remain cloacked in anonimity since they fear to be victimised by disgruntled players or affiliates.

If you treat your players and affiliates fairly by coming out into the open you have nothing to fear. I'm led to believe that the main reason as to why programs refuse to become transparent it's a sure sign that they're up to no good, whether it be now or in the not so distant future. I might be wrong but I believe that if a program discloses the names behind their brands less player and affiliate shaving will occur.

2. Stats reports: Give us detailed stats outlining player withdrawals, where the player's from, how many purchases were made etc.

Have a look at these threads: https://www.gpwa.org/forum/i-despera...ay-199731.html
https://www.gpwa.org/forum/stolen-da...tml#post547817

'Casino South Africa' a private member here at GPWA had the following to say in 2009 and it's still as relevant:

I have previously worked at a casino before I started doing outsourced <acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym> work for casinos.

All the hard work that we are doing to send players legitematly to a casino gets waisted when a list gets stolen. (It impacts everyone involved except the Rogue Affiliate - even the casino who buy the list will likely loose in the long run because the money paid to the rogue affiliate is used, to bribe the marketer to give the casino list to the Rogue Affiliate!)

Problems that I have identified making it easy for people to obtain such data:

1. The Casino Employees have access to information which should be confidential or worked through a system where the affiliate managers / support personel cannot see the details of a player - "like a cms that controls all correspondence, never showing email"
2. Casino Employees can see which players are VIP and Valuable players - So they can steal 1 player per day = 30 per month, can be a good business for affiliates.
3. Some affiliates make contact with the "Marketing People" working at the casinos, and these "marketing people" sometimes earn ridiculous salaries, and the Affiliate will simply bribe the "Employee" for players.
4. The list is "Bogus" but the Rogue Affiliate will say to the casino they will do a test run - Then the affiliate himself will get him and his (corrupt) team to make a few small deposits and some big deposits and the casino would be fooled into beleiving the affiliate have a quality list - so the list will be sold for $10 000.00 from which the affiliate will deposit $3 000.00 into the casino from his own account and will tell the "potential" client that he only did a test on 500 players in the list...

We get approached on a monthly basis by employees from the casinos that we work with, or had work with...

To help them with their sites (<acronym title="Search Engine Optimization">SEO</acronym>) trying to bribe a deal with a list from the casino!

I agree somehow the industry should clean itself! Casinos go Rogue because of these practices - and some feel closing the affiliate side of their business is a way to clean it up! "Some casinos think that all affiliates are scum, because of these practices!)

Many of you haven’t worked at an online casino and is likely unaware of how exactly casinos operate. I have had the privilege of working at Casino’s, consulting on their Premises and working physically very close with these casino operators. During this time as an “Affiliate” I was extremely shocked at how vulnerable we as affiliates are. – and how casino’s shave from affiliates, Trade with Affiliate Databases and how easy it is to remove affiliate tags from affiliates.

[Big City Jack]

The first step of getting anywhere with this might be to hear the AM's take on this. Do you see this as a problem? Comments? Why are you not offering all available stats through your software?

We are alot of affiliates that are concerned and want a dialog.

Well your heart certainly seems in the right place, but that's really the last thing on earth I would trust now, except the former AM's who admit what really goes on and how things really are. There has already been years of opportunity for such dialog. Time for action, not talk. It's 2015, it's still the wild west, and affiliates have no protection and no standing except for the few winners operators and programs feel they have to keep happy, or the ones to whom a few bones may be thrown so that it might look like there's potential for everyone despite the lopsided situation. The only dialog I recommend first is among affiliates working out what is really needed to instill confidence, credibility, and enable a reasonable degree of tracking both the existence and continued existence of customers they refer.

Affiliates have been and will always come off second best until the programs we promote become transparent [...]

Now that was interesting, and really just tends to confirm how I feel to begin with - that's it's currently a lost cause and probably always will be for this "industry."

I'm promoting a certain non-igaming affiliate program I don't want to mention now for which I could earn up to $50,000 for a single transaction, along with lifetime recurring commissions. Hasn't happened yet, but it could. That program sends me an email every time a lead signs up through my lead capture form. The email contains the name provided by the new customer lead, the phone number, and the email address, as well as a number of other significant data items - almost all the data items entered into my lead capture form. This program has no problem sending me and every other affiliate that information, and I could even contact these customers if I wanted. I already did once. I could even contact them with an alternative business's option if they don't do any business with the first company they contacted through my lead capture form, and this first company obviously has no problem with that possibility either. Now I don't even necessarily expect that much customer data for igaming, though maybe we should, but nonetheless that's really more like it.

[DaftDog]

The first step of getting anywhere with this might be to hear the AM's take on this. Do you see this as a problem? Comments? Why are you not offering all available stats through your software?

We are alot of affiliates that are concerned and want a dialog.

I think many affiliate programs do try and look after their members but have no control over the actual data sent from the casino to them by their borderline criminal casino owners.

[medmi]

Still no comments from any of the AM's?

[Big City Jack]

Still no comments from any of the AM's?

Are you surprised by that? They're not going to want to touch a thread like this with a ten foot pole. Either they know bullspit can't get anywhere with people to begin with or conversely even if they support fairness and honesty with affiliates they have their own jobs to be concerned about when considering posting in a thread like this. So any kind of change or discussion can't start with them at all really.

I suppose this thread will most likely fade into obscurity as it has already been slipping down the screen since your post for the next five years or so, while occasionally people may post again about the lack of transparency, fairness and so forth...

Like I said earlier, currently a lost cause and probably always will be...

[Big City Jack]

The few affiliate "winners" who are being kept happy by the operators also have no incentive to rock the boat either and every incentive to say nothing (or worse).

[medmi]

iGaming gotta be one of the few businesses where you can't discuss/ask about anything with your partners. Or where your account managers don't want to talk. Some subjects oviously are taboo.. It's a shame. It is this quiet treatment that makes us more suspicious. Is an open dialogue really that much to ask for?

The first affiliate program that offers a platform that is 100% transparant will gain lots of traction and will for sure be successful.

[Strutt]

My company operates SummitCasino.com and GravyTrainBingo.com which is powered by Cozy Games and uses the Cozy Partners affiliate system. I can assure you that Cozy Partners has zero features to shave, skim, detag or manipulate any player or affiliate stats in anyway. I will happily give any potential new affiliates a guided tour over Skype screen share to prove this fact to you - using my systems as the casino and bingo site owners. I wonder if any of my competitors using some of the popular affiliate management systems could take up the same challenge of providing compete visual system access, on the spot, to their affiliates? You can reach me on Skype at christian.strutt anytime to check with your own eyes the complete transparency of my two affiliate programs and also Cozy Games systems

Still no comments from any of the AM's?

[universal4]

I would imagine that any group that would be doing the shaving de-tagging or any other form of fraudulently taking away from the affiliate could easily get around this by simply creating a user to use to show affiliates around, that has less permissions.

Rick
Universal4

[Strutt]

Once again I can confirm that there are no shaving or detagging features on Cozy Games Partners affiliate system - there are lots of other bingo and casino site owners using this platform that can confirm this fact. I am happy to show and prove this fact to anyone upon demand (Skype christian.strutt). On the same note let's see how many other Affiliate Managers and Casino Owners - would be happy to do the same, and give a new affiliate total access to their affiliate management system, to verify that there are in fact, no detagging or shaving features. I reckon most of the other igaming affiliate systems have detagging and shaving features - hence us affiliates regularly get financially screwed over. Send traffic to any of the bingo and casino sites using Cozy Partners and you will see much higher player values, and a noticeably much higher frequency of big player losses; simply because none of their operators detag players and shave stats.

I would imagine that any group that would be doing the shaving de-tagging or any other form of fraudulently taking away from the affiliate could easily get around this by simply creating a user to use to show affiliates around, that has less permissions.

Rick
Universal4

[Strutt]

Rick - I suggest that you call up your 10 biggest operators today on Skype, without any prompting. Ask them to share their screen with you - and then get them to login into every back-end system affiliate that they use. My bet is that you cannot get more than 1 or 2 from these 10 of your "most trusted business partners" - to login into their backend systems on the spot - to show you and prove to you, that they do not in fact have skimming/detagging features. This task will take you an hour, and enlighten you a lot - please do it and report back to us

[universal4]

Are you implying that any specific program, or third party software supplier DOES have detagging features and currently uses those features?

And honestly, none of your statements really made you look any more transparent than other operators, except that you took a 6 month old discussion and attempted to use it to pitch your program from a days old forum account, instead of joining in the discussion without the advertising.

Rick
Universal4