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People who don't pay - Affiliate Window (154,000$) (19)

02-25-2016 08:04 AM #1 cmdeal (Veteran Member)

First of all, I can imagine how awful it must feel to be out of pocket $150K.

That said, if you had agreed to the T&C's which--I am assuming from your post--states that they do not need to pay you if they uncover noncompliant activities, then I am not sure what legal grounds you would have to sue, especially under UK contract law.

I don't know how familiar you are with English law, but in most instances, the loser of a court case also has to pay the legal costs of the winner, and in a fairly open and shut case like this, the other side can decide just to massively rack up their own legal costs because they know that they will win, and this can easily end up costing you half a million dollars.

You definitely should try to negotiate with them to see if you can recover some of that amount, but I would strongly advise you against threatening any court action or actually taking them to court, as that could potentially bankrupt you.

02-25-2016 08:05 AM #2 greenzone (Member)

Oh, what a huge hole in your cash. Holy shit! Hope you can win with your lawyers.

Hope you can solve this. I want to add my concerns about issue generally. Getting paid is another issue which we really care hard today. This must be a new skill in our skill set to be a successful affiliate? Maybe. As a network, you have your T & C and lawyers. I know it is same situation, you lose money but you have better ways to maximize probability of getting paid.

But, what about individual affiliates? How we can protect us to not getting paid?

I hope you an easy solution and getting paid.

@cmdeal, wow.

02-25-2016 08:05 AM #3 meathead (Member)

Wow, that must suck Hopefully you can get some of that with your lawyer. Best of luck!

02-25-2016 08:08 AM #4 cbrughmans (Member)

Apart from a lot of money, it has costed my team and me a lot of time so I prefer the lawyers to negotiate with them and find a solution, in or out of court.

02-25-2016 08:09 AM #5 sebastian_r (Member)

Quote Originally Posted by greenzone View Post

But, what about individual affiliates? How we can protect us to not getting paid?
Work only with trusted networks, only run aggressive if the advertiser allows it, double check with your AM, don't work with advertisers who threaten non-payment in the offer conditions.

Anyway, the whole "if one gets caught, nobody gets paid" thing seems to get more and more common. Had one of these cases lately. Sucks for the network, that needs to cover.

02-25-2016 08:13 AM #6 cbrughmans (Member)

What you can do as an affiliate

1. Work only with networks who have been in the business for +5 years. A company that survived that amount of time is solid as otherwise it would not be around anymore.
2. Split your traffic among various networks, even for the exact same offer
3. Negotatie fast(er) payment terms with your network of choice once you start delivering decent traffic (you need to make a minimum of 2,500$/week in order to even talk about this)
4. Do your research on them. Check their linkedin page, who works there, check on STM or FB (Group: people who don't pay), etc. Be a Sherlock Holmes

02-25-2016 08:14 AM #7 cbrughmans (Member)

Whatever the outcome of this situation, this won't bankrupt us. Not even close.
But thanks for the tip.

Quote Originally Posted by cmdeal View Post
First of all, I can imagine how awful it must feel to be out of pocket $150K.

That said, if you had agreed to the T&C's which--I am assuming from your post--states that they do not need to pay you if they uncover noncompliant activities, then I am not sure what legal grounds you would have to sue, especially under UK contract law.

I don't know how familiar you are with English law, but in most instances, the loser of a court case also has to pay the legal costs of the winner, and in a fairly open and shut case like this, the other side can decide just to massively rack up their own legal costs because they know that they will win, and this can easily end up costing you half a million dollars.

You definitely should try to negotiate with them to see if you can recover some of that amount, but I would strongly advise you against threatening any court action or actually taking them to court, as that could potentially bankrupt you.

02-25-2016 08:35 AM #8 bobliu (Member)

What correspondence have you had with them? Calls? Emails? Book a flight over and try and get a meeting set up with either Booking.com/AffWindow. Was it Booking.com that caught one of your affiliates brand bidding or was it AffiliateWindow themselves? Have they showed you evidence?

Make clear you'll be booting the affiliate off your network for breaking your rules, show you vetted them and they lied to you. Show them evidence (maybe even chats with said affiliate) to back up your claims they only sent 50 leads.

Rather than go full force, keep trying the nice approach. Get in touch with everyone you can in AffiliateWindow, if you keep hitting walls go to Booking.com. Make sure they both know you'll be sending them a lot more business in the future and this won't happen again.

The nice approach can work. If that fails, suggest a partial payment at the very least.

site:linkedin.com + "affiliate window"

I can see both sides of the argument, the fair thing to do would be meet somewhere in the middle.

Goodluck!

02-25-2016 12:16 PM #9 matuloo (Legendary Moderator)

Quote Originally Posted by cmdeal View Post
First of all, I can imagine how awful it must feel to be out of pocket $150K.

That said, if you had agreed to the T&C's which--I am assuming from your post--states that they do not need to pay you if they uncover noncompliant activities, then I am not sure what legal grounds you would have to sue, especially under UK contract law.

I don't know how familiar you are with English law, but in most instances, the loser of a court case also has to pay the legal costs of the winner, and in a fairly open and shut case like this, the other side can decide just to massively rack up their own legal costs because they know that they will win, and this can easily end up costing you half a million dollars.

You definitely should try to negotiate with them to see if you can recover some of that amount, but I would strongly advise you against threatening any court action or actually taking them to court, as that could potentially bankrupt you.
Not sure how it works in other countries, but in my own, whatever is in a business contract, it still has lower priority than the general business/citizen laws of the country, in case of a conflict between the two, the state laws are always the one to follow, no matter what is in the contract. I would expect to find something similar in UK too. The general business law covers a lot of important topics, protecting citizens from being scammed in a lot of ways, there are also specific parts that adress "good business manners" so to speak. I guess its always worth to let lawyers explore the options to over-ride the business contract.

02-25-2016 12:44 PM #10 iAmAttila (Veteran Member)

Really sorry to hear that.

TC's are basically the way out of everything. All they have to contain is "We reserve the right to update this T/C anytime without notifying anyone" and done deal.

02-25-2016 12:46 PM #11 kash50 (Member)

Oh wow. That sucks.

Hope for a positve outcome. They should at the minimum pay 50%-80% of the $154K

02-25-2016 12:50 PM #12 cbrughmans (Member)

Their T&C are +20 pages long and somewhere in there, in the really small print is a clause saying they reserve the right to cancel all transactions - not just on one campaign but on ALL campaigns - if one of your subaffiliates breaks the rules on ANY of their campaigns.

In our case: one affiliate delivered 60 sales that we were more than happy to cancel as they indeed broke the rules (booking.com doesn't allow brand bidding) but the other 10,913 sales were all approved by them, and then subsequently reversed.

They just made themselves 154,000$ extra margin which of course is sweet but given that we delivered those numbers in just two weeks, they could make way more money if they would let us keep running traffic.

02-25-2016 12:53 PM #13 andymin (Member)

Not sure if your situation fits the criteria but the UK does have this option:

https://www.gov.uk/make-money-claim-online

03-07-2016 07:35 AM #14 cbrughmans (Member)

AffiliateWindow is registerend in the US where every party pays for its own legal costs. Trading address: 921 E. Fort Avenue, Suite 200, Baltimore, Maryland, 21230, USA

But it seems after all we will find a friendly solution (settlement), which is always better.

Quote Originally Posted by cmdeal View Post
I don't know how familiar you are with English law, but in most instances, the loser of a court case also has to pay the legal costs of the winner, and in a fairly open and shut case like this, the other side can decide just to massively rack up their own legal costs because they know that they will win, and this can easily end up costing you half a million dollars.

03-07-2016 11:26 AM #15 dazed1 (Member)

Good to hear you have found a friendly solution, I found it unbelievable they would hold back all the commissions just because of 50 rogue sales!

03-07-2016 09:08 PM #16 atom64 ()

this is the reason to run multiple account fully seperated generating smaller amounts.
Such affiliate networks are the worst, in germany we have some with the most famous brands but their guidelines suck big time restricting every possible marketing strategy.. you wait like 3 month for first payment and getting banned 2 days before payout

03-14-2016 07:30 PM #17 rsaventures (Member)

Why did not you run directly with booking.com directly? They pay 40-50% commissions if you give them large no of sales. Also, They aren't as dumb as affiliate window to ban the entire leads .

03-14-2016 07:33 PM #18 cmdeal (Veteran Member)

Quote Originally Posted by rsaventures View Post
Why did not you run directly with booking.com directly? They pay 40-50% commissions if you give them large no of sales. Also, They aren't as dumb as affiliate window to ban the entire leads .
40-50% commissions? On what?

03-15-2016 08:43 AM #19 cbrughmans (Member)

Totally agree. I don't understand how these guys are still in business. Companies like Zanox and Tradedoubler are the worst, worst, worst to work with.
Superslow payments, a million restrictions, unresponsive/arrogant AMs and they can kick you out at any moment without warning.

Quote Originally Posted by atom64 View Post
this is the reason to run multiple account fully seperated generating smaller amounts.
Such affiliate networks are the worst, in germany we have some with the most famous brands but their guidelines suck big time restricting every possible marketing strategy.. you wait like 3 month for first payment and getting banned 2 days before payout

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