Party Screws Affiliates, Mike out $1500

So I’m out $1500 without playing a single pot.

here’s the reasons I was given

From PartyPoker

“PartyPartners is committed to ensure that affiliates are suitably rewarded for the players they refer and do not have any incentive to migrate players away from other affiliates. With effect from 1st June 2007, we are making system changes to ensure that there is no financial incentive for affiliates to “poach” players from other affiliates. Any player who creates an account on any of our brands starting 1st June 2007 and has had an account with us before will not be eligible as a Real Money Player and will not contribute to affiliate accruals. This is in line with clause 2.17 of the affiliate agreement which specifically defines a Real Money player as somebody who has not been a player with us before. In line with our affiliate terms and conditions, we reserve the right to deduct monies for any players referred by you before 1st June if they already had an account with us.”

From Affiliate

“We finally got word back from party poker, and it is, as feared, as bad as it can get. Not only will they not pay us for all the action in May, they confiscated all of our old funds and applied it to the debt we now ‘owe’. Below is the email we received from party poker: Further to our email sent on the 06/07/07 we would like to confirm that our Affiliate Investigations Team has completed its investigation. We regret to inform you that our investigation has provided evidence of your having generated Fraud Traffic, as defined in the Standard Affiliate Agreement you agreed to when you became an Affiliate. Subsequently, we have deducted the amount that we believe has been generated from such Fraud Traffic from the Affiliate Payment Accruals due to you.

The summary of your Affiliate Cashier Account is as follows:
Total Affiliate Payment Accruals due for May 2007 = $197,016.77 (The amount you owe party poker)

Amount deducted for Fraud Traffic + Past Funds = $83451.92

The balance you currently have at Party Poker = -$113564.85 (Yes that is negative)

If you would like to know the exact nature of the Fraud Traffic, then please email us at affiliates@partypartners.com or contact your affiliate account manager. Please note that as per our policy we will not be able to tell you the account names of the fraud/suspicious player accounts.

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused to you.
Kind regards
PartyPartners Affiliate Team

What does this mean? In summary, we’re screwed. We’re told 85% of the players in our program closed their accounts and remade new accounts for our program. This is what party is talking about when they reference “fraud traffic”. We had thought this would be just June 1st going forward, but what they actually did was, take all your action (If you closed your account and made a new one) and charged us for it all the way back from fall 2006. We got 3 total emails just like this one, because we had 3 separate accounts for various different programs. All told, we currently owe party poker, yes OWE party poker around $250,000.00 before we are back in the positive.

Obviously, there is nothing we can do, we have to close up shop. For those of you asking about old money you still had remaining, you have to understand that even our profits were confiscated by party, everything. We had money remaining on party poker, they used that against the debt owed. We are furiously trying to work something out with Party Poker, but at this point is does NOT look good. It is just not possible for us to see a difference between fraud users and legit ones.

I will put out a faq later to address your concerns and give out any new information I can.

I know this isn’t the news you wanted to hear, but it is, what it is. It’s party poker after all.”

This is what gets me the most

We sincerely apologize for any inconvenience caused to you.
Kind regards
PartyPartners Affiliate Team

Yea, that’s all it is, a fuckin inconvenience. FUCK YOU PARTY AND I HOPE ALL THE PLAYERS WHO WERE PREVIOUSLY GETTING RAKEBACK STOP PLAYING THERE.

I mean ok, if you’re gonna stop giving rakeback thats fine, but don’t wait until the end of the month when people are expecting to get paid and then say you’re going retroactive on it as well.

~ by Mike on June 10, 2007.