Gambling Wages Terms and Conditions - Under Review

[Guard Dog]

Predatory Terms

1. In any case where the Referral Company chooses a compensation program where GW agrees to reward the Referral Company for the lifetime activity of the referred player, the Referral Company must maintain the status of "Active Affiliate" to be eligible to receive compensation for old Referred Players. "Active Affiliate" status being defined as a Referral Company that reefers at least one new depositor per calendar month. In the case where a Referral Company fails to maintain "Active Affiliate" status for a period of six months or more, GW reserves the right, at their sole discretion, to completely discontinue any type of service.

Predatory Terms


NON-Predatory Terms Below:

Affiliate Payment Date?: Payment shall be made prior to the 15th working day of the following month.

Negative Carryover?: Negative balance: GW reserves the right to review all Negative Balances on a case to case basis for determination of pay amounts. (This does NOT say that there is no carryover, but DOES imply)

Minimum Payment?: If the amount of compensation for one month is less than US $100, the amount shall be made available in the succeeding month (when the accumulated amount is greater than US $100).

Revenue Share Percentage?: Up to $15,000 - 30%, $15,001 to $50,000 - 40%, $50,001 and greater - 50%

CPA Details?: Up to 25 players per month - $60, 26-49 players per month - $80, 50+ players per month - $125

Tiered Revenue Sharing?: When you refer affiliates to GW, you will earn 5% of their Net Profit. (Net Profit = Casino Profit - Bonus given - Chargebacks).

Our overall analysis: This program's Terms and Agreements are fairly good EXCEPT for the predatory clause. This clause allows Gambling Wages to confiscate your lifetime earnings on any past players if you do not send them players for 6 months in a row. This is not as bad as some programs, but still leaves you open to losing the lifetime revenue you worked very hard to obtain.

Casinos Gambling Wages Represents: Club Player, Cirrus & Cirrus.co.uk, Cool Cat Casino, Palace of Chance, Wild Vegas Casino, Cool Cat Poker, Bingo Knights, and Big Bonus Bingo

---------------- Gambling Wages Will Be Contacted for a Response ---------------------

 

[Guard Dog]

We have made the first contact attempt in regards to the Predatory Clause in the Gambling Wages Terms and Conditions. The contact will first be in the form of a Private Message through Casino Affiliate Programs Forums and will serve as our first notice to the Gambling Wages Affiliate Manager and Associate Affiliate Manager.

We hope that contact will be made soon and the issues can be discussed.

Thank You.

 

[Guard Dog]

Gambling Wages is aware of the Terms and Conditions issue at 12:47pm and reviewed again the issue at 4:35pm. We await contact and hope for a quick resolution to the issue.

Thank You.

 

[Guard Dog]

We made a quick call to Gambling Wages this afternoon (11:15 AM CST). I talked with Nicolas for a short period of time. He assured me that Gambling Wages will soon make a statement regarding the Terms and Conditions in the near future.

We will wait until Tuesday, January 23 2007 to make a follow up call in the event that a statement has not been recorded.

Thanks All.

 

[Guard Dog]

A followup was made today at CasinoAffiliatePrograms.com. The followup was in the form of a Private Message at the CAP forums at 8:40pm CST. We sincerely hope that Nicolas or Natalie will soon return with good information about their Terms.

Thank You.

 

[Guard Dog]

No contact has been made by Gambling Wages at this time and there will be a minor amount of time left for them to contact us about their Terms and Conditions before we must deem their program Predatory.

 

[GamblingWages]

Hi All,

First I would like to apologize for not getting back here earlier. I have brought this part of our terms and conditions up to management and we have reviewed it. Unfortunately, we cannot modify this part because it is there to protect us from Revenue share abusers.

Some people organize to play on each others Revenue share accounts. Since the casino advantage is less than 30%, they will win on the long run when playing at various casinos and using their affiliate programs, especially since when they win we don’t carry over the negative and we do carry over the positive.

We have seen this happen several times; we need a way to defend ourselves from it and this is part of how we do that. Almost all our affiliates can easily send one depositing player every 6 month so we feel it is not a disadvantage to our partners.

We do thank you however for contacting us. If you feel that there is something we have missed, please let us know. We strive to make our entire service as friendly as possible, without over exposing ourselves to fraud and deceitful behavior.

Best Regards,
Nicolas Johnson
Gambling Wages Assistant Affiliate Manager

 

[Guard Dog]

Thank you for your response Nicholas, we appreciate your candor and attention to the issue.

While we certainly feel that Gambling Wages should protect themselves from rogue affiliates, the rest of your affiliates should not suffer because of those rogue affiliates that have taken advantage 'several times'.

Your Terms and Conditions should only state that when affiliates attempt to defraud Gambling Wages by taking advantage of Revenue Sharing and collusion, Gambling Wages reserves the right to terminate all connected affiliate accounts after proper review.

To penalize all affiliates due to a few bad eggs is not the way to entice good affiliates to work with you.

As we all know - this term is very predatory and here are the problems with it:

1. It is difficult enough to get the Search Engines to rank sites. Simple algorithm changes can knock you out of the SERPS for quite some time.

2. The player(s) sent previously should be lifetime players and your program WOULD NOT have gotten those players without that affiliate.

3. Black hatters are copying our sites all the time and with Google you can get knocked into supplementary results which you may NEVER get out of. Resulting in 6 months or more trying to fix the problem.

4. Health issues can take you out of the industry and leave you penniless due to this completely predatory term.


There are a ton of reasons that this is predatory.... suffice it to say that YOUR AFFILIATE brought you that player and should continue to be paid REGARDLESS of how well they promote your programs.

Again - Please reconsider this term. AffiliateGuardDog.com will wait 1 more week for a response to this last plea to do the right thing.


Please reconsider your thoughts on this term.

 

[Guard Dog]

Gambling Wages will not reconsider their terms.

As such, AffiliateGuardDog.com warns affiliates to NOT promote this organization. They can steal your hard earned marketing dollars with ease through use of their Terms and Conditions.

 

[greek39]

I certainly regret not taking the Guard Dog’s advice. My first ever earnings wiped out by this response.

The reason you have not received the $301 is that this money comes directly from your players loosing back what they had lost during October. We normally do not make negative carry overs, but we reserve the right to do so just for these cases where earnings are directly from players loosing back last month's winnings.

If you look carefully, you will see your players have not deposited anything, so we couldn't have made any money and therefore there is no revenue to share.

This is for one property only. Should have listened, keep up the good work!

greek39

 

[Guard Dog]

Thanks Greek! This is basically what we have been saying about GW all along. there are quite a few affiliates upset with them at the moment for non-payment of affiliate payments as well as players upset at casinos taking months to payout.

I wouldn't promote these casinos if I were broke and desperate.

 

[GamblingWages]

Hi Everyone

In our constant search for improved service, we have decided to take down Point 5.5 from our Terms and Conditions. This is just one of our steps to help improve our long term commitment to our partners who I personally and the whole company have a deep appreciation and respect for.

If there is anything else we can do to help improve your affiliate experience, please feel free to contact me (contact details in zig). It is my intention to keep all our affiliates happy and in a mutually benefiting long term relationship.

@ greek39
Unfortunately your players did not deposit and loose. They played free chips one month and lost the amount back the next. It is exactly for reasons like this that we keep our negative carry over policy at our own discretion. 99% of our affiliates don’t even know we reserve the right to do this because of the low frequency that we apply this rule (although it is clearly stated on our website as well as forums, we don’t hide this)
-------------------------------------------------
Kind Regards,
Nicolas Johnson
GamblingWages Affiliate Manager

Toll Free 1-800-549-7407
MSN Messenger nicolas_1875@hotmail.com

 

[Guard Dog]

Thank you Nicholas! It looks like GW is really trying to turn things around. I certainly hope this is the start to an excellent new year for Gambling Wages.

Good Luck and we will be re-reviewing the Gambling Wages terms and conditions and hopefully finally getting rid of that 'predatory' designation.

 

[Vladi]

Unfortunately your players did not deposit and loose. They played free chips one month and lost the amount back the next. It is exactly for reasons like this that we keep our negative carry over policy at our own discretion. 99% of our affiliates don’t even know we reserve the right to do this because of the low frequency that we apply this rule (although it is clearly stated on our website as well as forums, we don’t hide this)

I can't believe no-one else has picked up on this.

1. You refer a player
2. Player wins on free chip code
3. Winnings subtracted from your rev share earnings from other players this month (YOU LOST MONEY HERE)
4. Next month, free chip player loses winnings
5. Casino does not credit you for player's losses next month.

So the casino lost nothing, BUT YOU LOST money, because it reduced your rev share earnings from other players in the first month.

Add to this the ridiculous way this program counts all the free coupon amounts given to non depositors as player winnings (even if they remain unused, or ineligible for the player to withdraw) and it is nearly impossible for you to make any decent money with rev share on this program.

eg: Player signs up and gets a coupon of $100 without depositing (just picking a round number). This puts you at -$100 immediately. On a 30% rev share someone else will have to deposit and lose $333 for you to break even. If they win on that coupon it's even worse for you. And if they forget about it and don't play anything, or don't complete wagering reqs and give up, or their balance stays around $100, then that $100 (or whatever is left of it) stays around until the end of the month stinking up your stats and there is nothing you can do about it.

And of course if they then lose that $100 next month, you can bet your last dollar that gambling wages won't count that as revenue for you.

Tip for young players: never go rev share with these guys. Believe me a couple of us have done the sums and would have been far far far far far far far far far far far better off had we not gone rev share with gambling wages.

 

[Guard Dog]

That is correct. There have been quite a few discussions on boards such as CAP & GPWA about the way manager credits are applied to reduce affiliate earnings.

This is the reason we do not promote GW casinos even though their terms are now friendly.

 

[GamblingWages]

Hi Vladi and Guard Dog,

The case of Greek39 can’t possibly fit the description mentioned above. His players did not deposit anything. So bonuses couldn’t have wiped his commissions. There were no deposits from his players so there is no revenue for the casinos or the affiliates. All that happened was a free chip was taken by a player one month, the player won on it, and lost it back the next. No deposits were made.

Now I am aware that in the past some bonuses were applied incorrectly and affected legitimate affiliate commissions. This doesn’t happen by default, it only happens when casino staff applies bonuses in an incorrect manner. If bonuses are applied correctly, no amount of bonuses will affect your stats. It is not the amount, but the way it is applied.

A situation where affiliate stats are harmed is not in the interest of GamblingWages. We understand that for us to grow, our affiliates must grow, and it would be counter productive to try to dampen affiliate growth.

So if you feel your account had any irregularities, please let me know and I will make sure you get everything that is rightfully yours.

We truly want to keep an honest program; that is the only way to grow honest affiliates. Affiliate marketing is a win-win situation, so it is beyond me why some people would want it to work otherwise.

In any case, anyone with any issues is more then welcome to contact us, we here for you!
-------------------------------------------------
Kind Regards,
Nicolas Johnson
GamblingWages Affiliate Manager
Toll Free 1-800-549-7407
Nicolas@GamblingWages.com
MSN Messenger nicolas_1875@hotmail.com

 

[Vladi]

Just a heads up that Nicholas no longer works there. My guess is he got embarrassed saying one thing publicly and then doing the complete opposite in practice (either by choice or instructed by superiors). Since then they have been through another 2 affiliate managers this year which says all you really need to know about this group. Don't touch them with a 10 foot barge pole.

 

[byebyebaby]

What is the deal with Gambingwages these days? I keep reading things that they can be trusted again and do quite well?

 

[Guard Dog]

admin post not working...

Yes, I have heard that about them. I know they have made huge strides in working with affiliates. It's strange, but from what I have heard - they have turned themselves around 180 degrees. Feel free to speak up if you work with them, I have heard this from quite a few affiliates.... but I am not active enough with them to have any real-world experience myself.