Live Lounge Partners Deception and Non Payment

[GCPortals]

Back in October 2019 we did not receive payment on our commission earned at Live Lounge Partners during September.
Eventually after several weeks of chasing them without a response, they replied.

It turns out that a player we sent them had lost money playing during September, earning us commission, but had won while playing in earlier months. The winnings outweighed the losses and the casino was going to be in the negative on the player, if they paid this out.
Our account with them had a no negative carry over policy. Something that was offered to us by them when we confirmed our partnership.

They approached this situation by saying that our player was showing abusive playing patterns.
As a show of goodwill, we suggested that they switch us to negative carry over for future activity. The fact we even suggested this should prove our integrity.

This was not good enough for them, they also wanted the negative carry over to be applied to the earlier months where the same player had won.
This would mean we suddenly had zero earnings from September, and at this point October also had good earnings that would be wiped out.

We declined this as it seemed extremely unfair, not part of our partnership agreement, and just a way to not pay us.
Can an affiliate company decide to change a partnership deal retroactively without mutual consent? It is our position that you can’t and should not be able to.

This is where the accusations began.
After some time they claimed that the player was “fraudulent”.
This never came up originally, it is confusing and odd because they had agreed to let the player continue to play at their casino.
This does not make sense and is not consistent with the actions you would expect when a casino thinks a player is fraudulent.
Normally they would close the account. But they told us they were planning on keeping this player’s account open.

When we still requested payment on the commission earned according to our partnership agreement terms, they then directly accused us of being a fraudulent affiliate.
We have sent them many players in the past without any issues or claims. They are now claiming that all of our players are fraudulent. But from our stats, we can see they continued to let the these ‘fraudulent players’ play anyway.

We let them know that we would go public with this information if they did not meet their payment obligation, their response was one of bullying tactics.
They threatened to spread their lies and post about us in a private “affiliate managers” forum.

We will be happy to share the e-mails showing the timelines of their threats and how they used fabricated information to change their terms, and not pay an invoice.

This is our post. We aren’t fraudulent. We are just trying to operate our business with integrity and not be scammed out of our earnings by a dodgy affiliate that is very quick to start calling names and pointing fingers.

Our advice to you is to give Live Lounge Partners a hard pass.

 

[Livelounge]

Hello!

To be clear, the accusations and threats have all been on your side. You are clearly a fraudulent affiliate, and as soon as we informed you that we will not be paying your commission due to fraud, you started threating with:

- Legal action

- Email sendouts to 30,000 members of your community (how...? your site has no traffic)

- Posts on all gaming forums


Also, you are trying to draw up a timeline that suits your narrative suggesting that we tried to lead you on. We were very clear with you that we would not pay the commission. We said that we could do a negative carryover, but that would apply from the months that your ONLY player has been playing. That would, in fact, have been fair – because that is the only way both of us could earn funds on a player like this.

Affiliate programs usually protect themselves from this type of fraud by saying that commission is not paid unless the affiliate sends 5+ NDCs. We do not want to be unfair to affiliates, so we do not use this clause. This does open us up to this type of affiliate fraud though. As all affiliates that have worked with us will know – we pay owed commission.

What this affiliate has done, is that he/she has sent a tracking link to one player. This player is a person they know in real life and collude with to share commission. To make it even more obvious that the affiliate knows the player in real life, they included the players first name in the tracking link.

I tried to post a link here with a screenshot, but it is telling me I am not allowed to post links.

It is stated in our terms and conditions that you are not allowed to give links to third parties / friends.

3.1.6. Affiliate will not register a player account or make deposits to any player account for improving his own affiliate commission. This applies to all accounts, for own personal or relative’s player account, friends, or other third parties, or by any other artificial or fraudulent way to improve or increase the Affiliates contribution to the Commission. The Affiliate does not seek to or in any other way try to cheat the company. All these terms are interpreted as fraud violation.


The player they sent, basically plays a form of Martin Gale. Essentially the player goes in and plays a 50/50 coinflip game once a month. If he loses, he doubles the bet next month. Every time he loses, the affiliate gets paid commission, and whenever he loses, he will double his bet next month. Doing this, the player and affiliate can work together to make sure they always earn money by abusing NNCO terms. We have seen this type of fraud many times before, and this is a clear-cut case.

We only work with legit affiliates that send real traffic. If it is clear that an affiliate is trying to defraud us, we will not pay. This affiliate sent one player, that came from a tracking link that has his name it. Their site does not have any traffic when looking at traffic tracking websites. Add insult to injury, the player coinflips once every month, and the affiliate pushes extremely hard to get the commission without even attempting to mitigate the situation. One thing the affiliate does say, is true though – I did go to affiliate manager groups and asked about this affiliate, only to be bombarded with messages from many other affiliate programs mentioning the EXACT SAME fraud.

You are welcome to share our email conversation – it will only solidify my position.

 

[GCPortals]

Hi Live Lounge Representative!
Thanks for giving your input here.

To set a few things straight for anyone that may read this:

- We did not start out with threats. It was only several weeks down the line of our communication (after they had finally responded) that we said we would write a forum post to inform the greater affiliate community, alert our member base, and possibly retain a legal representative.
These were efforts to get Live Lounge to see right from wrong.
What we did do was offer to switch our account to a negative carry over, as well as asking Live Lounge to uphold our partnership agreement by paying commission earned.
We are now making good said threats since we don’t appreciate being screwed over by Live Lounge.

- We have sent Live Lounge many new depositors over the years of our partnership, not just one. This is a blatant inaccuracy.

- We don’t know the player in question in real life. They are one of our members so we know their name and email address. That’s it.
This member emailed us asking for recommendations.
Since it is our main objective as an affiliate portal to refer people to brands, we recommended Live Lounge, and added the tracking tag using the players name to make sure they were tagged properly to us. It’s scary how often this seems to go wrong at online casinos.

- If the player had abusive playing patterns and was “fraudulent” as stated repeatedly by Live Lounge, then the player account should have been closed.
But Live Lounge told us they were planning on keeping the player’s account open.

- We don’t feel we need to defend our main site and the amount of traffic it gets, it’s not a huge amount but we get a few hundred visits daily.
What does this even have to do with this issue? Why is there this need to try and belittle us?
This reminds me of a school bully being caught in the act.

It is sad to see that Live Lounge have lowered themselves to actively trying to ruin an affiliates business.
They throw around the term “fraudulent” at every opportunity without sufficient proof beyond their assumptions.
To us the accusation is extremely serious.

We work with several hundred affiliate companies, and have done so successfully for over 10 years.
This is the first time that a partner has actively labeled us as “Fraud”.

We are understandably perturbed by their nefarious behavior.

 

[Livelounge]

Hello!

- We have sent Live Lounge many new depositors over the years of our partnership, not just one. This is a blatant inaccuracy.

Yes, this is true - you did send traffic a very long time ago. All of them were all bonus abusers. Literally every single player made an account in the attempt to abuse our welcome offer, and several of them managed. I did not bring this up, because it was not relevant to the current issue (as those bonus abusers were sent years ago). We did pay you for that traffic too.

You say you do not appreciate being called fraud, but from an operators perspective - everything about the player and the setup screams fraud. As I mentioned - just mentioning your domain the affiliate managers group got my skype spammed with people telling me that they also have you marked as fraud. This is not normal. There is a sheet where affiliate managers have added confirmed fraudulent affiliates. Your site is in that sheet.

- We don’t feel we need to defend our main site and the amount of traffic it gets, it’s not a huge amount but we get a few hundred visits daily.
What does this even have to do with this issue? Why is there this need to try and belittle us?
This reminds me of a school bully being caught in the act.

As far as I am concerned - real affiliates have traffic on their site, and rank on keywords. This was not a bully tactic - it was to show that you do not have traffic, which only increases suspicions that operators have regarding your site (all previous cases of fraud we have encountered also had little to no traffic).

We do not throw the word fraudulent around liberally. In fact, we always give affiliates the benefit of the doubt. All real partners that have worked with us are getting paid. However, this case is so clear cut, that we are ready to call you fraudulent.

 

[Skyla Burrell]

Having been in this industry 20 years, this abuse of affiliates has become way too common.
Live Lounge Partners is just another in the sea of rogue operations that refuses to pay affiliates on traffic sent in good faith and hides behind lies strong arm tactics and predatory T&C's.

 

[GCPortals]

Hello again Live Lounge Representative!
I hope you have been well. Thank you for responding again.

As anyone who reads through all this will clearly see, Live Lounge do not take care of their Partners.

Assumption without any actual proof beyond the circumstantial is enough for them to brand a business as fraudulent.
They said it as clear as day in the last post.
Our business has been put on a “sheet” by this Live Lounge representative that marks us as a “confirmed fraudulent affiliate”.
No actual investigation beyond this representative’s false assumptions.
Other casinos will then use this sheet and be tainted with this false information.

Affiliates should beware partnering with Live Lounge, or risk being put onto this sheet of false claims.

We reiterate that the correct and appropriate action should have been to close the player account since they were suspected of abusive play.
Entering into negotiation with the affiliate to get out of paying revenue and to try and continue earning on the player SCREAMS of dishonesty.
Blaming us for this is ridiculous. Any semi intelligent person should clearly be able to see this.

Had the player really committed fraud and their account was closed, we would not have expected payment. But this was not the case.
It is easy to throw around the term “fraudulent” as an excuse with no real evidence to support it.
We however have provided detailed information as to how they have tried to use bullying tactics to not pay.

 

[Livelounge]

Again with the slander and false accusations.

We did not put you into the fraud sheet. You have already been added there by several operators. They all suffered the EXACT same fraud.

This is a desperate attempt to taint our name in the hopes that we will pay you. You know that threats of posts on forums have gotten you paid before (one operator informed that they had paid you, because they could not deal with your hassle and threats of forum posts).

Blaming us for this is ridiculous. Any semi intelligent person should clearly be able to see this.

Ironic...

Entering into negotiation with the affiliate to get out of paying revenue and to try and continue earning on the player SCREAMS of dishonesty.

What do you mean earning? we have lost €5000 on this player, and you are trying to get commission on top of that. We attempted to mitigate the situation with you by saying that we can set the account to have negative carryover, that way (if the player continued playing) you could eventually earn commission. Obviously, being a fraudster, you knew that this was not an option, because your system of abusing NNCO terms would collapse.

No REAL affiliate would argue over one player that is clearly showing an abusive pattern. Any real affiliate is able to send traffic, and have a discussion and possibly mitigate any suspicions by showing goodwill. You have made no attempts to do so. You have had a stance that you deserve to get paid - no other options.

You are trying to bend facts to your advantage, and I think that really shows your true colors.

 

[Skyla Burrell]

You don't even rank #1 on your own name. Your imaginary list is a joke a best, a complete fabrication.
You are shady operators that bully and cheat smaller affiliates, bottom line. You can paint it anyway you choose to.
In the end you'll disappear just like all the other rogue outfits, you must be financially unstable to cry about a few grand!

 

[Livelounge]

You don't even rank #1 on your own name. Your imaginary list is a joke a best, a complete fabrication.
You are shady operators that bully and cheat smaller affiliates, bottom line. You can paint it anyway you choose to.
In the end you'll disappear just like all the other rogue outfits, you must be financially unstable to cry about a few grand!

Not entirely sure what you are talking about here. If you are referring to the sheet with all fraudulent affiliates - I can assure you that it is no joke and that you have been on it for some time. The sheet has 47 rogue affiliates on it, and you are on line 23, meaning that you have been on it for quite some time.

The bottom line is this: you are profiting from cheating casinos by abusing NNCO terms. If there is a sliver of a chance that this is not the case, you have proven to be an absolute nightmare affiliate to work with. You send one player that has won €5000, and then you threaten with legal action if we do not pay the commission that the player generated on a losing month. Affiliate partnerships are about mutual beneficial business. Any serious affiliate will want to have a good partnership where both parties make money.

You never even made an effort to understand or compromise - and that absolutely screams fraud.

You are now suggesting that I am crying about a few grand? Your commission is not even a few grand for starters, and I am not the one throwing a temper tantrum in an internet forum because someone called you out on your bullshit tactics to scam casinos.

Also - not sure if you noticed, but you are now posting as Skyla Burell, and not Gambling City. I think you forgot to switch accounts.

 

[Skyla Burrell]

I can assure you I am not Richard, and not posting as Gambling City.
Again, there you go with your false accusations and fairy tales.

 

[Livelounge]

I can assure you I am not Richard, and not posting as Gambling City.
Again, there you go with your false accusations and fairy tales.

Another perfect example of how you are not willing to even consider my stance, and instead just focus on personal comments.

Please read my replies, and try to understand my position - and use counter arguments (I cannot believe that I have to say this). This is a discussion, I have given you my stance. You have made no efforts to understand or come with a solution, instead you resort to sweeping statements regarding our partner program. You posted this out of spite because you were called out on your bullshit. You did not post this in an attempt to get paid. You know that you do not deserve that payment.

Also - the affiliate manager group told me that you are in fact working for Gambling City, so for you to come in and post pretending to be an impartial third party is laughable.

 

[Skyla Burrell]

I can assure you I am not Richard, and not posting as Gambling City.
Again, there you go with your false accusations and fairy tales.

My opinions of your group are my OWN.

 

[Skyla Burrell]

And, don't get it twisted - I said I was not posting as Gambling City and I'm not.
I'm just defending the honorable people I work for against predators like you.

 

[Livelounge]

My opinions of your group are my OWN.

Facts are relevant, your opinions are not. None of you have argued why you should be getting paid on a loss making customer that is showing extremely obvious abuse patterns.