RESOLVED: Ivy affiliates and legal action

[Billy_Goldblum]

I am a casino streamer on twitch and I had a deal set up with ivy affiliates to advertise all their casinos on my channel. I did so for about a year. Because being an affiliate is not my day job and I am quite busy myself, my gf and I work together to keep the affiliate stuff up to date.

Two weeks ago they sent us a very rude and short email asking for ID for UK compliance. While I am not a fan of this at all and have actually ended relationships with previous companies, the amount of players I have with ivy affiliates would make it near impossible for me to just walk away.

So we abided and supplied the ID. My partner and I had a brief conversation about the tone of the email and we felt like something was off.

2 days ago we get an email that basically says they are no longer interested in our services and my twitch channel is non compliant, my affiliate account is now closed.

Thats it. No requests to change anything, no guidance, no suggestions. That was it. I have gambleaware banner and responsible gambling banners in my channel and they knew full well the agreement was for us to always advertise through twitch.

They have not responded to any requests over the past 2 days or any emails or attempts to contact them. My account is locked and all banners show 404 errors.

I have had many signups over the year and some back dated commission. And they took it and just closed it.

Anyone who knows me on twitch knows I stream for fun and entertainment because I enjoy it. I have always told people who ask about signing up through me they have the option to sign up through me or use a different browser after clicking if they do not like the affiliate stuff.

I have always been honest and clear on how affiliate stuff works and explained that any commissions earned I just use it to stream with and no one is ever obligated to sign up through me.

With that being said, I advertised them on my youtube and twitch for a year. I did take two 3 month breaks from twitch but the banners remained there and on youtube.

I am appealing to the community for any advice on how to move forward. If nothing works I will attempt to pursue this by legal means.

Thank you

 

[Donkey]

what is you twitch channel? I watch casino streams a lot

 

[danniee]

I am following this very closely. Some worrying things being said on Casinomeister too.

Personally I have nothing but good experiences with IVY, but if it turns out they have even the slightest tendency to shaft affiliates I will have no problem walking away.

 

[NDG]

The best advice would be to do what you are doing now. Spread the word about your experience with the affiliate program.
You need to be compliant with UK regulations and some of the casinos are extremely paranoid about them.. but their seems
to be a trend lately of UK licensed casinos that try to use "compliance" as an excuse to close accounts and take away players.
To close your account for non-compliance without a warning or a notice that certain things need to be changed is not right..
and it would not be a program that affiliates would want to put effort into promoting to end up potentialy seeing the same fate.

 

[AussieDave]

@Billy_Goldblum - sorry to hear your getting screwed over. However, do you have very deep pockets? I'm guessing no, other wise you'd be doing this full time. Legal action... hmmm it's a waste of time, and more than likely you'll go broke before it sees the light of a court. You could go the UK small claims court route, but another affiliate tried that not that long ago, and even though he had an excellent case, the magistrate, rules in favour of the defendant, even though the clause in said contract was a moot point.

In the end, this affiliate, even though he'd (and other's) been screwed out of many thousand's of GBP, he had to bear the cost of the case, cause he lost. That amounted to somewhere in the ball-park of GBP10K.

KYC is tricky these days, as NDG above states. And, if your marketing to UK traffic, then not only must your KYC docs be good, but you also must ensure, where ever you are promoting said UK casinos, that you site, hosted stream etc., etc., also follows the guidelines of marketing to said UK punters. Though, most casinos lets their affiliates know if they are not compliant, and give the time to make their site etc., etc., compliant.

 

[Guard Dog]

Hi Billy_Goldblum,
We have just informed Ivy Affiliates about your complaint.
Keep you posted.

 

[Billy_Goldblum]

Hi there and thanks for chiming in everyone.

This morning we got an email that they were looking into the issue after they were given a heads up by others I was posting on the forums.

I went into my twitch channel after the email and was curious to see if there was anyone in my room. There were two usernames in there. One named Nancy and the other started with a P. They followed no one or any channels. The reason why I went and looked as I had a feeling they were looking for something in my channel to use as their reasoning or an excuse for their behavior.



First of all, I am very concerned that they are attempting to use tactics such as combing old streams looking for a reason to use about why they did this to save face.

I took a screenshot of this person in the viewer list. I went to other channels to see if this person was in there. Nope. I took a screenshot of the user name showing they followed no one and was not followed. So they had to find my channel directly through word of mouth at that exact time because I was not live so I could not be found. Only way is if someone was there looking for something.


Not long after I got a heads up from Melissa from LCB that the affiliate team told them they closed my account because of the language I used in my videos and the content.

Well now. What a coincidence that is.

 

[Billy_Goldblum]

I guess I dont have permission yet to post screenshots of the above or links but I have posted them on casinomeister. They can be found in the ivy affiliate thread in affiliate issues section there is anyone wants to see

 

[danniee]

I really feel this is an issue that needs some explaining, both in terms what has happened to Billy but also the things that are being ventilated on Casinomeister. I generate quite a lot of traffic to IVY and, like I've said before, I've had an excellent experience with them so far, but if it turns out others are being shafted, what is saying I'm not being shafted, or will be in the future. As someone said before here on Affiliate Guarddog, since we don't have any real insight all of this is built on T R U S T.

 

[Billy_Goldblum]

Hey Danniee,

Melissa from LCB responded in my thread there and since I cant post links here I will copy and paste what their apparent explanation is.

We received a feedback from the casino, you probably got an email from them as well. Namely, they state that you didn't stick to the UKGC regulations they sent to you, therefore, they needed to close the accounts as they were not compliant due to the nature of video and language used during the streams.

Not that I need to explain my side about the above because that explanation in itself is a ridiculous. My language because I swear sometimes? My video content. Me playing slots?

UKGC regulations they sent me? What? They asked me for ID and we gave it to them.

None of the videos were of us playing in any of their casinos either. I havent played in their casinos for months. I just have their banners in my channel.

If there were any issues any decent affiliate company would contact us and ask us to stop doing something specifically. They did not do this. They sent us a three sentenced email saying they are closing the affiliate account and stating my traffic isnt compliant.

When they realized it was a mistake to go after me, they went into my channel this morning, went through all my videos and then sent that explanation to Melissa because they had no other reason to give anyone why they just upped and closed my account

 

[Agentti]

It´s weird as we´ve heard good things about IVY but in our case , it´s been the worst. The affmanager is really hard to be reached and is not giving answers to simple quiestions. We once asked about the admin fee they are using as they sometime offer 60-70% type of revshare deals so something have to be off there. They first said it was 15% and then said it´s not and did not give the correct amount. Also , we been not paid for time of april-october. It´s always "will look in to this" and zero answer. I think they could have goods brands to promote to but for the issues stated above , we have no interest to promote them. First off , the affmanager of us would have to be changed. Not sure how many affmanagers they have.

 

[danniee]

This is getting worse and worse. Dont like what I am hearing and Im sending them a conciderable amount of players. Now it feels like they're just waiting to screw me over, if they dont already

 

[melcb]

@Agentti - We will make sure to do a real revenue share audit on these guys soon and then we can get a clearer picture on the fees and how big a portion is being taken from affiliates commission.

 

[danniee]

@Agentti - We will make sure to do a real revenue share audit on these guys soon and then we can get a clearer picture on the fees and how big a portion is being taken from affiliates commission.

The sooner, the better please. You guys are doing a great job!

 

[Agentti]

Updating on the matter of us: Seems that some staff of Ivy , maybe the affmanager saw our messages here or in casinomeister and looked in to it. They said the payments from the period of time had been bounced back by wrong banking details of us.

It´s quite strange as we use the exact same details for every other affiliate program and they´ve not had issues with it. Maybe that´s just us but i find it strange that they never approached us that our payments our bouncing back to them. Although the situation from our understanding was being solved for quite some time? Either way , trying second bank account now and will update if the commissions are received.

 

[Biti]

Lol.

Bs answer of them. If payments bounce back, it's good practise to inform the affiliate and not wait until messages at a forum pop up.

I don't work with them. They approached me. An aggressive approach in combination with a new program, exposure at conference and affiliate managers that really have no clue what they're talking about. Plus a white label of White Hat Gaming.

 

[Billy_Goldblum]

I am quite surprised Ivy affiliates have not apologized and said they made a mistake. I figured that was their only way out of this for them. Instead they have taken their time and done nothing over nothing.

I sent screenshots and all the correspondence to the admin here. Including the email from their compliance asking for our name, ID and country of residence. And our response which included all. The screenshots included the time stamp and date and overall screenshot of all emails between us and them, proving we did nothing wrong. And proving they did ask anything of us aside from general verification.

When you get caught trying to steal everything, shouldnt you quickly apologize and try and fix it. Are they really this terrible of people? Are they so arrogant they dont care if they end up getting blacklisted?

 

[Frank]

Sometimes they think it wont affect them, but so many programs have comitted suicide lately.. i think there must be some kinda brain disease that makes people think if they start shafting people they keep growing and making money

 

[awesamko]

I have never had problems with Ivy. It is quite late to make compliance through. It is good to know - thanks for sharing.

 

[Agentti]

Interested to know that those who have good releatioship with Ivy , what are you´r contacts there? I mean who is your affiliate manager for example who you deal with ?