Star Partner Changes High Roller Minimum{08/11/09 UPDATED ON PAGE 4}

[Guard Dog]

Star Partner is making their ‘high roller’ quarantine policy into one that will affect even low rollers. Star Partner calls it a Quarantine Policy, but it is certainly making a mockery of the term.


TERMS UPDATE, Commissions, Quarantine / High Roller Policy


19. Player Quarantine Policy


1. If the player generates a negative net win in any given month and such a negative net is at least $10000 $3000 and the aggregate net win in that particular month for the affiliate is -$2000, then the high-roller policy will apply in full effect.

2. If both measures are met (clause 1), then the negative net win generated by the player (high-roller) will be taken forth and compensated against future net win generated by the same player.

3. The negative balance carried forward cannot be set-off against other players’ net win.

4. The negative balance carried forward cannot exceed the sum of the aggregate net win for the affiliate, for that particular month.

5. If there is more than one (1) high-roller then the negative balance carried forth will be split proportionately among the players.

6. Any negative balances belonging to high-rollers will be reduced by future positive net wins that they generate in follow-up months (clause 1)



Summary:This term is verging on ridiculous, IMO. Moving a player quarantine win to $3k makes it such that just about any player can be quarantined. This is yet another term whereby they steal your first month’s commission by not enacting the quarantine until month #2. First month’s income can be forfeited with this clause.


Casino

Star Partner Changes High Roller Minimum

 

[Engineer]

This is outrageous. I'm assuming it is retroactive?

Star Partner (as Vegas Partner) tried to screw their affiliates in 2005 with retroactive changes -- now they're doing it again. I guess this is a group that just can't be trusted, ever.

 

[Guard Dog]

It's certainly seeming to be that way. I have to make this post around the web as well to make sure all affiliates are aware of this change. I would suspect it will stop a lot of affiliates from promoting their properties.

$3k... I have won that much myself in very low deposits. Seems more like they are trying to wipe out month 1 commissions than really caring to quarantine a high roller.

Maybe they will speak up about the new limit and if the term is retroactive... But since there is no 'effective date', it would appear it is definitely a retroactive term.

 

[inspiration]

I am so glad they altered this term ... they are dog food now ;D

It shows how much I can trust Starpartner ......not.........and I still earn money from the remaining players.........if you have any left due to mistakes from manual remapping of players......

I have my own issues with them at(CAP)

No responses in a timely manner, no real solution for the tracking errors, some without ever tracking a player......

I do not trust them ever again.

 

[tryme1]

Agreed. $3k is an insignificant amount in terms of a casino win. I'd be interested to know what the thinking is behind this move, because if I lost every player that occasionally won $3k+, I'd lose all my best players.

For the record, I don't promote Star Partner, but this is a sneaky way of grabbing potentially profitable players. Thing is - it's more likely to impact the bigger affiliates which is only going to cause Star Partner problems in the future.

 

[bonustreak]

They are already in my shit list but now they just made my final choice for me, down they go!

I am so glad they altered this term ... they are dog food now ;D

It shows how much I can trust Starpartner ......not.........and I still earn money from the remaining players.........if you have any left due to mistakes from manual remapping of players......

I have my own issues with them at(CAP)

No responses in a timely manner, no real solution for the tracking errors, some without ever tracking a player......

I do not trust them ever again.

Well I feel the same way, we went from making really decent money to less then $200 a month now. I asked for a report on our players and I suggest you all do the same. I was told my traffic were all freebie hunters so when I get the report needless to say I was very shocked to see that out of I think it was 800 deposit attempts over 400 were denied!! Umm ok that is not a freebie hunter issue that is a casino with a serious and I mean serious payment processing issue!! Then they pull that stunt and don't pay for the domain registration and we lose yet again when we have to change links(hmm how convenient!) The affiliate support is a joke there and I am plain just done with this place!

 

[Bonus Paradise]

I am so done with them.
We do promote them since i started as affiliate, for this month my casino profits show whopping $30!!!

This cannot be right!
Noone of all players we sent is playing !?!

Why do we earn with other programs, and not with Starpartner?

I was told my traffic were all freebie hunters so when I get the report needless to say I was very shocked to see that out of I think it was 800 deposit attempts over 400 were denied!!

Of course they blame it on our traffic, sure!
But then I say it again, why do we earn with other casino groups?



And now they even make a 3K min. for their high roller term?
ahh, come on....

I will never ever promote them again.
Nuff said.


All Banners will be removed by end of this week.

 

[inspiration]

I just remember they were the last ones who tried really hard to stay active in the US market once it was impossible all went downhill for them and......for us.........while other micro programs still have good returns.

Since they told me they manually map players because the trackers failed it was another excuse.

Well I feel the same way, we went from making really decent money to less then $200 a month now.

No surprise to me as BB1web (and some affiliate managers!) told me the same.
--

I asked for a report on our players and I suggest you all do the same. I was told my traffic were all freebie hunters so when I get the report needless to say I was very shocked to see that out of I think it was 800 deposit attempts over 400 were denied!!

I asked for the report never got it, they are simply not replying to emails and not on MSN.

--
Umm ok that is not a freebie hunter issue that is a casino with a serious and I mean serious payment processing issue!!

They tell it is your fault but as we all know by now there is something very very fishy about starpartner.

--
Then they pull that stunt and don't pay for the domain registration and we lose yet again when we have to change links(hmm how convenient!)

Sould I tell you how many times your lnks did not track because only the first page of a casino site tracked ?

--
The affiliate support is a joke there and I am plain just done with this place!

The fact that they do not reply is because they know they are wrong, I bet they are watching our posts for sure and think it is going to fade away.

Another surprise is that they offer prepaid media deals so one month advertising for lets say 500 dollar if they tell us we have freebie hunters and bad traffic how can they make a profit from it ????

 

[Bonus Paradise]

Another surprise is that they offer prepaid media deals so one month advertising for lets say 500 dollar if they tell us we have freebie hunters and bad traffic how can they make a profit from it

LOl, Yeah we made such a deal for July,
money was paid upfront, all fine so far.
Thats also why I say banners will be removed by end of this week,
I keep my deals.



btw, I just seen my stats are updated,
casino profit is 167$ now, its getting better ,lol

 

[StarPartner]

The quarantine policy was introduced in the beginning of March 2009 and we did this with affiliates in mind as well as our business.
We reviewed other operators that use this policy before we rolled it out, to guide us in the right direction in the relation to acceptable terms.

We wanted to create a scenario where affiliates could still earn on our brands even though there may have been winners and we were
intent on keeping the process as transparent as possible keeping affiliate in the loop with all of the players that may have been placed
under this policy.

Before we introduced the policy we sent an email out to J.Todd; Lou Fabiano; Steven Corfman and Affiliate Guard Dog signaling our
intention and requested feedback before we implemented the policy. Steven was the only that got back to us within the 2 week period
from when the emails were sent.

We began with $10,000.00 in March and it ran very well and we saw and big difference in affiliate’s earnings, affiliates were being paid
more than what they would have with this policy in place. We did however receive complaints from affiliates that they were being wiped
out from winners under the 10K mark. We had numerous affiliates contacting us commenting on the fact that they bills to pay and could
not afford to get zero from some casinos because of certain winners, they needed funds to cover their expenses etc

We took those complaints into account and we ran a survey for our affiliates themselves to decide what level to set the quarantine.
We sent out an email with the survey to our entire affiliate base requesting for everyone to participate, the email had the poll on and we
also hosted the poll on our website for a period of time giving ample opportunity to everyone to participate in the poll. This is a copy of
that email that went out:

Quarantine Policy Survey

Many of our affiliates have requested that we reduce our quarantine level from $10000 to $5000 and some have even requested $3000.

We would like your opinion. Please click here

The results came in and the large majority of affiliates chose $3000.00 as the desired threshold.
These were the results from the poll that we conducted over the 2 week period:

66.21% voted for $3,000.00
20.00% voted for $5,000.00
13.79% voted for $10,000.00


We therefore had to go by our affiliates vote and we implemented it according. Further to this, since the inception of this policy we have
reviewed those players that have been placed under quarantine and we have these results so far:

12% of players never return after winning
20% of players have won more
31% of players have played back less than $1000.00
37% of players have played more than $1000.00


We acknowledge that since the inception of Star Partner we’ve had prolonged teething problems, pertaining to reporting instability and tracking. These problems have always identified quickly and rectified. It is important to note that no affiliate lost players because of these issues. The source data was and Is valid, and the majority of these issues have been due to the distributed nature of our applications and replication between them. We have worked tirelessly to ensure affiliates get credited for the traffic they bring.

The issue of us losing our domain has no longer any bearing, the loss of our domain was beyond our control and the registrar “Verio” failed to
execute the auto renew that was in place at the time, or give us any notice as they should have done . With the loss of our domain we were quick to have an new domain up and running and there was no damage done to any of our affiliate’s links or accounts. The main issue with the domain going down was purely an access issue.

 

[WCD Admin]

In all fairness how many people responded to the survey? not percentages. that would give us a realistic perspective on what your conclusions were based on. Was the GPWA supportive of this move? you said he responded but not what his take was on things. Who responded after two weeks and what did they say? Its only fair to let us in on the complete story, no? Its to hard to draw any conclusions the way you worded your response.

 

[bonustreak]

I was not involved in the vote, would have been happy to vote on this. Anyone here vote on that 3k?

 

[Guard Dog]

I was not involved in the vote, would have been happy to vote on this. Anyone here vote on that 3k?

Not me. I also am in control of the mailboxes at AGD and could not find any such request for us to take a look at the term.

Starpartner - can you give me a date when it was sent to AGD so I can check further... Or a title, maybe? I have looked pretty hard, but nothing to be found so far

 

[inspiration]

Can not remember I did.......but now I do not care anymore at all.......

I asked for some simple reports regarding players that were not tagged due to tracking problems and a list of of player information, because most good players left the SP casinos - never got that. If I asked Rewardsaffiliates I had it as soons as I hit send. Starpartner 's Affiliate support is without no doubt very bad.

The fact remains that before Starpartner was merged from Vegaspartner and Golden Star there were not a lot of problems and most players seemed to stay - after it has been the opposite and what I have been told from my friends here and other places - they also confirm an average 80-90% drop in earnings. The new traffic I have sent did not convert very well either.

So I do not buy an explanation that our traffic is "bad" it is just an excuse for internal tracking problems or reporting.

Maybe I am called a complainer and a pain in the ass but if I and my aff. friends experience the same thing you can not blame me for being very suspicious.

 

[inspiration]

Starpartner - can you give me a date when it was sent to AGD so I can check further... Or a title, maybe? I have looked pretty hard, but nothing to be found so far

Before we introduced the policy we sent an email out to J.Todd; Lou Fabiano; Steven Corfman and Affiliate Guard Dog signaling our intention and requested feedback before we implemented the policy. Steven was the only that got back to us within the 2 week period from when the emails were sent.

I would like to see this confirmed by the representative of all parties that they received the SP email.

 

[Vladi]

I don't know who "StarPartner" is, but let me say first that I have had good dealings with Conrad before and found him to be a genuine person. But whoever posted that is so full of it I wonder if they even understand the policy they are talking about....

This is a copy of
that email that went out:

Quarantine Policy Survey

Many of our affiliates have requested that we reduce our quarantine level from $10000 to $5000 and some have even requested $3000.

We would like your opinion. Please click here

I received that email.

I believed at the time that it was, and it still is, a disingenuous joke. How can you send out such an email asking people to vote on something where you neither provide:

a) a copy of the "quarantine policy" in question
b) or a link to a page with the "quarantine policy" on it?

There was also no option on the vote to remove the quarantine policy entirely, or have it operate "fairly" where the winners are quarantined immediately, instead of after the end of the month.

I am a busy person and do not have time to play games with affiliate programs, so I did not vote and your email went into the bin where it belonged.

---

Now as for the rest of your drivel, you state that affiliates "earn more" with this policy in place. And that they wanted a lower amount so their earnings were not "wiped out" by smaller winners.

Since it seems that you do not quarantine players until after the end of the month, I cannot understand how it is possible for affiliates to earn more under this policy. The only upside for the affiliate is the 20% of players who go on to win more, but only on the amount they win after the initial quarantine has taken place, and only because it is not offset against other players' winnings. However, I presume this could end up making it even worse for the affiliate in the long run because further winnings just raise the quarantine amount, meaning the affiliate has to wait even longer to earn anything back from those players.

According to your policy, affiliates will still have their earnings "wiped out" in the first month, then to top it off they don't earn a cent back from the overwhelming majority of quarantined winners (i.e. 68% - your figures) who then lose some or all of their winnings the next month.

Ignoring the 12% who don't play again, and you have engineered a policy that is at the very least 68:20 IN YOUR FAVOUR, and I and many others here can see straight through it. That even disregards the longer term when those 20% who are winners are likely to go on to lose it back.

And seeing as the policy only takes effect after you have been wiped out anyway (-$2000 for the month) and you don't apply it until the end of the month, it makes absolutely no difference if the quarantine amount is 10k, 3k or 100k, except that the lower the amount, the more money you can cream off affiliates from the aforementioned 68% of quarantined players. It is so obvious that the only conclusion I can come to about your statement that "affiliates requested the amount lowered so that they wouldn't be wiped out", is that you either asked an idiot who has no understanding of what they are talking about, or you are lying.

Do feel free to come back and contribute something of value, but please:

a) stop with the "we're doing you all a favor" bullshit because we're not that stupid.
b) do keep providing statistics and statements that contradict your own arguments - it helps us tremendously

 

[mojo]

This policy slipped through somehow. Affiliates have now clearly expressed that it is harmful. Many will no longer promote this program.

What happens now? Will Star Partner listen?

We wanted to create a scenario where affiliates could still earn on our brands even though there may have been winners

There is no clear answer to whether affiliates get paid for their other players in the month the hit occured in.

You did say this at the GPWA Conrad:

When a player has a big win, you earn in that same month for the rest of your
players. Before this was introduced affiliates getting zero.

The bulk of affiliates that participated and voted in our survey opted to get

earnings on their other players even if a player won over$3,000.

I have asked this question so many times. I'm pretty sure I'm being ignored but I'll keep on asking. I would like to know and be clear on these terms.

We reviewed other operators that use this policy before we rolled it out, to guide us in the right direction in the relation to acceptable terms.

I believe Star Partner reviewed Playshare:

From Playshare:

Quote:
If both of the above criteria are met (see point I) then the negative net win generated by the high-roller will be carried forward and offset against future net win generated by that high-roller.

From Star Partner:

Quote:
If both measures are met (clause 1), then the negative net win generated by the player (high-roller) will be taken forth and compensated against future net win generated by the same player.

Playshare does not allow affiliates to earn from other players the month the hit occured in. These terms are almost identical so which is it please?

My questions continue to be ignored so I really don't expect an answer this time either.

For the record, when Vegas Partner moved to Star Partner I lost ALL my players. When I asked I was told 'they all stopped playing'.

 

[Vladi]

And one more thing, as I stated on another thread about these Microgaming commission theft policies:

I don't give two shits what any other affiliate wants to do with their contract with you, I signed under a set of terms that I expect to be followed, and if you want to change them, then you ask me personally. You do not use some rigged vote from people that are not party to my contract. Its called contract law. Comprehende?

 

[inspiration]

For the record, when Vegas Partner moved to Star Partner I lost ALL my players. When I asked I was told 'they all stopped playing'.

So if we almost ALL have experienced the same thing : losing ALL our players where is the need to promote Starpartner any longer ???

 

[Bonus Paradise]

I must have missed such a survey!
Did not see one.

Would be interesting to know how many really voted for 3K!?!
Would be interesting to see the survey.

Maybe it was written so very confusing, that people who voted for 3K
was thinking to vote for something else, maybe it was made up and written super positive for affiliates. I would assume so.

However, I said it already,
I am done with Starpartner, I will not promote them anymore.