I've been thinking a lot whether I should post about this or not. Mainly because I'm in Bitcoin (and on this forum - with other account) for a very long time, and I've seen everything. One thing I know for sure, is that when you write "Hello" on this forum, you will most likely get a few responses full of hate. When you try to discuss a serious issue, shit hits the fan and everyone goes berserk. Still, my experience with this site is not very good, and I feel a need to warn other people about it. I'm posting a full story, without censorship, and will let the comminuty to make it's own conslusions.
I'm not sure if I got scammed, but something went quite wrong.What happened:My affilate earnings were not paid.
Scammers Profile Link:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=903566Reference Link:http://mybtclottery.com/Amount Scammed: 0.59 BTC
Payment Method: See screenshots
Proof of Payment: See screenshots
PM/Chat Logs: See screenshots
Additional Notes: It all started a few days ago, when I stumbled upon the forum topic advertising a free lottery (
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1629219.20). I've visited the page, and liked it. Since I'm also in affiliate business for quite some time, I decided to promote this website and maybe earn something on referrals who will play free lottery, but maybe play some paid lotteries. I also noted that my affiliate link code has a low number (and concluded that there aren't many affiliates yet - which is good when you try to promote something quite new).
After a while, my stats started showing visitors, and even some really nice income. I thought - awesome, I started promoting them early enough, and even got myself a high-roller!
As I was happy with the success, I wanted to know when I will get paid (site says they do daily payouts to affiliates), and I contacted them via contact form). I got a reply saying:
The affiliate commissions need to be reviewed before the payout as it looks like one user made all his purchases via your link. But this lottery tickets were not paid. We are looking into that issue as soon as possible.
I wrote something back to them (don't have it archived because
their reply to email doesn't work! (actually, they send you email from one weird email address "from: MyBTCLottery.com <mybtcl@gmx.com> via tr01.nixmind.com, reply-to: "\"ds001@ddf.co.at\"" <ds001@ddf.co.at> - looks very professional, right?), but again had to use contact form. I warned them about bad publicity...and again got a reply:
MyBTCLottery is a fair plattform! We are honest and correct. Therefore we said that your commissions needs to be reviewed as there seems to be a issue.
Your affiliate banner had 50 impressions so far, and 65 visits came from that banner. As well as 12 purchases. (This is what the affiliate plugin says.)
90% of all visitors are interested in the free draws. Only 10% of all visitors attempt to purchase tickets for a paid draw. It's very unusual that from a single affiliate link there where ticket purchases worth of 2,3 Bitcoin.
Therefore we clearly need to look into that as it seems to be a result of a bug with the chache.
There is no need to send us this text:
"All I know is that my affiliate made lots of purchases and your website shows I earned certain amount of Bitcoins. Therefore, I expect payout of that amount ASAP. You are a new service, and you don't need bad publicity, right?"
We cannot pay commissions if they are based on a very obvious bug. "Blackmailing" is even worse. That's a very bad reaction. If there is insufficient respect or fairplay approach MyBTCLottery you better remove all the links.
Ones again, we do & love to pay our affiliate partners, but we cannot pay comission for invalid orders!
Im meantime, stats on page again show that my referred player is making deposits. Please note that all deposits are marked as
confirmed, together with my earnings. Here is last what I have:
Therefore, I replied to them:
OK, let's go from the beginning...
Having a high roller as referral - it's not questionable at all. Why should it be? I'm in Bitcoin gambling business for years now, and every now and then some of my players play with big amounts. Stats page clearly says that my players (I don't know if that's one or more of them) have made purchases worth 2.43772 BTC. For all those orders it says "confirmed". Your site clearly says: "Commission Rate 25.00% of each completed sale, pre-tax", and even the column on the right says what amount is that...
You run a business, you need to make sure it all works properly, so it's your responsibility. I see information which you provided, and all of a sudden it's a "bug". MtGOX had a "bug", and some other stories too... No. I've seen this lots of time in Bitcoin world.
Waiting for your suggestion how to resolve this without making unneeded problems. I won't accept the fact that the players which I brought and who made big purchases didn't earn anything for me.
In the meanwhile, they deducted all the earnings from my account, the amount even increased since we started discussing this:
Reply came in:
Good evening,
Thank you for your message.
The issue here is very simple: We gladly pay affiliate commissions for paid orders - but that's just not the case!
You had 58 banner impressions so far (which is a very very small amount) and the affiliate plugin somehow showed commissions for ticket sales in the volume of 2.3 BTC. The statistics do not include purchases of "free" tickets,
which is again very unusual as 90% of all users participate only in "free" lottery draws.
After a short review we have seen that all this ticket orders where made for one single IP. And that this orders all failed - as the user didn't submit the bitcoin payment. But somehow the affiliate plugin did set a "confirmed" status in the dashboard.
Now, the idea of a affiliate program is to bring clients who hopefully are ordering lottery tickets. If that's the case we are very happy to pay the commissions to the affiliate partner. But if there is a technical issue and the system shows commissions for in fact zero orders (not even "free" lottery draws) then we clearly cannot just pay the affiliate partner.
We can understand that you attempt to get the displayed commissions but you know very well that this would be just taking advantage of a error/bug.
Clearly there is a in fact a "safety net" in place a error like this happens and that is clarified in the Terms and Conditions of the affiliate program which you agreed.
Quote:
- My Bitcoin Lottery! reserves the right to update and change the Terms of Service from time to time without notice.
- Only if the customer submit the payment for the lottery ticket order(s) a commission can be paid to the affiliate partner.
Finally, MyBTCLottery is a honest and correct lottery site. We do not charge users commissions for payouts or any other fees. We giveaway all earnings from all lottery tickets to the winner of each lottery draw. We even have "free" draws
where we payout bitcoins without any ticket sale.
The only income we generate are kickbacks from sponsors and advertising revenue.
Your 2. email was very uncool to say it friendly. We are always focused on making users and partners happy,´but do not try to take advantage of a simple bug which is already fixed.
We would make a goodwill offer, but there are no paid orders so far from you affiliate link. In fact zero user sign-ups.
So, what should we offer in that situation?
A payment for nothing?
You will understand that we are focused on providing a good lottery for our users
and cannot spend money or further time in this case.
So I responded again (this time I saved the message before submitting it via their webform...). This time I accepted the possibility that there might be a mistake with their system, and even offered them to pay me a smaller amount than my earnings:
"You had 58 banner impressions so far (which is a very very small amount)"
- Not relevant at all. One impression and sign up is enough to make millions.
"the affiliate plugin somehow showed commissions for ticket sales in the volume of 2.3 BTC. The statistics do not include purchases of "free" tickets, which is again very unusual as 90% of all users participate only in "free" lottery draws."
- "somehow" - don't care, you could by lying!
- "unusual" - don't care, lame excuse
"After a short review we have seen that all this ticket orders where made for one single IP. And that this orders all failed - as the user didn't submit the bitcoin payment. But somehow the affiliate plugin did set a "confirmed" status in the dashboard."
- "same IP" - don't care - high roller joined and started playing
- "somehow" - this word again, it means nothing. All I know it showed "confirmed". I have absolutely no way to verify that those payments weren't made. As far as I'm concerned - they were made!
"We can understand that you attempt to get the displayed commissions but you know very well that this would be just taking advantage of a error/bug."
- I have no evidence that it was a bug, and neither do you
"Clearly there is a in fact a "safety net" in place a error like this happens and that is clarified in the Terms and Conditions of the affiliate program which you agreed."
- As far as I'm concerned, you've added that either before while planning to scam people, or added it yesterday.
"Your 2. email was very uncool to say it friendly"
- What would you expect from someone who earned some money, and all of a sudden is not getting paid, with excuses like "bug", "somehow", "we don't know"...?
"We would make a goodwill offer, but there are no paid orders so far from you affiliate link. In fact zero user sign-ups.
So, what should we offer in that situation?
A payment for nothing?"
- Either full earnings which are shown in stats, or a part of that as a "bug finder bounty", and that is a sign of MY GOOD WILL - to accept less that I should be able to claim
Another thing that makes you look really reliable is the emails you are using: "
mybtcl@gmx.com> via tr01.nixmind.com" and "reply-to: "\"
ds001@ddf.co.at\"" <
ds001@ddf.co.at>". Reply to address doesn't even work. It really looks shady. I'm sure Bitcoin community loves things like this.
You leave me no choice but to go public with this, and we will let the customers decide if your story holds. I've got all the screenshots and proof. You might be right, but in Bitcoin business, it's enough to have just a small suspicion for people to avoid a business in a wide circle.
I'll be waiting for next 12 hours for your offer of "bug finder bounty". After that, I'm done with the discussion.
Naturally, they temporarily deactivated my account (luckily I made all the screenshots before):
Soon after that, I received last reply from them, claiming I'm harassing them and claim what doesn't belong to me:
By participating in the MyBTCLottery Affiliate Program you agreed that your participation in the program was solely for the purpose of legally advertising MyBTCLottery , in order to receive a commission on products purchased by your referrals.
MyBTCLottery attributed referrals to you based on a tracking code embedded in your affiliate link.
MyBTCLottery pays you a commission on products purchased by your referrals according to the designated payment schedule, 25 % for each lottery tickets sold, and not impressions.
Unfortunately, due to your harassing of our administrators, threats and the refusal to acknowledge the clear terms of our affiliate program, we are sorry to inform you that we are terminating your affiliate account.
I leave it to community to conclude. Some will call me greedy abuser of possible error in the system, but I still have my arguments:
- All the information on which I base my claims are provided by their own website
- Excuses like "somehow", "unusual" etc. are not very convincing
- They provided absolutely no proof that those transactions shown in they system weren't made (only their word)
- If you launch a business, it's your responsibility to avoid risks of something not working well. Even if there is an error in their system - it's not up to your customers to suffer because of that
- Weid email addreses - you all know how this smells, and it aint' flowers...
Just a heads up, to all the affiliates, and players. Newbie account offering free things, and once people start making large payments...who knows?
