question on verification

[wilykat]

Why do accounts get verified twice i would have thought if they were verified green then they would be safe as its the company that verifiys that its all good to FJ. and is i quite common that ppl fraud greens

[MJ10]

They are automatically made green the 1st time round, then checked by people the 2nd time around. Sometimes people will try and get around the system the 1st time around.

[Cloverleaf]

Coming back to this. I wondered if Alex/Rich could confirm for what percentage of those users that go on hold, they actually lose the advertising payment?

I know the theory is that you 'might' lose the advertising if someone tries to cheat the system, but how often does this actually happen? Surely companies like Lovefilm are equally careful about users signing up twice so would be unlikely to block a previous payment?

I just lost 5 on a verification . Don't want to sound like I'm complaining too much, as all the networks do this, but I've never understood why we end up getting punished for another user's mistake. Afterall, some people go on hold just for signing up twice with two email addresses even if they only use one.

I've never seen one of my referrals come off hold and wonder if some complete their offer, try cheating the referral system, fail, and then never return. I'd expect the advertising payment to come through for these, even though they're on hold.

Thanks. As I say, friendly interest. I'd expect you have long term data on this now?

[Monkeyegg]

I don't know what percentage. There is also a percentage of greens we pay out on that we don't get paid for because we pay out on greens sometimes in less than a week, whereas we don't know for definite that we will be paid until 2/3 months after the event.

If we ran a system where you get the exact greens we are paid for, you would have to wait for 3 months (and much longer than this if you include pending periods) till we have received payments.
Our policy is to not pay out on referrals who have breached our Terms & Conditions, and we won't be changing this. One reason is to protect us from paying for leads we are not paid for.

Another reason is to protect the quality of the leads. If we paid out on all completions regardless of if our Terms & Conditions are breached, there would be less incentive for our customers to reiterate our rules to their referrals. We would probably also see people encouraging their referrals to breach rules like creating duplicate accounts safe in the knowledge that their own account would be safe and if it slipped past our advertisers, they would be rewarded with extra greenage.

These rules are not here to bring us extra profit. If we are gaining anything financially from this policy, it is not intentional and it all goes into the same pot. We regularly offer promotions and competitions where extras are given away.

There are actually occasions when we pay out on leads where the person has broken our T&C, and have been doing for quite some time. We reinstate quite a large perentage of accounts that are placed on hold where the breach is one that can be rectified. There are other instances we pay out on where we would be well within our rights to refuse to.

We think our policies on upholding our Terms & Conditions are fair and consistent. I hope you can appreciate our decision on this.

[Cloverleaf]

Thanks for the detailed reply Alex.

I guess I'd rather see a 2-3 month correction and re-crediting for those users that went on hold but for whom you still received payment (rather than comps/extras which are not really personal).

I just feel quite a few will have accidentally broken the T&Cs (as we see so often on exceem) but will simply give up on what is already a difficult process when they see they're on hold - rather than contacting you to reverse it.

I understand what you say about losses when paying out quickly for greens but would far rather see a more thorough verification of each and every 'pending' so when one goes green we know it is to stay.

This is my feedback anyway, but I know you have a business model to protect.

[Monkeyegg]

Originally Posted by Cloverleaf

Thanks for the detailed reply Alex.

I guess I'd rather see a 2-3 month correction and re-crediting for those users that went on hold but for whom you still received payment (rather than comps/extras which are not really personal).

I just feel quite a few will have accidentally broken the T&Cs (as we see so often on exceem) but will simply give up on what is already a difficult process when they see they're on hold - rather than contacting you to reverse it.

I understand what you say about losses when paying out quickly for greens but would far rather see a more thorough verification of each and every 'pending' so when one goes green we know it is to stay.

This is my feedback anyway, but I know you have a business model to protect.

We already pay out on accidental breaches, there are loads of occasions when we reinstate accounts. The main ones we don't reinstate are the ones where the breach affects our offers i.e doing more than one offer through duplicate accts or sharing an IP/household with another person who also does an offer.

We would have to delay by 3 months for ALL offer completions, not just those that we have put on hold. Just to be clear, we have no intention of doing this so it's not up for debate as such.

Like I said, it's not just comps we pay extras out for. We have other policies in place that increase our outlay so that we can be fair to people. For instance, when I verify accounts, if a referral created an account ages ago and it clearly hasn't been used and was forgotten about, I delete the original account without even placing the new one on hold - you would still get credit for that, with no onus on the referral contacting us. There are plenty of other things like this that we do.

[Cloverleaf]

Originally Posted by Monkeyegg

Like I said, it's not just comps we pay extras out for. We have other policies in place that increase our outlay so that we can be fair to people. For instance, when I verify accounts, if a referral created an account ages ago and it clearly hasn't been used and was forgotten about, I delete the original account without even placing the new one on hold - you would still get credit for that, with no onus on the referral contacting us. There are plenty of other things like this that we do.

Didn't know you did this - accidental duplicate accounts was my main concern and this is good to know. Thanks.

[Monkeyegg]

Originally Posted by Cloverleaf

Didn't know you did this - accidental duplicate accounts was my main concern and this is good to know. Thanks.

It isn't in our best interests to be taking greens off people when it isn't necessary - ratios are important to people so we have to walk a tight line between upholding T&C and maintaining ratios