ActiveWins / Betfred - Mysterious Unexplained Chargebacks

**webanalysissolutions** · 12 February 2014, 4:03 am

Originally Posted by TheGooner

At 80,000+ clicks for 2013 you're running an impressive level - and about 10 times our level - well done.

We were just testing the water with Betfred, unsuccessfully. We give some of our advertisers this many clicks in the space of 3 weeks

**webanalysissolutions** · 12 February 2014, 4:06 am

Originally Posted by TheGooner

Appreciate the insight webanalysissolutions - thanks!

No probs Gooner, I know you've run large and successful sites for a long time too

Any time you want to catch up, exchange ideas etc give me a shout.

**webanalysissolutions** · 15 February 2014, 8:10 am

Update - after chargebacks appearing on our account October, November, and December, guess what? - more chargebacks on our January payment report.

We reduced advertising in Jan so earnings only totalled $175.63. Chargebacks totalled -$277.22. Begs the question - fraud is fraud, but why let it keep on happening 4 months in a row?

**RacingJim** · 17 February 2014, 5:18 am

On a side note webanalysis - Very low signup rate 115 depositing customers for 80,000 clicks?

Even 1 in 20 signup rate would have got you 4,000 customers. I know it depends very much on the type of site though, but that does seem really low.

**justbookies** · 17 February 2014, 5:28 am

Originally Posted by RacingJim

On a side note webanalysis - Very low signup rate 115 depositing customers for 80,000 clicks?

Even 1 in 20 signup rate would have got you 4,000 customers. I know it depends very much on the type of site though, but that does seem really low.

Yes, I had thought about that. At 2%, which is around my worst sign-up rate over a period of time, you would have got 1600 sign-ups. I have an issue some days when clicks rocket and I know they aren't genuine. I think it could be bots or something crawling your site causing the clicks. I dont know what caused my particular false clicks but I banished the shopwiki bot (as I noticed them always having my content) and it hasn't happened since. That may be coincidence only. I am not technical but maybe would be worth having your traffic studied via logs etc.

**webanalysissolutions** · 17 February 2014, 5:44 am

Originally Posted by RacingJim

On a side note webanalysis - Very low signup rate 115 depositing customers for 80,000 clicks?

Even 1 in 20 signup rate would have got you 4,000 customers. I know it depends very much on the type of site though, but that does seem really low.

Depends on the type of site - take a live score type site the conversion is even worse. If you're a niche site you'll get a sign up every 10 clicks, if you're a pass through type site where people come to pick up scores or tips then it's all about volume.

**webanalysissolutions** · 17 February 2014, 5:46 am

Originally Posted by justbookies

Yes, I had thought about that. At 2%, which is around my worst sign-up rate over a period of time, you would have got 1600 sign-ups. I have an issue some days when clicks rocket and I know they aren't genuine. I think it could be bots or something crawling your site causing the clicks. I dont know what caused my particular false clicks but I banished the shopwiki bot (as I noticed them always having my content) and it hasn't happened since. That may be coincidence only. I am not technical but maybe would be worth having your traffic studied via logs etc.

Much of our click through numbers come from our odds comparison and displays, therefore we can display many thousands of links on our site at any one time for a bookmaker.

Conversion rates for us are about putting through a large volume of clicks - 200-300 clicks per registration isn't unusual for us, even with the best bookmakers.

**webanalysissolutions** · 18 March 2014, 3:50 pm

This is becoming an even bigger joke than I first imagined. Stopped promoting Betfred about mid-January (coming up to 3 months ago), and guess what - we're still getting negative chargebacks on the account! (our historical players continue to play, but we're still getting hit with chargebacks based on not a single registration since Jan 16th)

Was the best decision I ever made to stop promoting the minute I smelt a rat. I would strongly advise, based on our experience, that if you get negative chargebacks in one month with these guys to stop promoting until they disappear, because we've had chargebacks 5 months in a row, and chargebacks even once we stopped promoting - you cannot afford to keep promoting a company where you cannot get to the bottom of how these players are getting past their fraud team.

**Anthony-Coral** · 19 March 2014, 5:01 am

Really interesting thread guys and I wanted to make my own small contribution if I can...

Full Disclosure: I ran the Betfred programme for a couple of years when it was based in Gibraltar before they later moved to UK and created the Active Wins set up. I have no axe to grind with Betfred, equally no reason to defend them come what may - I know Natalie well from Active Wins and she's the real deal. I met Warren at LAC and he seemed decent and any programme that has Louis Deering involved, IMO, is going to be OK - he's not going to risk his long-term reputation for any short-term gain...

That said, there are operators where the affiliate programme is not sufficiently synched on all financial issues to allow for charge backs to be accounted for in affiliate revenue.

So, just because you may not have received charge backs for a long period does not always mean that they were not happening and that the operator wasn't losing money on some players. Equally, as has been previously mentioned, these charge backs can occur months and months down the line.

I have no inside knowledge from BetFred but it may be that this has arisen from them seriously beefing up the Fraud and Risk departments at ActiveWins which could mean that, if you can overcome this current bump in your relationship with them, they are actually an even better partner to do business with in the future.

Of course there is always the chance of being proved wrong in the future but I really do not get the sense that BetFred are headed down the road to secretly hammering affiliates as a way of retaining increasingly larger shares of the revenue.

If this was their intention then my sense is that using charge backs as the method (with all its potential for a live audit trail) would be an incredibly labour and resource intensive way of going about it for not a huge return. Just my opinion.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my thoughts from this side of the fence. I really hope that this gets resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

**webanalysissolutions** · 19 March 2014, 5:44 am

Originally Posted by HodgeyBoy

any programme that has Louis Deering involved, IMO, is going to be OK - he's not going to risk his long-term reputation for any short-term gain...

Yes, but any company based on IA sends a feed of data to IA, so IA would be completely unaware of any skimming/manipulation of figures before they were passed to the IA system. This has been a big gripe of a lot of affiliate for a number of years because you're passing data from one corporate body to another and that opens up the door for errors, miscalculations, or worse.

Also, everyone's a nice guy at the conferences - half of them are paid commission on affiliate earnings, the other half have performance measures to hit for affiliate sign ups and gaining exposure.

Originally Posted by HodgeyBoy

Of course there is always the chance of being proved wrong in the future but I really do not get the sense that BetFred are headed down the road to secretly hammering affiliates as a way of retaining increasingly larger shares of the revenue.

If this was their intention then my sense is that using charge backs as the method (with all its potential for a live audit trail) would be an incredibly labour and resource intensive way of going about it for not a huge return. Just my opinion.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my thoughts from this side of the fence. I really hope that this gets resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

I'm not accusing anyone of skimming or robbing - we'll leave that to the obvious guys mentioned across a lot of other forums who I won't name!

All I'm saying is that getting 20% of all your referrals coming back as fraud makes zero sense in promoting an advertiser and other affiliates should be aware that if they start to get chargebacks, if it follows our experience then you might get them 5 months+ in a row, so stop promoting and don't waste your clicks on someone who isn't going to pay you.

IMO something isn't right with Betfred's way of dealing with fraud - are they letting people in the door before realising they're not wanted? How are the know your customer checks working? What payment methods are they allowing that are generating this amount of fraud? Is it PayPal for example - I know that it is easier as a customer to shout fraud and get refunded under PayPal's insurance than most other payment methods. This sort of knowledge would help an affiliate streamline who they target and refer to brands that can't deal with this sort of customer.

If I had 20% of all my referrals come back to me as chargebacks with all my advertisers, like I'm getting with Betfred, I'd be pulling the plug on our website servers in the next hour and getting onto an agency to get a contract job!

Either that, or I'd be joining the fraudsters in making a living out of slack fraud teams and operators that are letting fraudsters get away with a handsome profit.

**thebookiesoffers** · 19 March 2014, 7:11 am

Originally Posted by HodgeyBoy

I know Natalie well from Active Wins and she's the real deal.

Double FACT

**mobilcasino** · 19 March 2014, 7:14 am

Sounds weird.

Whats the latest news on this issue?

**IACorey** · 20 March 2014, 10:50 am

Hey webanalysissolutions,

Thanks for the update on this, if you like please e-mail me at corey [@] incomeaccess.com with your account details. I'll relay this information to Active Wins. I'm sure that Warren would also be more than happy to get on an other call with you to discuss this.

**webanalysissolutions** · 20 March 2014, 11:27 am

No need Corey, I've been on the phone to Warren directly a few weeks ago. I don't need some IA person in Canada to do my chasing, I'm quite capable of doing this myself here in the UK, or even visiting Active Wins.

ActiveWins and I both acknowledge this is happening and we've exchanged details about how many players and what the chargebacks were. My point is, I am warning all affiliates that this is our experience, so as an affiliate read into it what you will and choose to promote these guys or not. It helps slightly to know that you've had 14 players that have wiped out almost all of your revenues for 5 months in a row, but it does not help at all when it keeps happening and you have no idea why, doubled with the fact the players you're being told are causing these chargebacks have English sounding usernames which are very generic - like "johnsmith" for example (not real, but yes, they're as generic sounding as this!), and are causing fraud amounts in each GBP figures to 00 pennies, so I presume they're English and not some sort of foreign based fraud.

I'm not really interested in promoting BetFred or ActiveWins brands at all from now. Warren is a friendly guy, but the stats speak for themselves. Their reputation with us is shot in our opinion and there are many many more good advertisers out there to promote in place of the strong positions we were giving them - the brand attracted very low value players in our experience anyway, especially with the no deposit free bets they pushed.

I hope I've made enough affiliates aware of Betfred chargebacks to get people to check their payment reports and make their own decisions if this happens to them. If affiliates across the industry exposed issues like this then the less favourable practices would have to be ironed out a lot quicker (it took me taking to the GPWA forum to get ActiveWins to wake up and address this issue, despite me trying to get it resolved for 4 weeks before coming to this forum) and affiliate business would naturally go to the best programs (which it kind of does already across the larger affiliates).

**webanalysissolutions** · 11 April 2014, 10:01 am

Update - guess what? March payment report shows yet more f*****g chargebacks! 6 months of chargebacks in a row, despite not sending these guys a player since January. I must be now approaching 15-20% of all my active players as fraudulent. Hard to believe.

Affiliates - check your payment history reports!!! Chargebacks appear on the payment reports around the 10th of the month following the end of month, so you may be getting screwed on chargebacks without really knowing it if you're just checking IA "earnings reports" as the month progress.

Prospective affiliates - consider our experience. You're much better off advertising other bigger brands on your UK traffic than risk working hard for ActiveWins and getting very little return as chargebacks roll on month after month.

**universal4** · 11 April 2014, 2:28 pm

I have never understood why the same player can charge back month after month after month, like I have seen at some groups. After the first chargeback, if there is not a reasonable explanation from the player, why are their accounts still open that they can continue to charge back for the next few months also?

Not sure if any of this happened in this situation or not but I wonder.

I would also be interested to know if the majority of the problem chargebacks are from the same geographic area, or if there are other connections?

Rick
Universal4

**webanalysissolutions** · 11 April 2014, 2:36 pm

Originally Posted by universal4

I have never understood why the same player can charge back month after month after month, like I have seen at some groups. After the first chargeback, if there is not a reasonable explanation from the player, why are their accounts still open that they can continue to charge back for the next few months also?

Not sure if any of this happened in this situation or not but I wonder.

I would also be interested to know if the majority of the problem chargebacks are from the same geographic area, or if there are other connections?

Rick
Universal4

I could half understand it if it were one player, however I'm getting chargebacks month after month from many different players, amounting to 15-20% of all my players to date!

I too have asked the same questions about why the fraud?, where are they from?, what are they betting on? what are their deposit methods? etc etc, however ActiveWins being a 3rd party say they're powerless to delve into the inner workings on Betfred. So, the moral of the story is - work with a company direct, who has an internal affiliate department and not some toothless Income Access third party (many times before have affiliates posted about the trouble of working with third parties).

**webanalysissolutions** · 12 May 2014, 1:18 pm

Update - that's 7 months in a row we've now had chargebacks! Just seen the April payment report. Positive earnings but far outweighed again by even more mysterious chargebacks - we haven't promoted them since January!

We've now lost out on $4000 in earnings in 7 months due to supposed fraudulent players.

All issues started after Betfred moved their program to ActiveWins too.

If the fraud is true, I might just keep promoting them big style - someone in Betfred would have to sit up and listen if that sort of fraud was amplified! If we'd seriously promoted them as strongly as we could have we'd have provided at least 10x the traffic we did that lead to this.

**IACorey** · 12 May 2014, 4:08 pm

Hi Webanalysissolutions

I know that you have spoken to Active Wins about this before, but just to be certain and to make sure that they are still aware of this I have relayed this message to them. Please keep an eye out for an update, or email me at corey[@]incomeaccess[.]com if you have not heard back by the end of the week.

Cheers

**-Shay-** · 12 May 2014, 9:04 pm

Originally Posted by IACorey

Hi Webanalysissolutions

I know that you have spoken to Active Wins about this before, but just to be certain and to make sure that they are still aware of this I have relayed this message to them. Please keep an eye out for an update, or email me at corey[@]incomeaccess[.]com if you have not heard back by the end of the week.

Cheers

Corey,

Firstly, its not that I don't appreciate your attention in these BetFred matters. But, considering you're the one who responds on behalf of ActiveWins, it makes me wonder if Income Access is running Active Wins for them? If you're not directly involved in running Active Wins, why can they not answer for themselves?

It is about time that someone takes responsibility and becomes accountable for the various complaints being lodged against Active Wins. The person speaking on behalf of Active Wins must be Active Wins.

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