New affiliate terms = Robbery

**abscident** · 22 February 2011, 6:25 pm

Hi,

I am a Bet-at-home affiliate since 2008 and I am very disappointed by the recent changes in the T&C. I never thought Bet-at-home will do such things to their affiliates, and introduce predatory terms that have the sole purpose of stealing money from the affiliates.

I earned a lot of commissions in the past from Bet-at-home, and the recent change in terms is ruining my earnings. I will summarize the changes that I noticed and that are reducing the affiliate's commissions in an unprecedented way:

1) 20% admin fee

The introduction of the 20% admin fee reduces all affiliate commissions by 20%. This affects all affiliates and is an instant theft of 20% of all affiliate commissions. When affiliates promoted Bet-at-home they were relying on a three level commission plan of 30% / 10% / 5% of Net Revenues for the lifetime of their players. All of the sudden they found themselves with 20% of their commissions taken away!

2) Sub affiliate commission change

This is the biggest robbery. Here is where I lose 70% of my commissions with a single amendment in the terms. The old affiliate terms said that sub affiliate earnings are calculated as follows: 10% for level 1 and 5% for level 2 from the net revenues of the players brought in by sub-affiliates.

This made their multi-tier program the best in the industry, and many affiliates decided to promote their affiliate program. I am one of them. Unlike other affiliate programs, Bet-at-home paid 10% / 5% from the players Net Revenues, instead of sub-affiliate's earnings. This represented 33.33% of sub-affiliate's earnings for level 1 and 16.66% for level 2.

With the new terms, they changed the way sub-affiliate commissions are calculated. Now they represent 10% / 5% of sub-affiliate's earnings. This means 3% / 1.5% of player's net revenues, compared to 10% / 5% how they previously were.

This means that master affiliates earn only 30% of what they used to earn before from sub-affiliates. Adding the 20% fee at point 1 we now earn only 24% of what we used to from sub-affiliation!!

This means 76% of our commission was stolen!

3) The "no negative carry over" changed to "negative earnings are carried over". As I can understand why they want to carry over negative earnings, I don't agree with trapping affiliates into believing that they benefit from no negative carry over terms, and after they bring you players you change the terms to reduce their commissions.

I have tried to discuss the second point in this list with the new affiliate manager for hours (the old affiliate manager left the company just after the changes were made, probably because he disagreed with the direction the company was heading), but with no result. He kept telling me that the decisions were taken by the management, and he has no power to change that. I asked for contact details from their management, but he told me that they don't want to discuss about this with me.

I sent an email to their management, but received no answer. I called the company asking for somebody from the management, but I was told several times that they are "not in the office".

I hope someone from Bet-at-home reads this, and reconsiders this abusive decisions. The affiliate community will surely react to this kind of changes, and soon there will be very few affiliates promoting Bet-at-home.

I plan to remove Bet-at-home from all my websites if they don't revert their policy to what they were before.

I'm very sorry that this happened, and I am still hoping that something can be done. I lose a lot of money because of this changes, since I promoted the Bet-at-home affiliate program and my earnings are coming from sub-affiliation entirely. That means my earnings were slashed by 75%.

I think that the Platinum Sponsor status at GPWA does not correspond with the new terms of the affiliate program. The new terms are more likely to earn you a "Predatory" status on AGD.

Regards,
Abscident

**yuro77** · 23 February 2011, 5:20 am

Thanks for pointing this out, Abscident. I just replied in the other 'admin fee' thread that after bwin went rogue, I started redirecting clicks from my sites from them to Bet-at-home. I will now be redirecting them again! I don't do business with crooked companies who introduce retroactive predatory terms, and I will be informing all of my contacts in the business to do the same!

I work extremely hard to refer players to these sites. Changing T&Cs is fine, that's business, but do not apply them to existing referred players. Even if it's legal, it's absolutely unethical.

**abscident** · 23 February 2011, 7:13 am

Originally Posted by yuro77

I work extremely hard to refer players to these sites. Changing T&Cs is fine, that's business, but do not apply them to existing referred players. Even if it's legal, it's absolutely unethical.

I totally agree with what you say here.

The stupidity of this retroactive change can be seen even in the new terms, that contradict with what they actually did. In the new terms, at paragraph 6 (commission plan) alignment "k" they state the following:

"Sub-Partner: The Partner may refer other persons (Sub-Partners) to bet-at-home.com, who may also apply to join the Partner Program. The Partner will be paid in relation to the activities of such Sub-Partners in accordance with the commission plan, which is valid at the time of registration."

What is written in their own terms suggests that affiliates should earn from their sub-affiliates under the commission plan that was valid at the time of registration of their sub-affiliates. That means that I should receive 10% of net revenues from my sub-affiliates that I registered before the terms change, and 10% from the affiliate's commissions only for affiliates registered after the change.

Of course this is not the case how they implement it. They use the new formula for existing sub-affiliates as well, so they are breaching their own terms here.

**Benitho** · 23 February 2011, 7:33 pm

What I`m wondering is, wether bet-at-home followed the bewinners-desaster closely last October/November... - If they did, then that would be truly astonishing and most likely other big names will follow ("hey, if bwin and bet-at-home can get away with this, maybe we should...")

To more or less only have subaffiliates with them and now make 1/4 of what you made before must really suck - I really feel for you...

B.

**abscident** · 24 February 2011, 10:17 am

Originally Posted by Benitho

What I`m wondering is, wether bet-at-home followed the bewinners-desaster closely last October/November... - If they did, then that would be truly astonishing and most likely other big names will follow ("hey, if bwin and bet-at-home can get away with this, maybe we should...")

To more or less only have subaffiliates with them and now make 1/4 of what you made before must really suck - I really feel for you...

B.

Well, for me it's worth than you think, because they also closed my best sub-affiliate (for reasons they can't disclose), and now I get around 5% of what I used to earn... Sometimes I still can't believe it happened...

**Anthony** · 25 February 2011, 6:06 am

1) 20% admin fee

The introduction of the 20% admin fee reduces all affiliate commissions by 20%. This affects all affiliates and is an instant theft of 20% of all affiliate commissions. When affiliates promoted Bet-at-home they were relying on a three level commission plan of 30% / 10% / 5% of Net Revenues for the lifetime of their players. All of the sudden they found themselves with 20% of their commissions taken away!

Where in the new terms does it mention the 20% admin fee?

**abscident** · 25 February 2011, 6:58 am

Originally Posted by Anthony

Where in the new terms does it mention the 20% admin fee?

I didn't see it in the terms, but it is implemented in the affiliate program. It appears in the "commission structure" page and it is deducted from the revenues. I noticed that by calculating the commissions from the revenues.

There is another discussion in the forum about this admin fee. This is how I found about it.

**graham** · 28 February 2011, 3:52 pm

20% Admin Fee?? LOL, really? That is one of the biggest joke fees I have heard of.

**RBS** · 28 February 2011, 4:30 pm

Sure 20% admin fee is a joke. The way i see it is, they can do it on NEW players if they like/dare to do so. But when they do it on old players send in the past, that is another thing and i call that stealing.

I don´t promote Bet-At-Home and most likely never will, but just wanted to say (if they read) that this does not sound fair, and you should re-consider this move !

**cassy** · 28 February 2011, 10:40 pm

these are the most common problem that most of our casino affiliate sites are engaging of. Is there any steps in preventing this kind of business? Because of this many of the valuable casino customers are getting out of trust with regards in playing online.

Thread: New affiliate terms = Robbery

LinkBack

Thread Tools

Search Thread

Display

New affiliate terms = Robbery

Posting Permissions