Guilty until proven innocent

[Jon12345]

Azoogle banned my account last night. I am still waiting to see if it will be reinstated today.

A month ago, two different ebay accounts were selling sites as a business package. They showed screenshots of how much money was being made by Azoogle. These sites had my Azoogle affiliate links on them.

Azoogle contacted me and starting asking all sorts of questions, like am I sure I did not do this, do I know the person who is doing this, am I a friend of theirs and so on. I was asked this repeatedly.

I sent the person on ebay an email and they promised to remove the links, which they did.

Last night I tried to log in to view my stats and it said my account has been banned. I contacted my account rep and she said the same thing has happened again and compliance is looking at it. She said they have a policy of 3 offences and automatic ban by compliance, following a "senior level" investigation.

I think this whole attitude sucks. Anyone can copy any link off an affiliate website. There is no evidence whatsoever to suggest that I was guilty. The screenshots were fake. Following their logic, I could argue that I have seen their screenshots on ebay 3 times and so they should be closed down to investigate possible fraud. Would you cut off person A's income if you found that someone had copied their content?

No one even phoned me. I will be transferring my business to Max Bounty as this episode has cost me money (lost affiliate commission), time (2 hours spent trying to find the emails I sent), stopping all my PPC traffic (and its potential effect on history) and worry if they are going to pay me my commissions locked up in their account.

I have sent them the 3 email conversation I had with the ebay guy one month ago as my defence of something where there is no evidence of my guilt. That really sucks big time. I just want to get my money out of them now.

Jon

 

[Ted]

It sucks, but welcome to the internet, unless you can afford to sue you are screwed. Web companies seem to be a law unto themselves.

 

[marcel]

It seems like the only way you can be in control is to create your own products and sell them.

That way your the employer, and not the affiliate "employee" .

Actually I am wrong, even employees have more rights since they usually live in the same town and can hire a local lawyer.

 

[mkrongel]

Good luck collecting. We had over $3K withheld from us for getting a Spamcop complaint. All good and bad things come around in life.

 

[jstme]

I speard my $$ around between a few CPA's in case that happens to me......that way at least you can still keep doing what you do while you are working it out with them, and even though it's a loss.....if its spread around its not as much of a loss. Just my $.02

 

[AZAlex]

Jon12345,

I believe your account was re-instated this morning. Looks like it was an oversight to put it on hold (by the way, it wasn't shut down, it was just put on hold by our compliance team, and re-opened promptly this morning). Apologies for the misunderstanding.

As for the other poster, the rules are quite simple: Generate legitimate traffic and we are happy to work with you. Spam, and you'll be terminated from the network, like you would from any other network that follows the law. It's quite simple, really.

 

[mkrongel]

Spam is one thing, we didnt spam, if we did spam then you would have terminated our account back in 2001 when we first signed up. We got a spam cop complaint, first one in years, most likely due to having an azoogle link in our email (told to us by our ESP).

Alex the major problem is the way it was handled. Just like the way your company handled the person who started this thread. Your compliance team jumps the gun and your AM's cant pick up a phone and talk to you like a human being. I think Azoogle was a great company, good people, good offers, and stood by their affiliates, your new way of doing business is the opposite in certain cases. Just my two cents.