CPA network charging us for Junk leads

M

MyWorks

New member
Nov 9, 2010
27
0
0
We signed up with what used to be an adnetwork (valueclick). They said they would work with us on a CPA basis. The CPA for us was a signup to our form for a 30 day free trial of our software. It is a cloud based (SAAS) application on a monthly subscription basis. It is aimed at B2B providers. I was clear on who the target audience was and the kind of people who we were looking to signup. However, after the campaign started we were getting very low quality (junk) signups. These were almost all from two gaming sites, they all were chinese names and they were all yahoo email IDs. There were no valid business names.

I did send a very detailed email about the several issues that I faced. The quality of the leads, just a single point of contact, that contact not responding to phone calls;emails;or voice mails. However, I am not getting a response from the guy.

After a lot of delays and not hearing back, I finally was able to talk to him and he said he would talk to finance and get this resolved. Everything seemed to be moving fine. Then, never heard back from him. Then, their finance team is asking me to pay the invoice. This guy sends an email and says that I have to pay. I tried calling him and he is not picking up or replying to emails now.
 


When I'm in a situation like that (only happened a couple times but still) I start "harassing" the whole company, sending emails to the rep and then I CC his manager, accounting, CEO and whoever else I can think of. That rep is probably paid on performance basis and thinks he can get away with it but by making his bullshit more or less public someone will have to save face by doing right by you.
 
1. Will this work for a large company such as valueclick/conversant?
2. The finance person (senior credit and collections rep), not just him (account executive) and the account manager) said I would have to pay. So, I am guessing maybe the higher ups know?
 
MyWorks said:
1. Will this work for a large company such as valueclick/conversant?
2. The finance person (senior credit and collections rep), not just him (account executive) and the account manager) said I would have to pay. So, I am guessing maybe the higher ups know?
Click to expand...

If it's under a thousand just pay up and move on.

If it's a lot of money, get a fuck-off letter from a lawyer stating that the leads are obviously fraudulent and provide all the documentation evidence.

As far as it goes for our business, we always pay up even when the leads are shit. That's why we usually do $1500 test buys beforehand.

More than 50% of the time the leads are shit. We don't expect anything better. I mean if I got upset over every company that sold us shitty leads in the past, I would have had stroke by now from high blood pressure.

My 2 cents.
 
It is around $6500. It ran for less than 10 days. Almost all the leads are just complete shit.
 
The most important part of the story that you left out is: whose contract are you working against? Does the contract you signed even allow returns? Regardless of what the sales rep said or not, if you signed a contract that does not allow returns, or you sent in the returns too late, you could be out of luck.

If you have operated within the contract and the rep isn't returning your calls, just call the company's operator and ask to speak to his boss to explain yourself. Make sure you have all the e-mails, etc. you exchanged with the rep to back up your claim.

Going over the rep's head will probably get you some movement on the issue.
 
The insertion order does not have a lot of details. However, he did mention it in his emails and phone calls (recorded). I think the terms and conditions mention that I should do it within 15 days or something. I did it right on the 15th day. I also asked for information from him right after the campaign was paused. I think he delayed on purpose. But I still sent the email with the list of leads and the details about them / analysis on what was wrong right on the last day. The leads were absolute junk and he himself said there was something wrong.
 
The insertion order does not have a lot of details. However, he did mention it in his emails and phone calls (recorded). The IO did link to a terms and conditions and I checked everything on it. I think the terms and conditions mention that I should do it within 15 days or something. I did it right on the 15th day. I sent the email with the list of leads and the details about them / analysis on what was wrong right on the last day.

Moreover, I have recorded phone calls (few) and emails. Does what the guy said/promised over emails and phone calls hold no weight? Can they just make any promises then without any consequences?
 
MyWorks said:
Moreover, I have recorded phone calls (few) and emails. Does what the guy said/promised over emails and phone calls hold no weight? Can they just make any promises then without any consequences?
Click to expand...
They can without legal consequences, as the contract you signed is the final word and whatever a rep says does not trump the contract.

The rep can face employment consequences if he promised you things outside of the contract without approval. Especially since it could cost the company you as a future customer.
 
They are just not willing to accept anything was their fault. They are sending it to an outside collection agency. How will this affect us (the company)? Will it show up on the credit report or when someone does a credit check? The invoices are already past their due date.
 
I'm not crazy about the idea of paying for bad leads. Don't be a pushover.

That encourages such bad business activity to flourish. Unless your business has a Dun & Bradstreet credit history that you are obsessed about protecting, I wouldn't worry about a collection agency harming your business credit because your business probably has none to begin with. That is why new businesses typically need a personal guarantor to sign for any business loan, merchant account, etc. You can also force the collection agency to verify the debt and you can dispute the validity by stating your case on why the traffic is fraudulent.

These are obviously fraudulent leads. You should build up a case by documenting the names, tying it to real people, cross checking if the ip address is a proxy, checking what country and city the ip is in and if it matches the lead data, and checking if these leads generated any legitimate business activity via server logs, etc.

Then take thiscase and hand it over to a lawyer who then sends them a nastygram telling them to fuck off about the payment because all the traffic is obviously fraudulent. Trust me they'll go away.
 
bluechinagroup said:
These are obviously fraudulent leads. You should build up a case by documenting the names, tying it to real people, cross checking if the ip address is a proxy, checking what country and city the ip is in and if it matches the lead data, and checking if these leads generated any legitimate business activity via server logs, etc.

Then take this case and hand it over to a lawyer who then sends them a nastygram telling them to fuck off about the payment because all the traffic is obviously fraudulent. Trust me they'll go away.
Click to expand...

Too much experience with this kind of resolution over the years, came here to say exactly this. It's almost verbatim to my procedure when this happens, I establish it(well) with a network before I even sign an IO and as a result I monetize without(much) traffic drama anymore.
 
I did send them a detailed lead file where I have the names, email Ids, business names, phone numbers of the leads.

I would say 95-98% of the leads were just shit. I can post samples here if you want. They were not real business names, fake chinese names, wrong phone numbers, all yahoo email IDs. I sent it to them. The AE said he would discuss this internally and get back. But he did not. I got a reminder for an invoice payment from their finance team.

Now, they are refusing to accept that the mistake was theirs. They said everything was right on their end.

We are a venture funded firm/startup (technology/software). Our credit report /history is important to us. That is one of the biggest things that is worrying me. Would this adversely affect us and how do I deal with this?
 
MyWorks said:
I did send them a detailed lead file where I have the names, email Ids, business names, phone numbers of the leads.
Click to expand...

IP's? Proxies? These two can solidify your case and are very important to getting the leverage back in your corner. In a world where you are the paying customer and it's their obligation to do right by your money, you've made them feel like they are the more important part of the equation and as a result it sounds like they have a firm grip on your stones.

You've shown your (inexperience) card to them by handling it the way you have thusfar.

They are trying to steal from you man, would you be as cordial if someone physically tried to rob you without a weapon? Make noise, or be walked on. This is the old west in some ways and you better be ready to draw blood or you'll end up a victim.
 
bluechinagroup said:
These are obviously fraudulent leads. You should build up a case by documenting the names, tying it to real people, cross checking if the ip address is a proxy, checking what country and city the ip is in and if it matches the lead data, and checking if these leads generated any legitimate business activity via server logs, etc.
Click to expand...

This is all fine and good, but speaking from a network's perspective, there are some merchants who don't do this until a billing cycle has come and gone. Sometimes they'll even wait for more than one billing cycle before they take any time to look at the sales that have been generated. They're then surprised when the network pushes back on reversals that fall outside what's covered on the IO.

While there are many great tools available to networks to identify fraudulent traffic, we don't have access to customer data. Therefore fraud management is a team effort. Both the networks AND the merchants have to do their part.

When merchants don't do their part, and leads become contractually payable because they let their reversal window elapse, they can ask for late reversals, but they can't just demand them and expect the network to agree. Especially when the affiliate has been paid because the deadlines were missed.

Just about all experienced merchants know this and the month-end reversal process goes well. But every once in a while there's a merchant who doesn't quite understand their responsibilities as per the contract.

I have to wonder if the OP falls into this latter category. He doesn't seem to know the terms of the contract he signed, doesn't come back to post updates and is posting this same question on other forums.

Anyway, just providing the network's perspective on fraud management.
 
@MaxSteve,
As soon as the leads started coming in, I called them up and told them that the leads are of poor quality and asked them to look into it. He said yes, he would do that. But the lead quality did not improve. I was also extremely difficult getting intouch with the AE. He did not reply to emails or phone calls. I told them to pause the campaign (this was done after I sent out something like 8-9 emails and several phone calls/voice mails in a single day.

Then, I told them that the lead quality is bad and send them a few leads as sample. Then, I send them a lead file with all the details. This was done within 15 days of the deadline (this window is mentioned in the contract and it was done within that time).

I also told them this as soon as I got the invoice. According to their contract, if something like this happens, then, both parties have to discuss this. But it seems we've been the only party doing the discussing and they just asked us to pay.
 
As it's possible for the affiliate to optimise every aspect of the tracking and leads. Is it possible for the advertiser to optimise their affiliates? Say affiliate 3654 is sending 100 bad leads, can yon not just pause them your end?

Also these days I was reading an interview from the guy who owned/s a4d and he says a lot of scammers who control botnets stuff leads.

It's not always the affiliates that are bad. This kind of shit hurts the good affiliates.
 
I discussed this with them and they told me that they did not have affiliates drive traffic or leads to them. It was the network itself that did that.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Top Bottom