Quote:
Originally Posted by Oh_4Q_Man
I wonder if twoplustwo took any initiative in doing a little background check on the site before taking their money and allowing them to advertise here. I signed up and began playing there on the assumption they were ligit solely on the fact they were advertising here. Pretty silly reasoning on my part, but I'm sure I'm not the only one
You should assume that those you see advertising here have gone through no check of any kind.
For one thing, we run ads in some of our forums that come from ad networks, where we don't have a lot of control over what ads run (although I think there are some general choices we can make - I couldn't tell you exactly how those work as I don't deal with them).
When it comes to advertisers that work directly with us (as opposed to the aforementioned network ads), most of the vetting would be with the companies that have been around for a while, where there would be some that we know have issues and we would refuse to do business with. An example would be Absolute Poker/Ultimate Bet - I don't think we ever did business with them. Now that may have been pure luck in their early days when they weren't so obviously shady, but I can guarantee you that for the last few years of their existence, we wouldn't have touched them with a ten foot pole. But of course, sadly, there have been numerous companies that went rogue that advertised with us. I'm not sure what can really be done about that - most of the criticism we've faced around those situations were a few times when some of our posters felt we should have ended our relationship earlier than we did, but others were fine with our approach. We'll never make absolutely everyone happy unless we pull all advertising as soon as a few payments start coming in late, and that isn't realistic. We try to find the best balance we can.
Brand new companies are tricky. You want them to have a chance to make a go of it (wouldn't we all like some more good rooms?), and of course we're in business to make money. I'm not sure what you can really do with brand new companies. If some think we should have picked up on the ourgame name copy, I suppose they might have a point, but honestly I'm not sure what the law even is in the countries where both are based. As for the poster that said "Also it is honestly disgusting that 2+2 is letting these fraudsters advertise on this forum without any due diligence at all.", I'm not sure what he's expecting. I believe his allegations went from super users to rigged software to bots, so don't know how he thinks due diligence would work if he were in our spot (likely he hasn't thought about that). If anyone's expecting that we're going to stake a couple of people to play on every site for a week or two before we take advertising, I'm sorry to say that's just not going to happen.
Honestly, the way a lot of problems come to light are right here on our forums. There have been times in the past where we took on advertising from a company with a well-known history that had some rough patches, and we insisted they had to have a thread where they would answer questions about past issues. We have pulled advertising from companies that had no issues we were aware of, but had things come to light in their thread. It hasn't happened often, but we have done it, and would do it again if we thought the threshold for doing so was met.
Just to show you where my own standards are on this (and I'm not speaking for 2+2 in this regard - borderline advertisers I'd review with management before accepting), I'll speak about a few companies that have been posted about quite a bit on our forums. If EPN came to us looking to advertise, from my perspective it would be a flat-out "no" until they do some major work on clearing up their cashouts. Merge, I'd have some trepidation about - I'd want to be certain their cashout times are consistently good again, they'd definitely have to make a rep available on our forums to answer questions to be able to advertise, and even then it might be a "no". Chico skins would also require some investigation before allowing, just because of their past issues. Bodog, I'd have zero issue with them advertising here. Just some examples, and again that's from my perspective, and not the "official 2+2" line.
Cliffs: On 2+2, just like everywhere else on the Internet, TV, radio, print media, etc., assume that no background checks have been done on any advertisers. Yes, we watch for what we can, and we won't take just anyone's money regardless of reputation, but there are lots of things we might not know about, could miss, or a company with a spotless record could go rogue. Your fellow forum posters are often your best resource.