I forgot.. How did you guys find out you were tagged as an affiliate?

Tried a different browser and was able to upload docs. Try that if you have the same problem.

Here's some info from the email:



"The amount that an Eligible Petitioner is entitled to receive will equal the final balance in the Petitioner’s account with FTP as of April 15, 2011, less any Affiliate promotions or Affiliate transfers to the Petitioner (the “FTP Account Balance”). You may view your FTP Account Balance through the online claim filing process at www.FullTiltPokerClaims.com. Once you log on using the Petition Number and Control Number set forth above, you will receive directions for accessing your account information and filing a petition and/or disputing the reported account balance. The FTP Account Balance displayed through the online filing process will reflect solely your poker transactions, and will not reflect Affiliate transfers or promotions."

I guarantee some genius decided that the rakeback payments, which were labeled as "Affiliate to Player Transfer", are affiliate income in those of us who were labeled as affiliates.

Hopefully the PPA or someone else can talk some sense into them before March 2nd.

off by 30k here. fun times

I've posted my story here before, pretty high volume Full Tilt player. Had rakeback from rakebackpros (often labeled as "affiliate to player transfer" in my account history although not always). I believe I made an affiliate account in like 2007 and maybe referred a small handful of friends and made a few bucks, although it was peanuts compared to my balance. Was tagged as an affiliate and went through all the hoops last year.

Just got an e-mail today with P&C numbers. They say my balance is $33k, my account history shows it at $70k. Completely unacceptable. I haven't done the math yet but I wouldn't be surprised if they just subtracted every rakeback payment ever from my account (which goes back to March 2006) to come up with that number. That's ridiculous of course because rakeback was just my own money being returned to me due to me procuring rakeback deals rather than it being collected by the fraudulent site.

Looking for advice on how to best dispute this and ensure that the entire balance that I had as a player through rakeback, winnings, deposits, and P2P transfers that relate to poker activity.

Wow, horrible news for affiliates if their rakeback for their own play gets deducted.

There seem to be three possible cases:

1.) Rakeback you got from another affiliate for your own table play (you should get this $$$ just like "normal" players did)
2.) Affiliate payments you received from those you referred (this will be deducted from your final balance)
3.) "Self-rakeback" if you WEREN'T signed up with another affiliate but got rakeback anyway because you self-referred or because Full Tilt eventually gave it to you because of your volume (unclear whether you can argue for this $$)

Does anybody know how these three scenarios were coded in the transaction history? Maybe somebody could point out the difference to GCG.

How do you see your amount owed? Is it after the upload documents screen?

Here's an example at the possible difference in documentation also

When I have some time I will try to do the math to see how many of my rakeback payments were labeled affiliate to player transfer. If it equals the $37k+ I'm short according to them then I can confirm how it works. I'll post full results here when I'm done.

The logic behind deducting rakeback payments that were paid through an affiliate are moronic. If they are trying to imply that affiliates who referred players to Full Tilt shouldn't get any money for their referrals because they were referring players to a fraudulent site, then OK. But if they then take away the portion of the affiliate payments that went to the players, they are essentially punishing the victim.

I was a player and I had just over $70k as part of my playing balance. Effectively 0% of that $70k balance was earned by referring other players to Full Tilt. The site turned out to be fraudulent and I lost that due to said fraud. Now there's this remission process to make players like me whole, but there's this whole affiliate/rakeback debacle. Are they trying to say I shouldn't get that $37k because I defrauded myself by getting a rakeback deal on Full Tilt?

Lets be clear on who the victims of this ordeal are.

I was signed up through the hendon mob. My rb payments are shown as a2p. I don't see why that would be excluded when i'm the p in a2p. I guess I'll have to call them Monday and see if they have any further info.

What documents can we even upload besides account history downloaded from FTP?

Why shouldn't players get the money in #3? Also "self-referred" seems like non sequitur, nobody's being referred if you just get a rakeback deal for yourself. Some players did that after they were already signed up as I understand, although I wasn't one of those. You're basically just bargaining for lower fees from the website, meaning less money collected by the perpetrators of the fraud.

Also I know plenty of people with rakeback who didn't get tagged as affiliates, so how is any of this sensible or fair?

You can upload anything you want AFAIK... you mean, which would be useful to upload?

All I can think of is to do an analysis like sangaman is doing where you say "Here are the transactions where I was a player getting rakeback like any other player (I should get that money), and here are the transactions where I got money for being an affiliate (those should be deducted)."

Or sit tight for a bit and see if somebody else is able to get some clarity...

If you haven't already accepted I hope you at least try to dispute. It looks like there might be a lot of people in the same boat, it would probably help the disputes as a whole if they get them from a lot of people.

I hope others who see this do dispute even if their balance is only off a couple hundred dollars for these reasons. I'm hoping we can come to a consensus in this thread on what the best course of action is and then get as many people as possible to do that. At a minimum hit dispute and send in the player history spreadsheet with a brief explanation of the situation.

I can't find my balance anywhere on the website

IDK man, you're preaching to the choir, but it's up to the lawyers at this point. If there's something in the fine print that boots out the people in case 3, they might be out of luck. But they should still argue for their money, of course. It just may not be as blindingly obvious as case 1.

Affiliate here, got email today.

Logged on with proper numbers, and my balance was NOT recalculated. I was prompted to enter one instead.

So I entered my final balance as documented by the downloaded player account history spreadsheet. Then uploaded same spreadsheet as supporting documentation.

Then I had to sign a form saying I wasn't an affiliate. No clue why my process is thus far different than other affiliates. Seems silly and arbitrary.

Got the auto confirmation email, will report back on any relevant updates.

That must be the same email I received. It asked me to enter my balance. I aborted and didn't submit.

for me it was on the same screen with the upload documents after i logged in using the numbers in the email and then confirmed contact details screen (clicked continue) then i saw

account balance: x

button: correct click to confirm

button: dispute balance upload documents

sorry to ask a dumb question but are you sure that you clicked the "login" button on the website instead of "create a new petition" ?

So it seems like if you signed up through an affiliate and received any kind of transfers you got boned.

Although not all affiliates are rakeback providers, something else is triggering the account deductions because there are people who signed up for rake back and received petitions with the correct balances in the fall.

Not a dumb question, but I did click on login. It had all my info but it said to enter the balance

TY. I'm just not seeing why #3 is substantively any different than #1.

Sucks to feel so helpless about recovering money that, as you put it, blindingly obviously belongs to you but repeatedly get hit with these roadblocks and just have to hope that some bureaucrat somewhere uses common sense.

This is exactly what I see. And like you my number is also ~30k short of what it should be.

Let's not rule out incompetence on GCG. It's very possible they are just being ******ed and for some reason deducting rakebake from affiliates and not from non-affiliates.

No. The difference is that those people were not tagged as affiliates and thus GCG didn't scrutinize A2P transfers at all.

Those of us tagged as affiliates even received a different "The Distribution Method" section indicating that all affiliate payments are being deducted from out balances.

We're being judged on a separate criteria that doesn't make sense.