Quote:
Originally Posted by sangaman
Add me as another "affiliate" whose FT balance is in jeopardy.
I didn't get the e-mail when I was supposed to. After a few days of waiting, I submitted a fresh claim for my cash balance plus tournament tickets and provided my account history spreadsheet as proof. After a few more days with nothing, I e-mailed them and asked why I never received a claim number from them in the first place and what the status of my claim is.
Today they responded and copy-pasted the list of people not eligible for payment, and then said "Based on data supplied to us by FTP you have been identified as an affiliate of FTP and will not be eligible to participate in this remission process."
I called up and got nowhere, they said that they'll do some research and call me back "as soon as possible" but couldn't give me a time frame and that I should call them again in two weeks if I don't hear anything.
Some relevant facts about my account:
-I have an upper/mid five figure balance. This is more than I wanted or needed, but Full Tilt's wire transfer feature hadn't been working for a few months leading up to Black Friday and my money was stuck on there.
-I deposited a couple of times (with my checking account I believe), mostly to take advantage of deposit bonuses.
-I believe I opened an affiliate account a long time ago, although I'm not sure I actually ever referred anyone. If I did, it was a handful of microstakes college friends most likely. I also may have done the refer-a-friend bonus although I really don't remember at all, I would guess I did not. I never advertised for Full Tilt or anything like that.
-I originally had rakeback paid to me directly from Full Tilt. Eventually I was switched to rakebackpros, and then raketherake. From reading this thread, this seems like the most likely reason my account was flagged as an affiliate.
-I was a very active player. I had the black card and the maximum Iron Man streak. Whatever money I may have made from referring players would have been a tiny fraction of my current account balance. The net total of all my rakeback payments over the years, on the other hand, would probably be a pretty substantial amount.
And perhaps most importantly, I was never an employee, vendor, team FT player, shareholder, or board member of Full Tilt.
I would be happy to discuss this dilemma with any other players in a similar situation or any people with knowledge on the matter who may be able to help. Thank you very much.
Unfortunately your fuzzy recall makes it look like you might be legitimately classified as an affiliate. Do what you can to fight it but signing up as an affiliate and then signing people up through your affiliate might be a tough hurdle to overcome. I doubt the amount of traffic you generated will be relevant to this determination unless it was none, then there could be a shot.
People got to understand affiliates were commissioned salespeople working as independent contractors. The money affiliates got paid came out of the money stolen from the players. I think the decision to not pay affiliates is 100% correct (I don't believe rakeback and refer a friend are affiliate programs). In your case I hope you did not sign up as an affiliate a long time ago and sign up a few microstakes players. I would advise not telling them you might have done those things either.
I think your best course of action is to believe you never signed up as an affiliate. Trying to argue you were only a little tiny affiliate might not be fruitful.
I think one advantage you have is with the seeming entangled rakeback players that there may be room to wiggle out.