Complaint Review: PaPaid Response - Internet

I re-launched with Paid Response on July 31st after the previous owner went bankrupt owing me $1,425.38. I spent money on advertising and followed all guidelines set by the new owner, Aaron Bowering. Things were really looking up, although my stats (provided by Paid Response) showed my 18 second-tier affiliates (people who joined under me during the old Paid Response days) making more sales than I was.

Then I get the following urgent message from a Mark Loudrey of investigations: Your account will be suspended due to the following:

You have referred only the following ad placers: (during your ENTIRE time with PR , not since it relaunched)

Affiliates Referred: (18 i.d. numbers given)

Yet, your earnings show: Second Tier Commissions $708.00 $708.00

Which is impossible.

Either something is wrong with your account and you will need to create a new one, or there has been something occuring with abuse to our scripts. We have removed over $687.25 from these earnings which is invalid and are investigating the matter.

Your click through's are marked as valid and then coming back as not. For some reason it appears as if EVERY single click through gets marked valid, which is not only very unlikely, but impossible as many of the email addresses within the logs are invalid and even marked in such format as [email protected] or mispelled ad#asdfadfad.net for examples.

As for the earnings showing over $700 from your downline, this is also not possible. Please review:

Your affiliate downline: (18 member i.d.'s) has earned $0 since working with PR . . .

You have had one downline earn, out of your entire downline. This means, the most you could have earned was $16.00 from six sign up referrals of his at $2 each. You have had 18 referrals from your URL during your entire time with Paid Response equalling: $270.00 at $15.00/referral.

HOWEVER, the following downline sign ups occured before our relaunch (meaning , they were through the former director, which we are not paying out for anything before July 21st, our launch date). For some reason, they were added to your account with us now, when they should have been removed, and you should have started from $0 like everyone else.

Affiliate (i.d. #) - Joined Feb 18 2003 (et cetera) . . .

Meaning none of these are valid to be paid out, since they all occured long before our relaunch on July 30th.

Bottom line..

Your earnings are impossible. Simple as that. We're going to look into this, but in the meantime the invalid earnings exceeding $680+ have been promptly removed and your account has been suspended and will remain as such until we determine whether it is a problem on our end, or if foul play is involved.

I would appreciate any feedback you can provide, during our investigation.

Mark Loudrey

Investigations

***************************

My reply e-mail: Your charges are absurd. I have no ability to know why you are doing this to me other than to avoid paying me what your system has marked. If this is a system problem, then I need you to investigate the matter thoroughly on your end. My PR identification is 6844 and I have used exclusively Pay-per-click search engines in the "old" PR and now also in the "new" PR.

Please hurry with your investigation because I have spent enough time and money here to last me a lifetime of frustration.

P.S. Your suspension has just cost me an additional $29.95 that I can not recover from the recently okay'd incentive site, 123WebHits.com. Thanks a lot. If you are indeed scamming me, you will not hear the last of this.

I then sent a follow-on email: Also, regarding your affiliate findings. When you first added the affiliates to my tier there were about 61 or so of them. I assumed the 18 remaining affiliates were actively working and having success at it.

I'm using http://tinyurl.com/ikxu in place of my long url,

http://www.paidresponse.com/cgi-bin/a.pl?pr&6844, if that is any help in your investigation.

Now I'm going to have to spend additional time at my expense shutting down all of the search engines I just re-invested my precious time in re-loading with the new PR information.

Please investigate away and let me know as soon as you can.

And Mark Loudrey replied: Michael, scamming you? Of course not. But you did not earn $700 with us, I'm sorry but this is the truth. You have not had even ONE referral since you began with our relaunch July 31st. Not one. Yet your earnings, contrary to EVERYONE else with us shows over $700 in "Two Tier Commissions". This is simply inaccurate.

We will pay you what is left in your account and verified, and will also reimburse you for your recent $29.95 sign up for that incentive based program. After that, we feel it is in our best interest if we close your account. There are many other typing companies that you be better off with. For us, we can not keep an account open that shows over $700 in less than three weeks from two tier affiliates that are non existant. We just can't. I will issue the credit via Paypal on Monday and your account will be closed. . .

My reply to the above: Mark, your investigation is a farce and you, sir, are an a*s.

Then I sent this message: Also, regarding your affiliate findings. When you first added the affiliates to my tier there were about 61 or so of them. I assumed the 18 remaining affiliates were actively working and having success at it.

I sent an additional response: I did nothing wrong, Mark. And BTW, I've invested a lot of time and money the past two weeks on this supposedly new image company. Take a look at my findings on the message board. This is insane. I don't know what is going on with your data but it is incorrect. But so be it, Paid Response, go to hell.

In his reply email, Mark said: You never had 61 affiliates in your downline that we can see. And all the ones you do have are no longer with us. We have paid you out what is valid in your account, and as a sign of faith, we have paid for the program you just signed up with, something we didn't obviously have to do. I wish we could keep you aboard, but because of how strange your entire account is, it's best we simply go seperate ways. I am honestly not sure what happened, but your entire account was "strange", from half the clicks to every "two tier" credit that wasn't valid. I do wish you the best...

PS: We are looking for a customer support rep. Perhaps you would be interested in applying?

(!!!)

I replied: Customer support rep? You've got to be kidding. I have absolutely no trust in you or the PR organization at this point. I DID NOTHING AGAINST THE RULES.

I am filing a full report on Paid Response on RipOff Report.com with your information.

I will email you the article once it is completed and you can post the rebuttals you posted here, but the world needs to know about this scam.

Then I received one final message:

A payment of $92.00 (for $62.00 in clicks and $30 for that program we did not require you use) has been paid to you via Paypal. Your account has also been closed.

Listen, world: I F O L L O W E D T H E I R R U L E S,

I D I D N O T H I N G W R O N G, A N D I S T I L L

G O T S C R E W E D T W I C E. Once from the previous bankrupt owner and now from the new owner and his organization.

Michael

Colesville, Maryland
U.S.A.