The Cardspike Situation

[Ridge]

I know almost everyone here is a PAP person too, so I'm sure you have seen my 25 posts trying to get issues resolved with Greg and Cardspike. At least 5 of my posts have been deleted and several I have been asked to edit.

I've been promoting CS since day 1, got several high stakes players signed up and playing, including 3 Pokerstars Super Nova elite players. I've invested a lot of time, money, and energy into making this one of my top rooms. I even built 3 cardspike niche sites.

As you have seen on the PAP forums, I had to pitch a fit to get my players their rakeback paid which amounts to mid 5 figures at least. Promise after promise from Greg have amounted to nothing.

As of this point today, some of my players have been paid, some have not. I am owed over 5k in affiliate money and haven't seen a dime. My forum guys who earn me a lot of money are suspicious of the whole mess now, and I will not be able to push any room hard for a while because of the lack of trust because of CS..

I'm at the point where I dunno what to do. Greg keeps making promises and nothign ever gets done.. I even cornered him on the PAP Radio show, which Randy R invited me on there to do. Still nothing gets done.

Now I've heard from several well respected members that there is some kind of issues with Cardspike, I do know that I am not the only person having issues and not being paid. I know PAS is not getting any response form them as well.

So, what do I do here guys?? I feel I have been pretty patient and understanding. I honestly think the world of Greg, but I am disappointed in this whole situation now. (Is Greg P a member here?) Also, that bring me to my next long post about the direction of PAP which is being run my my good buddy Randy R.. I told him today that I was disappointed that he was even involved with PAP/CAP.. To me, I think they are ruining a good place and PAP is a danger to our industry now.

PAP is promoting shady programs, shady poker rooms, and doing it all for money. Do they really have no morals or second thoughts about promoting companies that change their terms from one post to the next??

I am not the moral police by any means, I know I can be a major dick sometimes and I really don't mean to be.. I just can be too blunt with my opinion. I don't a huge issue with accepting money for ad space, but that is different from an all out endorsement of a room or program.. this leads affiliates to think that it is a good room to promote.

I would not put a poker room on my forum unless I thought they were 100% safe and would bring some sort of value to my websites. PAP obviously doesn't care about anything but whoring shady programs.. So anyway, this is the best thing about a private forum, everyone can be honest here without the threat of deleted post, MOD warnings, or punishment.

Please give me your suggestions on how to deal with this, and any info that might help me understand what is REALLY happening with Cardspike and your views on PAP

[MJ]

Do what Prop does on his Bodog pages - immediatly post a red flag warning that there is issues with this room and play at your own risk etc.

Show your members that outside of going to all ends to get their money, you'll also alert others and not keep promoting the room.

I think that works even better than removing the room and allows your pages to keep aging in case things turn around. - using the blacklist warning to get Greg's attention might help, but I think it's pretty clear he just doesn't give a shit.

[MJ]

PAP/CAP I made a post that sums up my thoughts over on the AGD thread.

[MPC]

I have been following the thread and your posts. When Greg announced Card Spike, I went and bought a few domains. But I decided not to take the plunge head first like you did. I decided to wait and see how things would work out. It's only normal to have some start up glitches, but this seems to be beyond normal to me.

Why are you not getting paid? What's the argument? You've been doing this for a few months, and you should get paid every month. Have you considered threats? Obviously if you're alreay owed $5K, that means you made them a ton of money. Demand to be paid, give a deadline, and list the consequence (i.e. redirecting all your players to oh... I don't know... Aced?)

I don't know Greg personally and I'm sure he's a great guy, but this is business. It is quite possible that Greg is getting dicked around as much as you are, or that his technical crew is simply incompetent (in regards to players being tracked, or getting their bonuses, etc). But it seems to me like there is a common theme - no boday is getting paid, not affiliates and not players. They have to fight for their bonuses, and at the end of the day, the person who's going to get hurt the most will not be Card Spike, it will be you. You are fortunate to have a highroller market, but when these players get feed up with CS, they'll remember who refered them there. And your credibility will go down the drain. Perhaps you should cut your losses and put everything on hold until CS get their act together and PAY those they owe money too. Don't send them more players. It's not worth hurting your credibility over this. Hopefully things will get better, and you can re-open the doors and flow the traffic back to CS.

I'm still wiating to hear positive experiences before I start pormoting them. Yes, I realize that this means missed opportunities in terms of SERPs but I'll catch up later. In the long run, the SERP battle is always on-going and those who are at the top today are not guranteed to stay there.

[MPC]

Do what Prop does on his Bodog pages - immediatly post a red flag warning that there is issues with this room and play at your own risk etc.

I don't like this approach. If you raise a red flag, then why do you still bother refering players there?

I prefer the method pokerlistings used with UB a while back when they simply left the room listed, but when you clicked the link to get to the room info, or to download, you just got a message "This room is suspended from our listing due to xxx".

Doing it that way actually gives a negative image of the room so they will be a lot more responsive to your requirements (unless you are a nobody, but this sin't the case). They'll want you to take down that negative publicity asap so they will have no choice but to take care of it.

[CK]

I don't like this approach. If you raise a red flag, then why do you still bother refering players there?

This is what you do. You dont refer players still you yank them entirely

http://www.stacksback.com/poker/bodog-poker/

[MPC]

even better

[MJ]

That's exactly what I meant (Prop did exact same thing).

Oh and I think the important thing MPC is that Greg was ignoring communication on whatever the issues are.

[MPC]

Well, I have to give him the benefit of the doubt. Not because I know him personally, but because he has a very good reputation. It is entirely possible they he was unable to respond immediatly, either because he was busy reponding to someone else, or maybe he didn't have new information to provide. Greg is just one person, and this sounds to me like it's bigger than that.

[Trikkur]

I promote them through PAS and have sent ~20 players. I made a video there myself and told my players to go play there personally. As most of us did, I trusted Greg from his association with PAP. I'm not speaking for PokerAffiliateSolutions when I say this, but they have not received any stats nor payments of any kind. Which means in turn, that I have no stats or payments from CardSpike. Players on my forum have reported not receiving payment and myself personally, I don't think I got paid as a player. I can't be 100% sure of whether or not I got paid because the amount was too small in comparison to what I had there to make a real notice, that is why I haven't said it before this.

I also promote them through a non-rakeback site with a direct affiliate account. I've had quite a few clicks, but no signups. Of course I can't confirm or deny that any of those players actually did sign up, but I know a few others that have promoted them have said the same thing.

I think it's crazy how this has all gone and being handled really bad by both CardSpike and PAP, etc. I have just removed them from my listings and warned my forum members about what's going on. I really hope this is all solved, but I don't really know if I can ever promote them again.

EDIT - Also can anyone confirm that PAP/CAP has nothing to do with CardSpike. I know a lot of people had reasons to think that, but Greg said they didn't in the PAP arbitration thread.