Ripped Off By Copeac – Intermark Media
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It seems that I bitch a lot on this blog and I guess that since I don’t have the time to focus on blogging about affiliate marketing that I may as well use it as an outlet when I have something to say.
If you would like to read the FULL story about my issue with Copeac then you can click here to read it. This includes email conversations and instant message conversations.
The short version of what happened is that I got permission from Danielle & Mike Krongel of Intermark Media to promote my affiliate link. I promoted my link for almost a year and brought them a lot of new affiliates with the agreement that I would earn 2% of each referrals commission for life.
An affiliate signed up under my link and was generating me almost $7,000 a month in commissions. After a few months of this, his affiliate ID mysteriously disappeared from my referral account. I was told that it was just a glitch with Direct Track and his ID was placed back into my account.. but the commissions stopped.
I waited a few months and emailed Danielle and was quickly told that I was no longer entitled to this persons commissions because he opened a new company and a new affiliate ID.. But I was still the one who referred him to the network.
A year went by and I said nothing about it until earlier in 2010 when a new affiliate manager at Copeac who had no idea about my situation decided to ping me on AIM and try to push weight loss garbage rebill offers. I explained to her that I do not run those kinds of offers and every week she continued to ping me and try to get me to push them.
Finally I decided to ask her to look into the situation for me about the fraud that Copeac committed with my account. She came back with a 3rd excuse and informed me that company policy had changed and the affiliate I referred was earning too much money and that he was voided from my account.
Why was I told 3 different stories? Direct Track glitch? No such thing that could cause this sort of glitch. The other 2 are jokes also. The company policy did not change until after they did this to my account. Mike Krongel and his company basically got away with fraud. I don’t really care what reason they had for doing it. They went about it in the wrong way and what they did was unethical and illegal.
As stated above, I referred a lot of people to them over the years. I was still earning commissions from other affiliates after they removed the $7,000 a month affiliate and this past July, after my correspondence with Kristen about promoting weight loss rebill offers, both of my affiliate accounts were closed, without notice.. along with all of my referrals.
I consulted attorneys and decided that it wasn’t worth it for me to go through all of that. I even asked Copeac directly for a settlement after several of the other companies that I do business with told me that I should stop sitting on it and do something about it. Nothing. It seems that they either don’t care or that they thought I would just forget about it.
If you are looking for a good read, please check out the full story. Read the emails and lies and you will see how shady they were.
8 Comments on this post
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mike krongel said:
Aden,
I think we spoke about this a long time ago. The publisher you referred did open a different account with us when his changed his business around (from personal to corporate), that publisher also no longer runs with us. I believe we paid you out, i also think we paid for you to fly to Vegas with your SO and paid for your stay.
I am sorry affiliate marketing didn’t work out for you but you were paid for all the referrals of that one affiliate. he turned off in early 2009 and ran Rez V offers with Azoogle which is why your commissions for him stopped (he actually ran with another network because we wouldnt pay him $1 more because we had to factor your referral fee in to what he was being paid). The affiliate also didnt even know who you were and claimed he never clicked any of your links to sign up. Whatever the case you were paid tens of thousands of dollars in referrals from this publisher as admitted by yourself in your previous post.
Sorry you feel you got a bad deal but you were paid for all of his traffic, not sure why you still have a gripe (a false one at that) years later and never brought it up to me.
Always two sides of the story unfortunately your view is completely distorted.September 15th, 2010 at 3:36 pm -
mike krongel said:
Also your account was probably terminated due to inactivity, call us up and ask to have it re-enstated. We dont know what inactive accounts generate referral commissions. DT doesnt provide good reporting around the referral commission area.
September 15th, 2010 at 3:38 pm -
aden said:
Mike, you and I never spoke about this situation and this is the first time you have addressed it to me. I never brought this up to you directly because I figured that by speaking with Danielle you had been made aware of the situation and been given an opportunity to handle it as you saw fit.
I really have no reason to trust your newest explanation. This one is merely the latest in a series of half truths and deceptive lies given to me over the past year and a half.
Affiliate marketing has worked out great for me, despite my experience with Copeac. I have been running my own marketing business since 2008.
Regardless of how much I was paid, a contract is a contract, and just because it turned out to benefit me doesn’t give anyone the right to terminate it. I don’t expect Copeac to fix this anymore, which is why I posted this as a warning to any fellow publishers.
If you consider my view to be completely distorted, it is because my view has been shaped by a year and a half of lies that continue to this day.
September 16th, 2010 at 3:23 pm -
Name (required) said:
Hi,
Found this post from Andrew Wee’s blog. Really sorry to hear about your situation. Ive been involved with affiliate marketing since 2008 and have learned a lot about this industry and witnessed a lot of shady shit going. Trust no one in this industry. Publishers are rarely valued and are seen as the bottom of the pile. Even if youre doing high volume, and have networks blowing shit up your ass – dont trust them. Dont trust anyone apart from your family and close friends. The internet may have revolutionalised how we do business, but dealing with companies over the web is still very risky. I’m guessing you are already doing this now, but make sure you spread your earnings everywhere. This is easier said than done since not all networks run the same offers, but its likely you will get screwed over again some time in the future and spreading your earnings over multiple networks and advertisers is the only way to help reduce financial damages.October 15th, 2010 at 11:48 am -
Petra said:
Mike your partnered with a company that is ripping off a lot of people including me with automatically taking payment for no services. https://signup.grabswag.co?m/index_v2.php.
How does this make you feel?
“GrabSwag.com, is a scam, partnered with a company called IMM Interactive/Copeac which is owned by Mike Krongel”contact info
Mike Krongel
IMM Interactive/Copeac
135 Crossways Park Drive
Woodbury NY, 11797July 27th, 2011 at 10:04 pm -
Karma said:
KARMA! Copeac is now closed…
January 30th, 2012 at 2:24 pm -
aden said:
While I don’t take satisfaction if the demise of the livelihood of all the employees of the network and all the affiliates, bad business practice will result in bad karma.
January 30th, 2012 at 2:39 pm -
buklau said:
I wonder what Mike Krongel is doing right now..
February 4th, 2012 at 6:15 pm