Please Explain

What is Party's problem with Rakeback? Perhaps, I do not totall understand how the whole thing works. An affiliate signs you up and that affiliate is then compensated based on how much rake you produce right? If so, then why does PP care if those Affiliates distribute part of their compensation to the players producing it?

I know I am missing something here, right?

[RikaKazak]

First off, it makes people make 2nd accounts if they didn't start rakeback in the beginning. (thus cutting into pp's profits)

Also pp is adopting pokerstars business model where instead of giving rakeback to players they don't mind multitabling pros leaving (thus being easier on fish) and also using that "rakeback money" for t.v. advertising and other advertisments.

[Niediam]

Big time non-rakeback affiliates (who sign up FAR more people than rakeback affilites) are also upset because they players are leaving to set up a 2nd account once they learn about rakeback...

The short answer is this:
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If the only people who signed up with rakeback affiliates were those who were signing up for poker for the first time, Party would not have a problem.
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In fact, the vast majority of people who sign up with rakeback affiliates ALREADY have poker accounts in their names. This means two things:

1. They are violating the terms of service by opening multiple accounts, generally with false information on at least one of them. Good luck finding scammers or credit card fraud when half your players have false info in their accounts. You gonna delete half your user base?
2. The person who marketed and generated the FIRST account is getting screwed out of the revenue. This may be Party itself, or may be some affiliate who advertised and produced content. Either way, someone spent time and money to catch that first sign-up, and now they're losing it. They're not going to be happy.

From a "Business" point of view:

Many other industries that use affiliates prohibit them from discounting out of their own commission, ie. they also do not allow "rakeback."

Problem here is this kind of discounting hurts the brand and price integrity of the original product.

Most companies either employ one of two methods to attract sales: branding or heavy discounting, Starbucks on the branding side and Wal-Mart on the other.

Party Poker has obviously chosen the branding route and does not want rakeback/discount affiliates to damage their brand name/price integrity.

Players who find out about RB after they have signed-up with a white hat affiliate feel upset/cheated somehow. Then RB affiliate poaches them away. In general this is just sleazy business.

Also you are putting some random affiliate in charge of player retention and as a result their actions, either good or bad, are very closely associated with the parent company Party Poker.

Just some other reasons a site would choose to not allow RB [img]/images/graemlins/wink.gif[/img]

[morgant]

spot on!

[StellarWind]

Excellent post.

[ QUOTE ]
Also you are putting some random affiliate in charge of player retention and as a result their actions, either good or bad, are very closely associated with the parent company Party Poker.

[/ QUOTE ]
This is correct of course but the sad irony is that most rakeback affiliates seem to be more ethical (see recent VIP nonpayment threads) and provide much better customer service than Party.

[PauliF]

2 points

1) high volume customers get discounts and special terms in every single industry especially the high end brand conscience ones

2) they specifically set out telling people they knew make a living playing poker online that the bonus system was intended to be regular. they knew they were lying... they messed with peoples income out of spite and the desire to harm their competitors....

they blatantly lied and act like they have done nothing wrong....

I REALLY hope that whoever the 5 people are who win those cruise places make sure they address these serious issues with party representatives continually, loudly and publicly and that they do this for the duration of the cruise and especially if they make the money or even win

thats what i will be doing should i get one

[emonrad87]

[ QUOTE ]
I REALLY hope that whoever the 5 people are who win those cruise places make sure they address these serious issues with party representatives continually, loudly and publicly and that they do this for the duration of the cruise and especially if they make the money or even win

thats what i will be doing should i get one

[/ QUOTE ]


Don't piss off the bunch of "unethical" people too much, or at least make sure you have cash to buy a plane ticket home out of a random port town. [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]

[MicroBob]

why would it be any different to address this issues in person as opposed to via e-mail or over the phone?

Is it just for your own self-satisfaction? Because I don't see an in-person tongue-lashing actually provoking them into changing their policies.

Darren seems to believe that those players who didn't make it to the target were not deserving of their full percentage.
He made this decision after the fact....or maybe he was in charge of this decision all along and the various vip-reps were misrepresenting the situation (my original rep seems to have completely vanished...I really don't think she's there at all anymore).

Obviously he would have been wise to keep his players happy and just give them what we were told we should/would be getting.
But he decided not to...and has heard from a ton of players about it I'm sure.
So what good would it do to tell them this in person?


They also would have been wise to not screw around with the December bonuses and pretend like the Santa and touchdown things were a viable substitute.

I have barely played any hands there this month because I'm getting better incentives elsewhere (I just started to clear away my $100 reload bonus though just for kicks).
I have also told them that I am looking forward to getting my incentive for December and hope that it is worthwhile because, for the time-being, my time is better spent on other sites.

Well, it's Dec 18th almost and still no real VIP offers. Just a regular reload as well as a couple mostly-pointless promotions that I'm not bothering with.
It's up to them whether they want to attract me to give a high-volume of hands there or not.

30k hands this month have gone to one of their rivals already from me alone that they could have had all for their own greedy little hands if they had just offered me ANYTHING remotely reasonabler.

Again, I even TOLD them pretty much, "I'm getting offers and incentives from all kinds of other sites. I would love to bring my high-volume play back to Party. What can you offer me?"
Their response was to wait (and wait and wait and wait) so that, I think, is an indication of how seriously they are taking the issue of retaining high-volume players.

I will of course go for the cruise package if I deem it to be worthwhile. But again, that's up to them.
Since they are only giving away 5 packages I might just look it over and decide that my chances of winning are too slim to make it worth my while (thus Party misses another chance to get me and my high-volume-ish play to return to their site).


I keep waiting for Party to do something. I keep waiting for them to actually want me to come back.
I'm still waiting. And, in the meanwhile, the other sites are benefiting.