Complaint: Peel.com

[torifan]

Your complete and full real name: David Drumm

The exact URL of your site where this issue occurred -http://sportsgirls.net

email: dave@sportsgirls.net

The nature and timing of your contact efforts via email and or phone - email on 7/18 to David R.

The exact nature of your complaint:
This is a warning to any webmasters using or considering using peel.com to serve popup ads. They retroactively reduced the CPM rate of ads served back at least as far as April which is when I joined. The rate was reduced from near $1 CPM to near $.50 CPM. There was a statement on the stats page that stated that all revenue figures were final by the 10th of the month following the month. I noticed the stats for Apr, May, and June were reduced by nearly 50% on 7/17 and sent an email inquiry that day. I received a reply on 7/18 stating that the 10 day rule was "outdated"...

As you know, we recently instated a 90-day payment policy. Basically, we are not receiving accurate data from our advertisers until late into this 90-day period, making it impossible for us to provide more than an estimate to you regarding the value of your advertising. Unfortunately, the figures we received back were lower than we anticipated, thus the change in the system. We are replacing the outdated line about the 10 days from the end of the month, as we can only provide an estimation of our sites' revenues until we receive every report from our advertisers.

This is my reply to Peel on 7/18, to which I have received no response:

Your site stated that the figures were final after the 10th of the month -- then they were final. If the statement is outdated then it should be replaced and affect only revenues going forward. What you are describing is a RETROactive decrease in the revenue, which is completely unacceptable. The decrease was drastic - almost 50%. At $1 CPM, I was barely able to tolerate
the 30% decline in traffic caused by the annoyance of the ads, but at .50 CPM it is simply not worth it.

I request that you escalate my complaint to someone who can re-instate the old revenue figures. If there is no positive response by this Friday, I will post a formal complaint and warning on geekvillage.com and my webmaster site, searchprograms.com.

The other aspect of this issue is that Peel's action was taken without any warning or notification thereby eroding the trust that we had built up. In this business, trust is number one.

[Czar]

Thank you for keeping the community informed, Dave.

For those of you who have not encountered an official complaint of this type, please note the following term from the posting guide:

If you are not a party to the issue, but wish to add positive comments to the thread to help both parties, please do so. If you are not a party to the issue (you did not start the specific Complaint topic), and wish to post your own negative comments, YOU MUST START A NEW THREAD AND FOLLOW ALL OF THE PROCEDURES OUTLINED ABOVE.

If the merchant in question chooses to respond to this issue, which we hope they will, the representative's response must conform to the following procedure:

Merchant/vendor member procedure for your FIRST post:

1) Your complete and full real name
2) Your position and title and company name with the company in question
3) The exact URL of your site
4) Your email address or company email address for resolution
5) Your response. Devoid of profanity, efforts to humiliate, abuse, attack etc. Details of your contact efforts. If YOU know from first hand knowledge that the member is a "cheater" or violated your rules then simply state this once if you are so inclined. Or tell them to contact you privately.

This is THE END of the dialog. A single response from both sides. After that it's taken up in private via private email. Additional comments by either side are never appropriate. Please remember that all of this data must be in your FIRST post. Data in your profile, the back seat of your car, your signature, your computers hard disk, or your best friends desk is never appropriate and does not eliminate the requirements. If a vendor responds with no record or similar verbiage the Webmaster Member is banned.

Team Geek thanks you all in advance for your anticipated cooperation.