Why Does Market Leverage Suck Ass? I’ll Tell You Why!!!
written by Anthony Dinh
A few weeks ago, I started running some campaigns on Myspace, and I noticed that my clicks weren’t tracking correctly as there was a disparity between the click counts that Myspace was reporting and what Market Leverage’s system was reporting. I the contacted Chelsea Osoling, my affilate manager, who confirmed that they indeed were having issues with their tracking system. After hearing this, I immediately became concerned because I was getting some decent CTR’s, but no conversions. So, I asked Chelsea to check if the conversions where tracking correctly, and she assured me that everything was working fine with the conversions tracking system.
A couple days had passed, and I still wasn’t seeing any conversions, so I asked Chelsea if they could create a test lead to see if the campaign conversion was tracking correctly. She said that they couldn’t do this on their end, but that I was more than welcome to run a test for myself if I wanted…and this is where the nightmare began! The product I decided to test was “Easy Profit Shortcuts”. I filled out the registration form, and even paid $2.97 shipping for a CD that was supposed to arrive in the mail in a few days.
After completing the purchase, it said that I could get started right away, and I was taken to http://www.easyprofitshortcuts.com where I was supposed to logon…but wait, there was a problem. At no point during the registration process was I prompted to create a user account, nor was I automatically assigned one via email. There wasn’t even a register or create account button, so I decided to try the “forgot password” link, but to no avail. Instead of prompting for an email, it asked for a username, which I did not have. I tried using my email anyway just in case, and instead of getting an error like “sorry, username does not exist”, the page completely errored out with some XML errors. At this point, I was starting to question the legitimacy of this offer, so I pinged Chelsea on AIM, and she said that she would notify an Ad Manager who will look into it.
The following day, I followed up with Chelsea on the issue, but she said that the advertiser has not responded yet. 7 days later, I received the CD. There was an insert which said to logon at https://easyprofitshortcuts.com/Login.aspx, and to click on the “forgot password” link if you forgot your username or password. I wasn’t surprised that this page didn’t even exist, and that I got an HTTP 404 error when I tried accessing it. I continued reading the insert and a bit further down, it stated, “you received a 14 Day Free Trial Membership in the Easy Profits Shortcuts Club. After your free trial ends, we’ll bill $39.99 for your membership fee each month, etc.”…WAIT, what? I don’t remember reading that disclaimer anywhere when I registered! I immediately inserted the CD to see if I could find any support email or phone number I could call to cancel my “membership” immediately, and you will never guess what happened…it FREAKIN hung my machine!
At this point, I was furious and my suspicion was pretty much confirmed, I HAD BEEN WAMBOOOOZLED!! I messaged Chelsea to tell her everything that had happened, and this was her response:
[09:56] AThoDinh: this is an unacceptable offer, uve got to help me fix this issue!
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: cancel it
[09:57] AThoDinh: i cant even login
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: call them
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: shouldnt there be a number with all of your stuff you received
[09:57] AThoDinh: theres no number
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: email them
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: there should be some kind of contact
[09:57] AThoDinh: heres my problem…u guys r supporting a bogus offer
[09:57] mktlvgchelsea: i reached out the ad manager but theyre traveling so if you have another alternative it might be quicker
[09:58] mktlvgchelsea: well i did my part i will follow up again
[09:58] mktlvgchelsea: but what else can i do?
What else can you do? That’s when I demanded to speak to a manager, like pronto! Kyle McCall, one of the Senior Affiliate Managers, hopped on. Kyle provided me with an email as well as a link https://secure.secureorderpages.com/_includes/tos_profits.aspx to the advertiser’s terms and conditions, and asked me try contacting them. He said that, “sometimes advertisers do some shady things”, so I asked him, then why would a reputable company like Market Leverage even conduct business with them and not just drop them from the network? His response was, “well we have a legal team that goes through all of our offers but sometimes things can slip through the cracks, check in with the advertiser and let me know if you have any other questions”. Later that day, I told Kyle that I had tried emailing the advertiser at support@easyprofitshortcuts.com, and you guessed it…it came back UNDELIVERABLE! He requested that I email him my full contact information, and he was going to have the advertiser contact me directly.
The next day, I followed up with Kyle, and he said that the Ad Manager in charge of the account was away and that she’d be back in the office the following day. He suggested that I send them a cancellation letter via snail mail to be safe…you’re kidding right? Not only does the trial end in 4 days and I will be automatically charged the $39.99 monthly fee, but everything we’ve tried up to this point has lead to a dead end, so what makes you think that they will even reply to my letter? In case you’ve lossed track by now, let me outline the number of RED flags that I’ve encountered with this whole offer:
1. cannot login, no username/password provided
2. “forgot password” feature is useless and returns XML errors
3. sneaky 14 Day Trial, and $39.99 automatic monthly charge
4. no telephone number/email provided to customer
5. support email provided by Market Leverage comes back undeliverable
6. login page provided with CD insert doesn’t even exist and returns HTTP 404 error
7. CD opens Flash but does absolutely nothing and even hangs my machine
Let’s see, I encountered 7 RED flags, and everywhere I looked was a dead end. How on earth did this offer even make it through to your network? 
So much for Market Leverage’s “Legal Team”, they’ve failed horribly on this one, they deserve a big fat “F” for Fucken Sucks! Whoever reviewed this offer should be fired, how freakin incompetent can you be!? This offer has SCAAAAMM written all over it!
3 days left until the trial offer ends, and again I follow-up with Kyle on the status of what is starting to become a total headache. He was busy, so I messaged Chelsea to see if they’ve made any progress in contacting the advertiser. “Not yet, we are still waiting on a call back, we have called the advertiser several times”…surpise, surprise…NOT REALLY! Geeee, I wonder why the advertiser isn’t answering your calls, hmmmm?! Chelsea said that they’d definitely let me know as soon as they have any word from the advertiser. I’m a very patient kinda person, but comon now, you’ve been giving me the same line for the past few days now!
I emphasized that the trial was ending in 3 days, and I wanted to know what recourse I would have if they started charging me $39.99 every month. I felt if they did their due diligence and peformed the required checks, then they should be held accountable. Chelsea asked me for a confirmation number, and I told her that I did not receive one, therefore I had no record of the sale. I told her that I had the CD in hand and that my bank statement reflects the purchase, so I sent her a screenshot of that for proof. She told me that they’d reimburse me if I were to get charged, and that they’ve a “good” relationship with the advertiser. Well, think about it, they purposely give you no way of contacting them or any way to cancel your membership. So, of course the poor customers who have been scammed have nowhere to turn, and that’s why you never hear of anything like this happening. Fortunately, for me, I happen to be an ad publisher, so I know the correct channels to go through. I know that Market Leverage will refund me, so I wasn’t really concerned with that aspect, but my frustration was the lack of due diligence by their legal team. God knows how many poor people are being charged these obscene monthly fees because they don’t have any way of cancelling it. To me, this is very unethical business conduct, and very BLACK HAT!
Today is day 14, the last day of my 14-day trial period. I messaged Kyle, again he was busy and didn’t reply, so I checked with Chelsea to see if she had any updates. Apparently, both the Ad Manager in charge of this account as well as a Senior Affiliate Manager have been making multiple attempts to contact the advertiser, but none of their calls have been returned. I find it very ironic that this advertiser with whom you claim to have a “very good” relationship has been dodging you all of the sudden for the past 2 weeks. I really hope that you will reconsider continuing your business relationship with them, and hopefully you will drop them from the network. Personally, I can’t understand why a reputable company would want to even run the risk of hurting it’s image by associating with such a fraudulent advertiser. They’re out there scamming people everyday, and by doing business with them, your basically enabling their efforts, therefore it makes you just as guilty and accountable! Obviously, this issue is not going to be resolved today, so I guess I can look forward to a $39.99 monthly fee on my next credit card statement…thank’s Market Leverage!
Stay tuned guys, I’ll keep you posted with any updates and the final outcome of this whole ordeal…let me know if you’ve had any negative experiences with advertisers like this! Here’s the advertiser’s info if you’re interested…STAY AWAY!
support@easyprofitshortcuts.com
Mining Gold Corporation
No. 348
3780 Old Norcross Road, Suite 103
Duluth, GA 30096
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Although you were obviously duped here by the advertiser, you can’t totally tear apart Market Leverage for this. There are tons of shady offers on all of the networks. The network is really a middle man and it would be extraordinarily hard (if not impossible) to police what every advertiser was doing, post sale.
That said, Market Leverage might have been able to handle your grievance a little better. Your best bet would be to reverse the charges on your credit card and I’m sure you won’t have to pay anything.
No, he shouldn’t be able to tear Marketleverage apart, but in the end, they are responsible because they are responsible for what ads they choose to run and their affiliates.
I have seen PLENTY of ads on marketleverage that should not be on the there with all the Sneaky a** lead caption pages, and false claims…..marketleverage really need to clean up their ad system and become more strict on what ads they choose to accept to run in their database.
Another thing many people don’t know about Marketleverage is that, lets say you get paid based on a sale. First, the person has to type in the info on the front page…you only get paid if the person follows through with the offer!!!! Now, that means that Marketleverage gets paid like $5 for a lead that the advertiser can follow up on and YOU get NOTHING! Goose egg—this was told to me out of an affiliate managers own mouth from Marketleverage!
Also, I noticed to that Marketleverage is WAAAAAY off with their stat counter. I have also had the same encounter with different stats than what marketleverage is showing. One time, I promoted the hell out of a product. I made about 100-200 blog comments on high page rank blogs. I didn’t make 1 sale! In fact, my stats showed that i only had 3 clicks! I knew this crap was not right. Out of 200 url blog comments on high page rank blogs I didn’t make 1 sale? Something smells fishy, and the affiliates will soon find out about it. When I use to promote my own products, using the same method, I made at least 1-2 sales. Marketleverage might just be bogus for sure! Or at least they are invovled in shaving affiliates real earnings. I say create your own product and sell it. Ugh
yeah, my initial frustration was jux wit the advertiser, and i was very patient wit ML…but after 2 weeks, they still haven’t resolved the issue! also, after all the RED flags and the glaring evidence, they still maintain that they have a good relationship with the advertiser…yeah, so good that they’ve been doding u calls huh?…i’d be happy if they’d at least re-think their relationship considering god knos how many ppl have been scammed!
Yeh a simple reject with you Credit Card company would do the trick…
But a bigger problem I see is that if You are advertising a scam product like EasyProfitShortcuts, then you are putting Your reputation on the line.
Those automatic billings are illegal if not clearly stated on the registration page, You could report them to the BBB.
yeah, i wish it was that simple…i talked to my bank and they said i had to call the electronic claims department. after that, it would be a 30-day process to reimburse any charges. unfortunately, they cannot jux reject charges. wat if it was a legit charge, and u were trying to get something for free?
yeah ML has completely removed the advertiser from their network…good riddance!
Anthony,
Thank you for bringing this issue to our attention. I am very sorry that you have had to deal with this situation, and I agree with you that there are a number of things that we can do better. We have taken several measures to correct the problem, including removing the deal from our network. In order to provide our publishers with the best selection of advertising opportunities, MarketLeverage works with hundreds of different advertisers. Occasionally, an advertiser will violate MarketLeverage’s terms and conditions and we try to resolve these issues as soon as possible and deal with them accordingly. We will refund any charges incurred by you, including shipping and handling, and will make sure your re-bill is cancelled. While neither MarketLeverage nor the advertiser acted perfectly in this situation, we hope that you will judge us on how we’ve learned from it and the efforts we have taken and will continue to take to improve the experience of those who use MarketLeverage.
You are welcome to contact me directly if you have any questions or problems at mattw@marketleverage.com. Thank you again for making us aware of this situation.
Matt Wlodarczyk
Director of Operations, MarketLeverage
Matt,
I appreciate your attention in this matter, even though it took 2 weeks and a blog post to get the job done. I’m glad that you considered my suggestion and removed the offer from the network. Thanks for cancelling the re-bill and offering to refund my charges. I did incurr my first monthly charge today, so I will forward to you.
Hey Anthony, Glad it worked out for you! Are you back for good ? I’d hate to see you stop blogging…
JJ, it didn’t work out. I got rebilled $39.99, so I’m still waiting for them to deactivate it and to issue a credit.
i will be sporadically blogging when i get the chance. right now, i’m focusing on affiliate marketing and developing a product to sell as well.
Yeah I’ve heard about ML doing some shady stuff. That “i did my part, what else can i do” line actually got a LOL
Seeing any improvements with the Myspace Ads yet?
Hey. I am glad I looked into this because I became an affiliate marketer for marketleverage a while ago. Is there a legit affiliate program on this earth!! What upset me even more was the problem you were having with your conversion rates. Scam affiliate programs will always play with this to try to dupe you out of your money.
I decided to test my network as well with the clicks. I advertised a blog post containing tons of links to my website url of the offer through Market Leverage. I have a stat counter which showed that I had 300 conversion clicks. I would assume that I would have gotten at least 10 clicks from this since I did very effective marketing. Guess what? I checked my stats and showed that I only got 3 clicks. Only 3 clicks for 300 page views? Something sounds fishy.
I used Marketleverage because it was recommended by the top bloggers such as johnchow and Shoemoney. You, know word spreads very far about scam affiliate programs.
Tell me what you think about this…oh and what a coincidence, we have the same affiliate manager Chelsea…I am starting to believe that these affiliate managers are ploys and are not really who they say they are. It is just a scam to make people feel comfortable about the affiliate program. They better straighten up or I will contact the BBB.
Erica, I also joined ML b/c I read some good reviews about them from JC, Shoe, Tyler and other bloggers as well. I just recently joined Copeac and started my first campaign about a week ago. Even though I’m still losing money, I made 2 sales for Acai Berry! I was marketing multiple products for ML for awhile and I never made a single red cent! Not only that, my clicks weren’t matching up either. I’ve heard of AMs shaving clicks and sales for themselves. Also, they will do some detective work to steal your keywords and landing pages. Not saying ML engages in this, just saying that it DOES happen. I was told by my AM group that Ads4Dough and CPAEmpire are also pretty reputable. gluck!
Thanks for telling me that! So you didn’t make any money from Marketleverage either? I suppose the people that are actually making money are using blackhat methods to get them ALOT of traffic. They are still being duped out of some of their earnings, but they still earn a nice amount because of all the traffic they get. Its a damn shame.
No offense to you of course as you were duped, but how new are you to affiliate marketing? You should know 90% of the offers being promoted are shady… on every network.
Of course they weren’t JUST going to charge you $2.99 lol…
scott, this was actually my first week in the game, so i hadn’t figured it out yet, but now i kno better ;p
Market Leverage sucks.
They scrub like shit. They have very very bad tracking.
This network will dissapear.
Tyler cruz and the shit zac johnson are the fuckers who promoted this network. Fuck you biaches!