Caution: Cybersocket vs. Sue and Collections happy

We have encountered some problems with Cybersocket that I want to share with other webmasters or websites which may or may not advertise with Cybersocket.

May, 2005 we began advertising with Cybersocket in their classifieds areas of the print publication, advertised 5 ads in their annual print directory, as well as through online marketing through Cybersocket.com by both paid banner ads as well as link exchanges. We also purchased ads in their holiday e-mail newsletters.

January, 2009 a decision was made to cease advertising with Cybersocket. After much investigating we discovered we never received any traffic from advertising in all of those areas with them. A letter was sent to them by mail with signature confirmation, email, and fax to cease advertising.
After they signed for the letter, after they received the fax, and even after they acknowledged they received everything they still continued to run our ads.

Earlier this month we were notified by their collection agency attempting to collect a $1200.00 debt from Cybersocket for print advertisement. We explained everything to the collection agency of what occurred. Supplied them with all of the emails and signature signing for the letter, the email communications, etc. The collection agency would not acknowledge it.
Our attorneys were notified and we met with our lawyers at Scherline and Associates in Allentown, PA. (www.scherlinelaw.com). The law firm spoke with the collection agency and the debt collection was dropped.

Today, this email comes through from Morgan:
As long as you refuse to pay for the ads that we ran for you and honor your contract, we will not promote your sites, or your program. Your account is being sent to our national collection agency today.

This is the second time they have submitted us to their "National Collection Agency."

The first time they didn't even have our business name right. They also made an attempt to have it placed on our Dun & Bradstreet account. It did not hold their either.

On any advertising contract, we add a term that clearly states that we can basically back out at any time for any reason as long as it is provided in writing. We followed this protocal.

So we shut off Cybersocket's affiliate accounts today. Not that there's ever been any clicks, but we did remove them from being able to promote us through affiliate linking.

A call just came in from Cybersocket and a message was left. I do not know at this time who it was, but now we are being threatened we're going to be sued.

Anyone who plans to use Cybersocket's paid advertising / marketing services will read through forms on GWW (Primarily this one: http://forums.gaywidewebmasters.com/...ad.php?t=29206), and if you should, I highly suggest doing advertising month to month. We have been through hell with them and continuing to be harassed by them on ads they ran without permission. And why any print publication, magazine, or print media would run ads without any payment prior to it being printed is beyond me.

I wanted to take this time to let others know our experiences.

diddnt you say that they had sorted this out a few weeks back or was that someone else instead

Um no.... wasn't me. They're still at their games.

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On any advertising contract, we add a term that clearly states that we can basically back out at any time for any reason as long as it is provided in writing. We followed this protocal.

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CyberSocket let you write your own advertising contract with them? Or any other company for that fact?

I need to do business with them, I could put in a clause stating that if I don't like their work, say after a couple of weeks, I can cancel and owe nothing! it's brilliant, I will never have to pay for anything or honor any contracts!!! Yippe I'm gonna be rich!!!

No, what we did was sign a short-term contract with them. The contract we terminated was a 12 month contract. After 7 months into the contract, it was terminated.
The clause states "We will pay monthly for ads ran, at any time this contract can be terminated for any reason by us in writing."
If ads have been ran prior to the termination notice, they are paid. Any ads of which have ran after this, we will not pay unless we are in the middle of a cycle or something. However, we have a card with the dates they're publications are sent to print. We informed them 2 weeks prior to the print date. All ads up to that date were paid by corporate check and did clear our checking account.

:bullcrap:

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Originally Posted by derekt

Today, this email comes through from Morgan:
As long as you refuse to pay for the ads that we ran for you and honor your contract, we will not promote your sites, or your program. Your account is being sent to our national collection agency today.

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Key word Max, "HONOR YOUR CONTRACT." They ran the ads AFTER the fact we told them to stop in writing, via email, etc. as I said.

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Originally Posted by derekt

Key word Max, "HONOR YOUR CONTRACT." They ran the ads AFTER the fact we told them to stop in writing, via email, etc. as I said.

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Princess...I believe that was 3 words! Guess you'll be in detention with me!

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Originally Posted by maxx68

CyberSocket let you write your own advertising contract with them? Or any other company for that fact?

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Pretty much any agreement is negotiable. We do this sort of thing all the time, write in additional terms and conditions or guarantees or "escape clauses." Of course, the other party doesn't have to accept our terms, but if that happens, we just don't do business. Particularly (my current mantra) In This Economy, it's pretty easy to dictate your own terms if they are reasonable.

This could also be a sign that they are struggling financially, i was reading a news article a few days ago on Entrepreneur (i think) that was basically saying a lot of companies are sending past-due invoices for web-based transactions through to collection agencies because they arent making as much money as they used to.

One example given was a company who sent a 5 yr old invoice to a collections agency even though for the last 5 yrs that invoice had pretty much been written off.

Its hard to imagine with all the bad press Cybersocket has been getting lately they are still making money like they used to and i know for a fact that ad sales are down across the board in both adult and the non-adult segments right now.

Perhaps this really is a last-ditch attempt to try and generate revenue.

Regards,

Lee

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Originally Posted by gaybucks_chip

Pretty much any agreement is negotiable. We do this sort of thing all the time, write in additional terms and conditions or guarantees or "escape clauses." Of course, the other party doesn't have to accept our terms, but if that happens, we just don't do business. Particularly (my current mantra) In This Economy, it's pretty easy to dictate your own terms if they are reasonable.

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Maybe some will do this, but I've turned down ad clients who insisted our contract be re-written to meet their legal department needs. The one that I remember was gay.com. I can't imagine why any business would allow an account to dictate contract terms for something short term. Perhaps a long term client can have that privilege, but such trust needs to be earned in my humble opinion. By the way, our standard contract is very simple and straight forward.

Regarding Lee's comment about collection agency usage, I can offer some more insight in that area. Our Plugin Feeds department used to right stuff off with some degree of regularity (like hundreds or even thousands of dollars) but now they've adopted a much less lenient policy with people who owe us money and don't pay on time (though their idea of hardball makes my cell phone provider look like the Gestapo in comparison...I'm a day late and I get three text messages and a phone call!)

Guys, I haven't worked with Cybersocket yet, but I've purchased some ads elsewhere to help promote GCruiseCash (now LoadedCash) and opted for the one-time payment rather than a recurring CC charge that many advertisers push for. It was a great thing to do, as they were running the ad at LEAST 5 months after without me knowing and later asked for compensation.

My best advice is to make sure they know EXACTLY what you are looking for (duration, cost, etc) and KEEP YOUR EMAILS so you can "remind" them of what you both agreed upon.

After a few reminders, they backed off and moved on.

I wonder if mainstream print media tries crap like that.

When buying mainstream print, I was almost always able to buy the 6x or 12x rate for open buys (meaning one time) as long as the salesperson felt like we were going to end up going in on a regular basis. (And if the ads worked, we always did.)

The only reason I'd see somebody locking you into a contract is if they know their publication doesn't work and are trying to get $ out of you, because a smart publication will do anything to woo a potential ad buyer, knowing that success of the ad = a long term ad buyer.