When I logged in to ECF this morning... this is what I was greeted with...

This account has been Terminated for Abuse! Contact admin

I have not abused this account... however, I have been waiting patiently for two payments. I sent them the letter below (so you all can see my reasonable approach)... but as many of you know, they usually do not respond. I have lost a great deal of time and money as I was upgraded to partner status. I cannot even complain in their forum as I cannot log on... if any of you members have a link to their forum... please PM me with it.

My Letter to them...

First of all, I know that I have played fair with ECF. There may be a small amount (50) of auto hits due to not knowing about this restriction in the beginning. However, I have way over the 20,000 hits required for payout of which 95% or more were achieved through Traffic Exchanges (manual) and advertising on GPTRE programs. I have been waiting for payout since Aug. 01-2003... I have been waiting for a refund of my "partner fee" since Sept. 20-2003 as per your terms. I do expect an explanation about this and I will be posting a copy of this email at the GPF so as to see if you are doing this to others. Please respond promptly.

PS- Here is an update on the letter I sent to the address on the top of my defunct page...

----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- <admin@exitcashflow.com>
(reason: 550 5.1.1 <admin@exitcashflow.com>... User unknown)

This is the address that is now on my site... who is abusing who??

Sometimes you ask yourself... "Do I need this abuse?"

Good luck on getting your money from them and getting your account back.
From what I hear about them, you may not be getting anything from them.

I am a member, but only have $2.61 in my account.
I have been spending must of my time and effort now with SAS.

Gooooooood luck

on the front of their site they said they will be paying everyone who hasnt cheated by november

I can guarantee you that I have not cheated.

It says on the members page that all hits by autosurf will be zeroed, not that account will be deleted.

This is the link to the forum

http://www.exitcashflow.com/forums/

Hope that helps and goodluck

Thanks

I also noticed they changed from hits to popups....

Anyone NOT using popup killer these days

they zeroed me from 14500 to 157, I'm pretty sure I got them all from advertising.

I guess this happens if a WM is spending all money they received, then they can't payout, so they start cheating.

I'd say:

LET'S ZERO OUT ALL HONEST MEMBERS OUT OF ECF.



52230 Current Members ( CAN WE GET THIS TO 522 MEMBERS?)

in case no one noticed yet.... I'M ######

They disabled their admin@ email address a while back due to issues with trojans. And yes they did notify everyone about it via email.

Here's the email they sent about the admin email change. It was sent on Aug. 26th.

Yeah... I just remembered that email. I have sent an email to David at his address. I got it from the FAQ.

Do you think I will receive a response??

I'm not sure.

But I fired off an email this morning because with some PTR sites now having an Autosurf side to them then that is going to cause major issues.

Where does it say you only get paid if the popup loads or shows? On the front page it still has the same blurb about getting paid whether the viewer has a popup killer or not.

Hey Guys,

We have been zeroing out the earnings of members who have been caught cheating. This may include using autosurf programs such as Cashits or other forms of cheating as outlined in our Terms of Service, to which you agreed when you joined our program.

It should not matter when you are caught- if you want to cheat, be prepared to face the consequences. If you feel that these actions were made in error, send me an email with your username, and we will verify the site logs with you.

Regards,

Dan
ECF Admin
ecfadmin@exitcashflow.com

Great,what about the honest members
Why does it take so long to get paid or
to get any respond at all?????????
I am waiting already for nearly 3 months
while your terms state payment in 14 days.

I am surprised to see ecfadmin replied here to start with.
Normally they simpley disregard any posts they see.
Eevn in their own forum posting normally gets replies from other
affiliates but rarely from ecfadmin.

so Dan i see you are still here,
Can you explain us why the long delay in payouts?
why your terms and your actions not going hand in hand
and why the majority been disregarded?
Don't tell me the answers are in your faq as this and reality
are 2 totaly different things when it comes to your site
and actions..

3 months to get paid???let us work and promote it manually and you know it takes quite awhile and later on top of it let us wait that long?

what incentive would anyone have to keep promoting you seeing that??

In your own forum seen posts of members waiting already even longer than 3 months,no autosurfs no audits..no replies.....what kind of support is that?

Ad personal staff if you have no time and keep growing and change your tos

don't let us wait that long

Funny.sad actually,
while typing ecfadmin did the regular thing-leaving with no reply.
How typical..
guess their post here earlier is a miracule..

This is ridiculos, there is nothing safe to invest time and money in. I was looking at joining them, but I dont know now. Everytime you turn around there is a problem. They are quick to use us to promote and pay for ads but getting paid is a lottery, or gamble, this applies to many programs. This is taking me months to sort through , I cant think straight anymore. All these search engines, search exchanges, ptr, autosurf, manual surf. Where do we go, what do we do? This is pretty hard, I was happier without all this. Now I dont know what to do. There is always a million and one things to do. I cant catch up.

I gave up on ECF when I read on their forum that when a person clicks on ECF links 50 times, then that person will NEVER count as a hit again. I'm sure most of us here have clicked people's ECF links far more than 50 times, so as we continue to do it the ECF affiliates apparently aren't getting paid for our clicks. Because of this I don't bother promoting my ECF link at all anymore.

Edited to add: I'm not sure this 50 clicks policy is still in effect. They were considering changing it in favor of only crediting for people who actually viewed the pop-up, and maybe they have. But either way, it seems like it's going to be rather difficult to earn money at ECF.

okay, the important wording here is "zeroing out the earnings"


how does "Terminated for Abuse!" come into play here? i'm starting to think that all the hateful awful things i've heard about ECF are true. i mean, he came and replied here but didn't actually answer the question...


and the 50 hits Pearl is referring to is actually "also anyone viewing 50 different ECF pages in one day will not count for the remainder of that day..." i got a little freaked out by reading Pearl's post so i went and looked it up at the ECF forum.

I got freaked out too when I read it a couple of week's ago at the ECF forum! At that time it was a 24 hour unique click situation, and then that deadly 50 times in a LIFETIME and you no longer count as a hit. Then the admin (on the forum - this is their own forum accessible on their page), suggested maybe changing that to crediting everyone but ONLY if they actually view the pop up. So now it's 50 times in a DAY? I'm going to have to go check out their web page, but like somebody else said, the main page never seems to be updated to reflect any changes.

All I know is I have about 28 cents in my ECF account and I have had 28 cents forever, even though I know I was getting hits from Traffic Swarm and other places, so if I was getting paid for EVERY click then I should be earning. I'm going to log in now and see what's up - maybe I'll find that my account has been deleted!

ohhhhhhh, okay, now i get it.

on the member control page it says



but in the TOS it says




and don't forget this from the TOS as well



so if you've been doing alot of advertising and not getting "enough" referrals, ECF has the right to not pay out the amount promised per page view - of course, members are not given any information as to how many referrals we are required to have per # hits received.


verrrrry cute you sneaky ECF guys

Oh... never mind about going to check the page. After what girrl88 just posted about "inferior hits" and payouts, I might as well just delete my ECF bookmark and let them eventually delete me for inactivity.

So, is SAS any better? I've been kind of promoting that, but I wonder if it's really better than ECF?

Those are very good points. I just posted this on their Forum (I have a thread going there about this issue)

Here is an interesting point made by a member at the GPF...


QUOTE

Very Important! Our Terms of Service prohibit the use of AutoSurf websites! Hits by AutoSurf sites will be Zeroed!

- ECF Admin


but in the TOS it says


QUOTE
12. Members cannot use Auto Hit exchanges or other Automated means to promote their pages. Any member found doing this will have their account promptly deleted and all commissions will be forfeited. This includes loading of the ECF page in an IFrame.

I made the mistake once of putting on a banner in an autosurf site. However, I realized my mistake and removed it after reading about this in the forum. Of the over 25,000 hits I had... I am sure that only a few hundred were from the Autosurf Site. After reading the top TOS, I continued to use ECF with the expectation of losing those hits. I did not expect to lose my account. I would like to know why there is this contridiction in Terms. I read the top term and assumed that all was okay.

I could use some help here in regards to comments from other members

well all my clicks at ecf have come from cashclicking, traffic roundup, share-traffic, this forum and sas full page promo ads ( and a few ptc ads ) and all my credits are still intact and so is my downline, so if I get paid on nov 3rd in full I will be a happy camper

ECF Members,

We admit that we have been a bit behind in some payments, and this is a result of us not being paid from several big advertisers from whom we expected payment, namely Google and Clickxchange. However, we stand by our claim that all honest members will be paid on November 3rd. Following that, members will be paid automatically once a month, regardless of how much they have earned for that month.

In regards to our terms of service, you are correct that you cannot use autosurf programs to promote ECF. They are an impersonal and ineffective means of advertising and we will not pay for hits from these types of programs. If you are caught using them, your account will be terminated. It is the responsibility of the member to read the program's terms of service prior to signing up. If you choose not to agree with them, you have the right to not use our program.

Secondly, we should not, and cannot afford to pay users who accumulate hundreds of thousands of hits, but see little response to both our program and our advertisers. For the majority of members, this will have no effect on you, but it should be well within reason to average a referral per 2 or 3 thousand unique hits.

Hope that helps,

Dan
ECF Admin

You don't clean your database
You never did,95% of my referrals
never been active but they are
still there from day1.

I'd like to know that too

There is still no answer why honest members
have to wait that long,you know how long and hard
it takes to reach the 20000 hits with unique and just manual traffic
why in your terms it never said payment will be in 3 months or 6?
if i'd know that i'd have never joined from the first place.
I want to see my payment on November 3rd,i am skeptikal not because i cheated,coz i didn't,i used only manual traffic exchanges
but seeing how emails beeing disregarded,no support,long delay
in payments,all that lead to believe that November 3rd wouldn't
be again the dead line for ALL the honest members.
Time will tell,to start ecf start providing support and and reply to your
members inquiries.

I've notice a lot of people putting ecf into the shared page on sas, I think that will also get your ecf hits zeroed. I only just joined both ecf and sas but have earned a lot more from sas, mostly because of the in house traffic exchange. Rod seems to have a better reputation here than the ecf guys as he pays much sooner. Also sas hits need to be 12 hour unique and not 24 hours.

I think its ridiculous if ecf are adding to and clarifying their terms in their forum and not telling the whole memberbase of these decisions. I didnt read anywhere about a 50 unique hit limit on viewers or anything about allowing the popup to load. I dont remember seeing anything during signup saying I had/ought to visit their forum to get updates to the tos either. Its a bit tough to expect people to play by the rules when you hide half the pages of the rulebook!

payment is so so so long!
wating about 4month!

SAS is great!! Rod is as nice and helpful as you could want a WM to be they pay and they payout quick. I just reached payout again today and I only have 1 semi-active referral. I bet I get paid well within the TOS terms I was paid last time in less then 10 days. If you do traffic exchanges you really should join SAS.

edited to add, SAS rocks!!! I cashed out today I got paid today!!

What about those that joined BEFORE that was placed in the terms. And please dont tell me it has always been there. I checked long ago when the discussion about Autosurf sites first came up. It was never there.


Also, you should answer the question reguarding PTR sites that now have an autosurf component to them. IT would be good to have the answer so people know that they arent going to be getting themselves deleted just for being part of a PTR that also has an Autosurf site because of the scripts allowing it.

I would like to jump in here and make a few comments.

First of all, thank the members that came in here and supported SAS

But this thread is about ECF.

Dan and I have been talking extensively in regards to what is a legitimate site to promote ECF and what is not.

Since our programs are similar, ECF WILL accept ALL sites on the SAS Approved Sites list. (please see the link in my signature to see what sites are approved)

I think this is a much more effective tool than to play "catch up" all the time when new programs appear that we don't approve of.

As far as the ECF page loading in the SAS "shared" page section, unfortunately, that is MY fault and NOT the individual members. They have simply put the ECF page in our SAS rotator and our rotator is suppose to block ECF pages from displaying in the shared section (much like our rotator already blocks other SAS pages within itself...confused yet? LOL)

Anyway, this is something I will have fixed this weekend. I'm sure ECF won't zero these hits (if they want, they can even deduct these hits from my account )

I understand their member support is "weak" and thats why I have volunteered to help them out with customer service (unfortunately, this past month I have been very busy with my own site).

Just to remind everyone, the deadline to get sites approved on the ApprovedSites list is quickly approaching (Oct 20, 3 days from now). This WILL be official for SAS but I don't know when ECF will make it official. However, I strongly suggest everyone start using that list and you will be safe that ECF won't delete the hits.

Take care everyone,
Rod

Gee Dan... it is nice to hear from you and answer everyone else's question!! When I joined it stated that Autosurf Hits would be eliminated not that the account would be deleted. As I have said... 98-99% of my hits are legitimate. I even upgraded to Partner.

I did not realize that putting a banner on an autosurf site would terminate my account. Even though it was a grey area... I removed it soon after I read some comments about it in your forum. Besides, when you think about it... a person would have to manually click on a banner whether it was manuaclicks or auto.

The main point however, was when I joined the terms said that the auto surf hits would be removed, not the account. If you changed the terms at a later date... you sure did not let your membership know about it via an email.

I sure wish I would have known this 5 months ago... if I would have read the forum at ECF before joining... I never would have. The complaints about ECF in that forum were mind boggling. Since that time, I have learned to do a lot more research before joining any program. So I guess there is no one to blame except me.
I can see them deleting someone who has 1000's of autosurf hitsand is trying to abuse the system. However to delete an upgraded member with only maybe 1 % autosurf hits... an honest mistake corrected immediately.

The way I see it is that it is just another example of an unreasonable WM taking advantage of and not being flexible with their members.

Rod why do you have a deadline for approved sites? I was on the net all night and saw some that I dont think are on your list but should fit the criteria possibly because no one has seen them yet. They would be useful, because of new customers.

Well then the bottom line remains... I want to see proof. The majority of my hits were from advertising in the GPTRE Programs. Yes, I joined a bunch of Traffic Exchanges also... but I do not recall any sites that were AutoSurf Sites. If I have any hits from a Autosurf Site... it would be less than 1-2% of my total... if that. I may have joined one long time ago in the beginning... prior to realizing the terms. However, the terms stated at that time that you would lose those hits and not the account. Here is the term...

Very Important! Our Terms of Service prohibit the use of AutoSurf websites! Hits by AutoSurf sites will be Zeroed!

Let me ask you all a question... (I realize some of you will not answer due to your fear of being deleted), but if a member has an Upgraded account... has been a member since the total number of members was at 27,000... has a 98-99% accepted hit rate that is over 25,000 .... should that member lose all his earnings and the money he spent to upgrade due to a few autohits??

Please answer this question keeping in mind the above TOS

gotlucky, I believe the deadline is for sites that are not on the list. He made the list so members know where they're allowed to advertise. The ones not on the list are not approved for advertising, but he did mention you can email him and suggest other ones.


Please correct me if I'm wrong Rod.

Back to ECF, does anyone know what happens if we only have 1 referral thats not even active and get thousands of hit? Do we lose the money or our account?

I did ask on their forum but it takes forever to get a response over there.

Surprisingly they replied here although disregarded the thread subject and never replied to logical posts here,you would expect them to provide support but there is none,a miracule took place at gpf and ecfadmin replied..must be mistake,normally you see their name reading and leaving without saying goodbye.

It seems as though we have 2 different threads running in the same thread...

What I meant by the deadline is, at the moment, my old system of allowing ALL sites EXCEPT the ones that I have banned over the past several months (mostly autosurfs) will now switch over (on the 20th) to the "all sites are banned EXCEPT the approved list" system....

See the difference? With so many sites popping up EVERY day, I couldn't keep up with various autosurf programs and personal pages where a cheater would run a banner on their free homepage and get an autoclicker to click for them.

This way, only sites that I have REVIEWED will get credit when they send a hit to the promote page.

At any time in the future, if a new site wants approval, simply email me at shareadspace@hotmail.com and I will look over the site and either approve it or give you a reason why I don't approve.

As long as they fit the criteria I have stated on the approvedsites page, I am pretty lenient

Like I said, the new system goes into effect on the 20th...

tic..tic..tic..

Rod

PS...I first announced this about 2 weeks ago so everyone had ample time to send in requests. I dont like to make quick changes unless absolutely necessary (like the new turing page was an emergency because of news that I have found)

now that's a load of horse pucky if i ever heard it. you know, as well as i do, that the more people that have already joined (and you're claiming 52,359 at this point), the harder it is to get referals.

how many people here are already members of ecf? show of hands *counts one, two, three... more than three...*

ok, so let's say that i advertise my ecf link at a site. the members there are already members of ecf, or simply have no intention of joining at this time (i myself must have seen ecf at least a hundred times before i finally joined). now, let's say that the site has, oooooooooh, 1,500 members. of that, 1000 click the link. nobody signs up because most are already members, and the ones that aren't have no intention (at this time) of signing up.

congratulations. i've HONESTLY just racked up 1,000 clicks, with no referals gained. think this can't happen? think again. it can. how many times do people here see ecf advertised? now, how many are clicking the link, but are already a member? how many that aren't a member click the link, but don't sign up? please keep your hands up, this is going to take a while to count everyone

requiring a referal to get paid... i suggest that the owner of ecf look into the reactions of people to dragone team when they said that people had to have a referal to get paid.

Actually, they are rarely here. I asked Dan if he could come over here and address everyone as to the current state of affairs with ECF.

Remember, I am just trying to be a mediator...Don't shoot me! LOL

Rod

PS... The reason I stick up for these guys is based on extensive talks I have had with them and their genuine interest on what I and several others have had to say to help them improve the overall quality of their site. I find these traits hardly characteristic of scam artists.


Most scam artists WILL tell you exactly what you want to hear. Make you feel good and THEN take your money. I honestly think they have been overwhelmed and maybe a quite slow in addressing some serious issues but hey, better late than never, right?

Hey Rod... I don't mind sharing a thread with you but you have not responded to my situation. What would you do seeing that you are an owner of a similar type of program?

The members that I HAVE deleted at ShareAdSpace, I have server logs and I am 100% positive they purposely tried to cheat the system so in those cases, I simply send them an email and tell them "Your account has been terminated for cheating. We have recorded your hits for legal purposes"...I don't break it down to them because I only give them more info for them to try to counter my detection in the future.

However, I have NEVER deleted someone 'yet' for running autosurfs. I have on several occasions, emailed them and told them "you have 48 hours to remove the links or I will delete your account" and I have deleted some credits (if not all), but so far, they have heeded my warning and complied.

Like I said, the cheaters I DO catch are very apparent and I have no tolerance for them and will strike with 'terminating force'


What is your username with ECF? I will contact Dan and see if I can mediate.

Rod

Thanks Rod... my username is zzmario and the account name was Daydreams Unlimited.

I have also requested a refund on the Partner Purchase ( you can see my thread in their Forum under zzsleep).

Thanks once again Rod.

Hi,

We are not in the business of ripping people off. When we learn that a person is cheating through autosurfs or other methods, it is only natural that we suspect that this user will continue to abuse our program and as a precaution we will delete that person's account. Of course, people make mistakes, and if only a small portion of your hits have come from autosurfs, of course we are not going to just delete everything. We will examine the site logs more closely and pay you a true reflection of your efforts.

Seeing as how there is a considerable contingent of ECF members at this forum, we will stay and respond to your questions/concerns. I also suggest that you visit the ECF forums as well as the SAS chatroom, which I also frequent.

Regards,

Dan
ECF Admin

Very good question! I'd like to know this too. Am I wasting my time promoting this site? I can't afford to do that. I have 3 referrals under me, but between them they only have 2 hits.

In the first place, that doesn't seem right to me because I have personally clicked on their links so there should be at the very least 3 hits and secondly, I really honestly believe that after all this time, they would have had at least a few clicks to their links.

Hi Dan,

Don't know if you'll read this, but I have a concern to voice with you.

I have posted this on the ECF forum too, under the "General" forum by the thread name "Worried question."

Several months ago when I first joined ECF I went on eBay to see if I could buy some hits for free. I found a seller who offered some number of hits I no longer remember, for a good price. I emailed the seller and asked them, are these real hits or autosurf hits? He said these were real hits.

I discovered later that they were, in fact, autosurf hits, and immediately deleted the account the hits were coming from. Unfortunately, by then, I think I had sent over 20,000 hits to ECF from this liar's autosurf site.

At this point I have nearly 85,000 hits so it's only 25% of my total, and I'm trying to get more genuine hits to show that I'm not trying to cheat.

What do I do?

okay Dan, i'll bite.

my username is girrl88 (imagine that!) and i know that i have some hits from an autosurf site. i don't know which one because it was not me that put my ECF site there it was a friend who was trying to help me out. i do have one referral. please let me know if you are going to just delete the autosurf hits or if you are going to cancel my acct when i try to cash out.


i am also sending you an email with this same request and will post here with your response.


also, and this is just my opinion here, but wouldn't forcing people to have a certain number or percentage of referrals per number hits just create more cheater/bogus accts?

Hello, Logical, I think I know exactly why your account was terminated. Since at least September 15 you have been loading your Exit Cash Flow page in a frame on your personal website (and you still are with your own popup ads in addition to the ECF popup).

The Terms of Service say this:



Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but you were in clear violation of the Terms of Service.