ClickBooth vs Wickedfire - Hilarity in the Making
Posted on March 9th, 2008 in Funny
If you're tired of refreshing this page every day like a d-bag, you should probably subscribe to the RSS feed.
Disclaimer: This is all second hand observation and does not reflect the opinions of anyone. Please assume there is an “[allegedly]” before every sentence.
Update: [allegedly] Clickbooth sued Jon Fisher who was forced to settle out of court for an undisclosed amount and remove any posts talking bad about clickbooth from their forum. Actions like these reflect much more poorly on their network than any forum posts could have possibly.
It all started exactly a year ago. On March 9, 2007, Stojan, member of Wickedfire forums made a post inquiring about the status of Clickbooth. He had not heard back from them after repeated attempts to contact the company, and had not received the money owed to him for over 2 months. Obviously concerned, he asked what the deal was. His issue was apparently resolved rather quickly, however, something funny happened. Other members of the forum started chiming in about how they had been screwed over by clickbooth and then lied to about where their money was, or ignored completely. Lisa, an employee of ClickBooth then responded to one of these claims by saying the individual had been sending them spammy traffic from Craigslist, and proceeded to post their private affiliate stats on the forum to prove it. Naturally, people on WF got pretty upset about this. Eli, WF moderator, and author of BlueHatSEO, jumped in and edited out the private information that the ClickBooth employee had posted. The thread got fun after that. Another member of WF, posted that it was kind of a joke that they would withhold payment because traffic was coming from Craigslist, implying that they normally accept this kind of traffic. That’s when things got interesting.
Rather than apologize for posting one of their members private information on a public forum, as they should have done, John Lemp (owner of ClickBooth) contacted Jon (owner of WickedFire) demanding that the posts by the WF member implying that ClickBooth accepted spammy traffic from Craigslist be removed, and that Eli be fired for erasing the information posted by his employee. Jon was understandably completely floored by this laughable demand and was naturally upset.
Please keep in mind that, at this point, Jon (WF owner) was a little bit biased because he had recently been in negotiations with John Lemp over some domain deal which Lemp had apparently lied about and tried to pull some shady maneuvers in the contract or something. Not really sure about that part, as it was too boring to follow, but it’s important to keep in mind.
So after getting upset over Lemp’s demands, on May 15th, 2007, Jon made the notorious ClickBooth Poll post on Wickedfire. In this post, Jon presented most of the information he had available to him at the time about the situation, and asked the users of Wickedfire to decide if John Lemp, Lisa, and the rest of the employees should be banned from WickedFire. If you have some time to spare, please read the post. It is absolutely hilarious at parts. They both get into a giant e-peen battle, throwing insults back and forth, but in the end, it’s pretty clear that Jon was the winner. He had asked Lemp several key questions over and over throughout the thread, which, had they been answered, would have probably spared ClickBooth’s reputation and let them continue business as usual. They were, however, never answered, and the results of the poll were clear. Over 86% voted to ban ClickBooth from Wickedfire.
ClickBooth proceeded to send 2 Cease and Desist letters to WickedFire in a feeble attempt to get all this bad press erased from the forum. They promised to sue if their demands were not met. Jon said that he would not be removing anything, and to bring on the lawsuit, knowing they had no case.
In December, 2007, a few months ago, a poll thread pops up on WickedFire by a disgruntled affiliate called More ClickBooth Fraud. He claims to have been screwed out of several thousand dollars by ClickBooth for no reason, and says he can’t even get in contact with them to ask why. Many people replied saying they had been completely screwed by ClickBooth too, for much more money. Some for over $30k.
Fast forward to the present. Clickbooth is now making good on their threat to sue Jon and WickedFire if their demands to erase the negative press were not met. What are they suing for, exactly? Among other things, Emotional Distress. Sounds like Shoemoney will have a friend for his legal threat crybaby club. Now, where’s that Kleenex affiliate program when you really need it…
March 10th, 2008 at 10:38 am
At this rate Jon is going to need to start a damn legal defense fund. The guy gets more legal documents than most lawyers!
March 10th, 2008 at 10:48 am
As the famous Artie Lang put it… “WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH”
March 10th, 2008 at 11:38 am
You’re so gonna get sued.
March 10th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
EPIC!
March 10th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
Right on the money.. there are some things being left out though.
Like the fact that Lisa was INSTRUCTED to post the affiliate’s stats by JOHN LEMP himself. Most of the posts after that one were actually made by John Lemp.
Lisa quit her job the next week, and John Lemp blamed ME for it. That’s really what got me riled up enough to say “enough is enough you fat fuck!”
But anyway. ClickBooth advertises all over Shoemoney.com. Coincidence?
Maybe it’s time for Lemp and Shoe to stop giving eachother lega advice. But if they want to give advice to one another, perhaps “how not to destroy your reputations by being crybabies” is the topic they need to address.
March 10th, 2008 at 4:03 pm
Truly epic lulz
That forum post is classic
March 11th, 2008 at 11:58 am
nickycakes.com is hosts all the dirty laundry for SEO, SEM, AM
A+++ GREAT BUYER +++ FAST DELIVIERY.
March 11th, 2008 at 4:20 pm
will they be on one of the judge shows? sounds like thats where it belongs..
March 13th, 2008 at 11:22 am
Hahaha draaaaaama in this game son!
March 17th, 2008 at 2:42 am
Random, just sent you an email, greetings from the Quad.
March 17th, 2008 at 6:15 am
Heh lol@ #1
March 18th, 2008 at 12:05 am
[...] p.s. - For a more in depth look at what started this whole thing, I recommend reading this thread from NickyCakes.com. [...]
March 18th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
I’m one of those with the C&Ds in my inbox. Did not take the post down. Heres the letter:
http://www.blogosis.com/2008/03/19/clickbooth-email/
April 1st, 2008 at 8:51 pm
I am sure they are sending those C&D’s out for good reasons, possibly false accusations by wickedfire members….
April 1st, 2008 at 9:29 pm
nope, just people reporting the facts.
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:46 pm
@nickycakes: how are they facts if they have no proof? They are all opinions since their is no backup of there claims, everyone just looks at the negative side of the story, only about 5-10 are claiming all this crap that they got banned etc with no proof, much more people are reporting that they are getting paid, I am one of them due to the legal integration of my ads!
April 3rd, 2008 at 8:38 pm
i agrees with matt, nicky. i have been using clickbooth for the past 2 months and there are no words that i can describe clickbooth because they’re great.
April 3rd, 2008 at 9:58 pm
So your good relationship with clickbooth invalidates the claims of the many other affiliates who [allegedly] got screwed out of their commissions? You’re either clickbooth employees, or affiliates who’s affiliate managers begged to come here and comment. Not sure how else you would have found this blog, to be honest.
April 4th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
@nickcakes: I am neither, I am a regular publisher like the rest of the community, and how would i find this blog? mabe cause i follow up on it….
April 10th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
@nickcakes: after lerking around and doing some reasearch by using google :D, I see that most of these post are total crap, no proof, no nothing to help the wickedfire site, How do you explain all the crap wickedfire did in the past with Azoogle, and digitalpoint? same sh*t, different company, I say attention whoring should be banned ;).
April 10th, 2008 at 8:35 pm
I agree with you matt, I see all this crap being posted about companies everyday, and I see one source for all of this, wickedfire members. Get your heads out of ur a**es people and seek the truth. I am not a member of clickbooth as of yet but I am awaiting my approval. Hopefully I get accepted :D.
April 13th, 2008 at 12:50 pm
Haha, no way Peter, Matt & Johnny are Clickbooth employees. These 3 jokers were also commenting on http://skewism.com/companies-that-cant-take-bad-press-part-one-clickboothcom/
At least try to make up different names!
June 8th, 2008 at 4:32 pm
CLickbooth are thiefs they owe me $3000 and they found all kind of reasons to ban my account.
October 31st, 2008 at 8:15 am
My name is Mark Gordon; I’m a reporter with the Gulf Coast
Business Review, a weekly business newspaper in Sarasota and Tampa, Fl. I’m working on a story on IntegraClick, a company based in Sarasota. I’d like to get some details of these problems. I can be reached at mgordon@review.net
November 17th, 2008 at 12:33 am
Sounds like this whole thing is over with a clickbooth victory. I’ve been following up on this whole dispute and writing about it on my blog lol. good to see its all over.
December 5th, 2008 at 10:03 pm
Pretty funny but are you trying to get sued? Who are you going to expose next? lol
February 5th, 2009 at 10:25 pm
Clickbooth is not honest, they owe me over $1,300. You may find everything is going fine, then one day you will not be able to get into your account, and you will not be able to contact them. They will not have the decency to even tell you why you are getting ripted-off. If it walks like a duck and it talks like a duck, it must be a duck.
These folks act like thieves to me. I would suggest not to get to much money owed to you with these people and you will be ok.
April 12th, 2009 at 12:36 am
Fuck Clickbooth, they suck.