You would assume that now that Adult Friend Finder is owned by Penthouse you wouldn’t still be hearing about them scamming people still, but you would be wrong. After what I heard today, it really makes one think twice now about having anything to do with any division of Penthouse, not just the blatant scammers like Adult Friend Finder. I really thought much more highly of Penthouse … well, until now. I guess looking back on it, when I heard the story on TMZ about Penthouse being busted for hiring men to pretend like they are women online, and they have been doing it since the day they launched their site, duping who knows how many thousands and thousands of consumers into thinking they were talking to real women, that I should have suspected they were just as shady as AFF but for some reason I just had more faith in the Penthouse brand.
There is a thing in the adult industry known as cross sales. A lot of times these cross sale deals are made in a sort of, you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours kind of deal.
In short, website A offers a consumer the opportunity to join website B for a great discount, sometimes free for 1 to 3 days, sometimes for just a $1. In return website B pays website A a kickback or commission of typically $20 to $25. Website B is banking on the fact that the consumer in question will love their website so much they will stay a member and in return, they will make their money back on the full membership price and any recurring months they may stay a member after that.
Sounds simple enough, right? Well really it is, but the problem with this system is when you have a company like Adult Friend Finder, who will go to people and trade favors for things they want of rather good value, say for example if a company owned a content company as well and AFF might say, reduce my cost on this huge amount of content I just bought from you and in return I’ll send you a ton of new members through a cross sale deal. The problem is AFF sends over fake sales.
So now the guy just gave AFF a huge discount, losing thousands of dollars on content in return for, nothing. Actually worse than nothing, in return for a large number of chargebacks.
What AFF is doing is bullying new members into joining a series of websites, as many as 8 “FREE TRIALS” to activate their membership and talk to other members. They promise, you won’t have to pay for anything, just join and then cancel right away.
See what they just did there? Now website B just got themselves a whole bunch of members fraudulently.
How fucked up is that?
So before you sit down and consider making any deals with any Penthouse owned websites including Penthouse, Adult Friend Finder or Danni.com, just keep in mind this story you just heard because you could be the sucker who gets scammed by them next!