Account killed with $2,830 still pending. Has anyone ever actually got that money?

Ran a sweeps offer with them since November - nothing clever, same two sources the whole time, they knew exactly where it came from because I told them in the application.

Logged in Monday, account disabled. Email says "traffic quality concerns" and cites clause 8.3, which when you go and read it says they can withhold accrued earnings pending an investigation with no defined end date. $2,830 sitting there. Asked what specifically was wrong with the traffic - no answer, three emails now.

So the real question. Not "is this a scam", I know what it is. Has anyone on here ever actually got money out of a network after a termination like this? Not a partial, not a story about a friend - you, and how much.

no. the clause exists so that they never have to. it's not there for fraud, it's there for exactly this

Post the exact wording of the termination email, redacted. There's a real difference between "pending investigation" and "forfeited", and people in this thread are about to give you advice without knowing which one you got.

Caveat first: I've recovered twice out of four attempts, so this is a coin flip, not a method.

What worked both times was going sideways instead of up. 1) The advertiser whose offer you ran has a name and usually a marketing contact, and they do not enjoy hearing that the network running their campaign is withholding from publishers. That is the single highest-leverage email you can send and almost nobody sends it. 2) Write once to the network's billing address, not the AM, with the amount, the dates, the clause number and one sentence saying you'll be posting the correspondence publicly if there's no payment date within ten business days. Then actually do it.

The two I recovered were 60% and 100%. The two I didn't, I never got a reply at all, and in both cases the network was gone inside a year — which tells you the withholding wasn't about your traffic, it was about their cash.

I'd be careful recommending the public post as a lever, and I say this having watched this exact cycle since about 2014.

The AMs all know each other. They're in the same three Telegram groups and they've been in them since Skype, and the guy who posts a naming thread gets a reputation that follows him to his next four applications. I've seen people iced out of decent networks for a $1,200 dispute they were completely right about.

The quiet route is worse in every way except the one that matters: you take 50 cents on the dollar, you sign nothing, and you're still approvable next year. That's usually the better trade and nobody wants to hear it because it feels like losing.

The blacklist is mostly a story the AMs like told about them, because it's free leverage.

I've named two networks on boards like this one and applied to eleven since. Approved on nine. The two rejections were geo, not reputation.

Also "take 50% and stay approvable" assumes the money exists and they're negotiating. Half the time they aren't negotiating, they're stalling until you stop writing.

Nine out of eleven at your volume isn't the same test as nine out of eleven at his. You're worth the awkwardness to them. He might not be, yet.

We're not going to agree on this one and that's fine. He should hear both.

Four weeks, since people asked me to update.

Found the advertiser, emailed a marketing manager there - polite, one paragraph, dates and amount only. She replied within a day saying she'd raise it, which is more than the network managed in a month. Then nothing. Two follow-ups, nothing.

Network has now stopped opening my emails entirely - the read receipts stopped, which is its own kind of answer. So the count is still zero people in this thread who got paid after a termination. Leaving it here rather than pretending it resolved.