I've been in this business for a while now. And I am going to share a bit about what I have learned in the past few years. A bit about what is happening now and perhaps we all can discuss on ways to combat the on-going issue.
In short - the retail sellers of SMM services are currently being scammed BIG TIME by the reseller panels. And I'm tired so would many of you be.
Let's back up a bit. And lets establish a few things.
The Supply Chain -
1.
PROVIDERS - At the base of it all you have what we can Providers. Who are they? They are simply the ones who develop services / servers for a particular service. Imagine a team of developers with bot farms for a given platform and custom bot scripts that allows them to control this bot farm. These are Providers. They focus more on development, maintenance and keeping the services up. They want less to do with customer service, marketing, branding and all that.
Naturally, a provider wouldn't want to deal with end users. They are basically the 'factory' in this chain. They don't want to sit around and sell to end users. They don't want to sell one unit to X. And two units to Y. No, they want to sell to wholesalers and distributers who buy 10s of 100s of thousands of units. (Just saying units as a way to explain, of course units is not exactly the quantity of measure for SMM services)
2.
RESELLERS - And then you have the 'wholesaler' and 'distributers' - these are the RESELLER panels. They are simply ones who have access to various providers and they simply LIST the providers services on the panel and add a margin to the service and VIOLA! Life is set. They have to deal more with customers, do a fair bit of marketing and be a LITTLE bit fancy with branding and thats about it. Its clean money. Hook up to various providers and you are done. Most , if not all the panels here on BHW are RESELLERS. They are simply getting a providers service and adding margin to it and reselling it. Most of the sales made by panels are to retailers. Retailers are what you can think of as big businesses with chain of retail stores orders 1000s of units and shelving it for the end user.
3.
RETAILERS - And finally come in the RETAILER. These are people who run retail websites that focus HEAVILY on marketing, HEAVILY on customer support and satisfaction and usually send to END user. The retailer buys in bulk from RESELLER panel and sells individually to individual end users. Usually the margin at retail side pretty good however, the costs are too pretty high.
With the supply chain cleared out of the way, lets now move to the audience and revenue sizes that everyone usually deals with. (All mentioned is generalization of course and pretty roughly mentioned, but you'll get the idea)
The Scale (Revenue vs Customer Size)
1.
PROVIDERS - Now, the provider usually deals with a HANDFUL of resellers. Life is good for them in terms of customer support. They have to chit chat on Skype with 4-5 resellers or a bit more. And thats all the support that they need to provide. Each of these 4-5 resellers bring in $10 to $100 a month of sale so making millions is doable. (Talking about revenue of course)
2.
PANELS - The panels may deal with 100s to 10s of thousands of customers. Really depends. However, what the panels REALLY rely on are also a handful of retailer. A panel is making a TON only and only if they have a good selection of retailers putting in $50k a month deposits and purchasing non-stop via API from various sites. The $1 free credit people is really not what these panels make from. Its the big sharks with large sites with ton of traffic that are the bread and butter of reseller panels. Without these retailers, the panels wouldn't be making even 1% of what they make now.
3.
RETAILERS - And in come the retailers. Naturally here the focus is a lot on branding, marketing, customer satisfaction. Ads, video marketing, emails, live chat and all that. The margin is VERY good in most cases. However, the pure burden comes from the scale of audience / client. Provider deals with 4-5 resellers. Panels really need to deal with 10-20 retailers. However, a retailer HAS to deal with 1000s if not 100s of thousands of end users.
The Gap of Knowledge (here is where the issue starts to appear)
1.
PROVIDERS - Given they are the 'factory' - they make their own rules. They don't usually have to answer to anyone. If the service is good and price is low - they'll make millions. They can tell any reseller to fuck off anytime they want. It won't affect much. Plenty of demand. The rules made up and ALL in their favor at all times in all cases. If shit hits the fan - they'd never lose a dime.
2.
PANELS - Learned from the providers, the panels too have made setup that strips them of all responsibility. They 'expect' the retailers to understand how things are and NOT to complain. And usually the retailers do understand that these services aren't easy to run and you can't be too picky. Burden is on retailer to understand that IG is updating or algorithms have changed and so on and so forth.
3.
RETAILERS - Here is where the GAP happens. The retailers then sell these services to END users. Most of whom have no idea how to even format their computer. They have no idea what a proxy is and forget about having them understand what PV/EV means - what API means. Nope. These are end users. And of course not everyone should know everything. And this is where the hit comes for retailers as they are left with burden to deal with noisy consumers when things fall apart. Everyone wants refund. Everyone wants world class service. And THEY HAVE 100% RIGHT to ask for good service and support. I am in no way blaming the end users whatsoever.
Problems. Problems. Problems.
And when shit DOES hit the fan here is what happens -
1.
Providers - they hold monopoly. If they suspend a reseller panel, they know the panel will die. They have in no way any responsibility whatsoever. Yes, hats off to them for having done what most of can never do - creating bot farms, develop custom scripts and automating it all.
2.
Resellers - these people are the freeloaders in situation. Neither do they make the service. Nor do they take responsibility for it.
3.
Retailers - And here are the ones who have to be held accountable at all times as they are selling to end users. They have to deal with angry emails, unsatisfied clients, chargebacks and refunds.
Example of Issues and JOKES
1. A panel users start and end count of a link (IG post link) to calculate delivered likes. Lets say you placed an order for 1000 likes. And at that point the count is 100 likes. The panel will then note the end count and when it is at 1100 likes, it will conclude that the order is delivered. NOTE - Panel WILL NOT individually check each delivered like and ensure all 1k are delivered.
Now, if delivery happens in an INSTANT this makes sense. At 12:01 the post had 100 likes, you placed order and in few seconds or a minute at max the post had 1100 likes at 12:02. All good. All 1000 came from panel (in most cases)
Lately with IG updates, the likes take HOURS and DAYS to come through.
So, you place order at 12:01 for 1000 likes, and that point your post had 100 likes already. Panel notes start count as 100 likes. For next 24 hours - no likes come through. And the post (naturally) gains real likes too from followers in the meanwhile which the panel CONSIDERS at its own FUCKING delivery and marks the order closed. You've now paid $4 for 1k likes that you never got.
Next, you message your reseller panel about this and they immediately back out and say that is not how things work. And that this is how it is.
2. At times if the post is not gaining natural likes, the issue arises when likes are not delivered for days. Example, you place order today for 1000 likes. And 24 hours later no like is delivered. Naturally for the retailer, the end user will start getting anxious and ask for refund. Now, the retailer is stuck. On the panel the order is still 'processing' and it won't auto cancel. IF the retailer places this same order on another server or panel, then if the order is delivered, the previous panel will also mark the order complete.
1st of August - you place 1000 likes for $5 at Panel A
2nd of August - no likes have arrived, order still processing. You place order on Panel B for $5 and you get the likes.
3rd of August - you have now spent $5 at Panel A and $5 at Panel B and you can't get refund from any of them.
For those wondering why can't retailer ask the reseller panel to 'cancel' the order - well, that is not possible when you have 10,000 orders per day. It is not doable at all. Even if you even do request for cancellation it can take hours for the order to actually get cancelled.
(Side Note - I have lost over $10k so far due to this issue)
3. The reseller panels are also somehow free of all responsibility when it comes to updating services and descriptions. It simply shows how lazy and fucked up they are. I guess with so much money they don't see the need to work hard.
And this is where the retailers get fucked. They see a service on panel that says 'INSTANT" start and they sell it forward telling to customers 'Few Hours' start so that there is some buffer. However, only to find out service doesn't deliver for next 5 days.
Panel would mention 'REAL' likes and only to find out porno profile liking customer posts.
And the issue is the panels keep switching servers and not service ID, so its not like you can TEST each server and stick with one based on your findings. Nope.
One day you are order from Service ID 100 and you get quality X and next day panel finds a cheaper server in market and swaps it. You are still sending order of Service ID 100, but the panel is now sending it to another server.
4. Auto Likes
I could go on and on but I'll mention only one more which is with IG auto likes. Here you have panels mentioning auto likes with instant start and they don't start for 3 days. Imagine having 10,000 auto likes subscriptions and all of them aren't delivering. You're down by $2k given the new $4 per 1k rate. And none of the likes have delivered. Most are naturally gained and panel is marking them 'complete'.
If this isn't a scam then what is?
End Note -
The question now comes as to what can we even do? Aren't we simply at the mercy of the system? Well, yes and no.
Yes, unless you are a code ninja who can make own servers and bot farms, you'd have to rely on the current providers.
No, you can actually take things into your hands if you wanted. And that is what I'm thinking we should do. Same as providers do - we should form a coalition of mega retailers. Ones that bring $10k+ a month to panels in deposits. And we can then form a monopoly ourselves and we hold the power to fuck any panel we want. It simply is something we are now forced to do unless we want to keep losing shit ton of money to this scam.
If a panel starts to scam then we suspend them from our list of suppliers and they are banished forever.
Instead of panels fucking us, we can suspend them.
One by one, fuck all these panels for scamming the shit out of us. And the market will see correction. Until a time will come when panels will take responsibility for their services. They will do HONEST advertisement of their services.
....
Honestly, in all fairness, I don't even mind high prices. I'm okay paying $5 per 1k for likes. And $10 for 1k of followers. As long as the panels are FUCKING delivering on their part. And if they can't then PLEASE refund the fucking balance instead of holding us hostage and eating up my funds.
....
FYI - for all reseller panel owners - its really NOT that difficult to find who the providers are. A simple reverse DNS look on PerfectPanel site shows ALL the sites that are hooked and from there its simple to find out who is doing what. All this 'secrecy' isn't helping anyone. The retailers have been paying your rates not because we don't know who the providers are - simply cause we don't want to jump the queue.
Your days are now numbered should you wish to continue to scam.
As mentioned, I have made losses in this past few weeks more than I can even imagine. And its such a SCAM.
As BHW mentions, the customer should hold the entity he paid to, responsible for delivery of service. However, that is not the case with panels. They simply blame the provider. Haha. They have NO responsibility involved in this whole setup.
So - I'd suggest all you guys to start opening shit list threads for losses you are facing. I will do too. I have seen so many threads of so many people in pain - all for what? Don't give these resellers this kind of power.
MAY GOD BLESS YOU ALL!
And if you are a player in this game and seeing problems, you can leave your review on who scammed you and how so we can all learn from it and take necessary actions. Honestly - I'd simply like for all this loss to stop.
