Roku Developer Program

[martinamor]

Hello fellow developers!

I hesitate before doing this kind of thing but I've reached the end of my tether.

Roku has failed to pay us rev share on our channel for 4 months now (approaching 5). Our channel is still live and Roku now owes us 10s of thousands of USD. I realised they had failed to pay after a second monthly payment didn't arrive (now 2.5 months ago) and immediately let their support know. They raised a ticket and assured me it would be sorted. Since then they have either sent reassuring messages when I've asked for an update or simply ignored my regular messages about the matter. At one point I even contacted the Customer Success manager via her personal LinkedIn because she wasn't responding to my messages on the Support thread.

The latest message I had from support (which lifted my spirits!) was a request to update our payment and tax details, which I duly did. This was a week ago. Since then nothing - and STILL no money.

I am amazed that a listed co will behave like this. I am on the brink of instructing our lawyers to write to them accusing them of breach of the Roku Distribution Agreement. I really don't want it to come to this. I just want to be paid.

Does anyone else have experience of this? Any tips on who to talk to get them to cough up?

Thanks in advance.

[renojim]

This is disconcerting!  I've been receiving my pitiful payments on time (roughly).  I will say that after a decade of dealing with these people they don't do anything quickly (and rarely competently).  A week may not be enough time, but I couldn't suggest an amount of time to wait given all you've been through already.  I know a problem I had years ago took months to get straightened out and there was little to no communication during the process.  I've had pretty good results with PartnerSuccess, but haven't contacted them in a while (I need to for another problem).  If it helps, I sincerely doubt they're trying to rip you off.

[martinamor]

Thanks renojim! That is actually reassuring to hear. 

It's definitely the silence that bothers me the most. I have been sending regular messages to the partner success team asking them for an update and when to expect payment and most of the time they don't even bother to respond! If my business owed someone money, I would be updating them regularly on what was happening so they knew we were good for it.

Instead I've spent 2 months worrying that they'll never pay us and in desperation I'm finally reaching for the big guns and getting our lawyers on them. It's a total customer relationship fail and a textbook example of unnecessary escalation.  Feels like my only options are to try to remain calm while they fail to pay us for an unspecified period or to spend money and take them to court.

One middle path that occurred to me is to tell Roku's investors and various analysts in the SVOD space that Roku's isn't paying its partners. I think they would be interested! I hope you're reading this ROKU! 

In any case, thanks renojim for listening to my venting on here. Hearing from kind folks like you has helped!

[Komag]

Did you ever get payment?

[martinamor]

We did - yes. 5 months of payments in one day. A big relief. Things are back to normal now I think - at least we’ve had one payment since and it was on the right day.