[tescovouchers]

I had to sign up and post just to reply to this (not my sites btw).

I'm sorry but the voucher situation is getting increasingly more ridiculously monthly with increasingly insane policies coming from the networks regarding the publishing of these codes. As gunneradt shows there is no way Tesco or anyone else are going to get the codes out of public domain. Shut down one site and a hundred more will spring up. The fact that these codes are entirely open to general use means the only leverage Tesco have is threatening affiliates with commission. As the tesco1 site shows no big deal - just slap up some adsense and make some money.

The point is - these demands being made by the networks/merchant are useless. They will not stop the distribution of codes, they will not keep that info out of public domain. All they will do is make Tesco (in this case) lose complete control of the voucher channel.

I think these actions are short-sighted, ignorant and actually making a fool out of the networks. The merchant can sit back smug as they get to make loads of sales without paying a pence to the network on commission and the sites running adsense for example get a good laugh out of the adsense revenue.

Moral of the story? Networks need to learn to get a bit of vision and not bend over nicely to insane merchant demands. Control your channel, advise the merchants but don't be played for a fool. The only way for voucher use to be controlled is by the merchant. It is a simple manner for them to control usage by account and a joke to expect networks or affiliates to do so - if they can't be bothered to fully resource and solve the problem on their end why are the networks and affiliates losing the revenue while bending over to ridiculous and ineffective demands.

This is not a network or affiliate problem it is a merchant problem. Make them fix it.