Quidco no longer working with Affiliate Window

[Rich79]

Tweet

Any bonuses they may, or may not get paid by the networks have nothing to do with the cashback commission from the merchant

Also from Quidco's site:-

"Unlike other sites we pass on the full 100% of earnings we receive from merchants"

??

[tomj]

Whats the estimated £loss to awin now as a result of this?

[confuscius]

Where a merchant operates a tiered commission structure based on volume does a Quidco member get 100% of the base level commission or 100% of the higher level commission? If the lower then what happens to the difference?

How can they pay the higher level commission as these are normally calculated based on volume after the event?

What am I missing here? Or does 100% cashback mean 100% of basic commission cashback? In which case, they cannot by definition pay over 100% of ALL commissions received

Could someone enlighten me, please.

[renegade]

I assumed the 100% cashback model relied on the difference between the basic commission levels and whatever tier or deal they can arrange with the network, agencies or direct to make their profit - not much point running a business that gives away all it's commission is there? Or am I missing something?

[monkeyprojects]

Looks like someone has just removed the entry on the quidblog regarding the 'bonus payments' and '£65 vs £40' mentioned by Mark. They asked Quidco for feedback on the two issues, guess they got it

looks like I did. question is do I dig up the cashback code we wrote years ago or continue with our current plans.

[Andrew Starr]

What I can see possibly happening in the future is quidco starting their own network and 'persuade' merchants to join.

Would it be cost effective for quidco to do this?

Would this then allow them to keep the full override?

Could all the networks lose out eventually?

[smarties]

I assumed the 100% cashback model relied on the difference between the basic commission levels and whatever tier or deal they can arrange with the network, agencies or direct to make their profit - not much point running a business that gives away all it's commission is there? Or am I missing something?

I think they do give the higher tier commission if they get it. I've seen QuidCo merchants in the past and it has said that it'll track at the base value then it'll be verified by the merchant at the actual value based on how many sales they got.

The QuidCo cashback levels seem to be higher than base value in most cases as well.

[Cheapdvds]

loving the linkback to rpoints , ie to their moderaor restricted forum

[Cheapdvds]

well done rpoints u soon rectified that , guess rpoints are rubbing their hands as CBK has to be top contender for taking the crown , and good luck to them

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Would a network setting up a white label cashabck site of all their merchants be viable? And affiliates simply referring customers whose details they can market too as well (sharing the base), that way more often than the highest tier may always be available, just a question of what commission the referring affiliate receives.

[darrenb]

Looks like someone has just removed the entry on the quidblog regarding the 'bonus payments' and '£65 vs £40' mentioned by Mark. They asked Quidco for feedback on the two issues, guess they got it

The same questions amongst others are being asked on the Quidco thread over at Money Saving Expert the only difference is they cannot delete the post's, instead they simply choose to ignore them.

[HomerJ]

I think there is nothing wrong in affiliates asking merchants and networks to set standards to deal with queries. While AW are quite good in helping with untracked sales queries, there are still a few merchants in other networks who do not reply to queries for months on end. Due to some merchants like this, we have paid tens of thousands of pounds in "goodwill" payments to members. Whether it is 28 days, 45 or even 60, drawing a line somewhere is a good idea.

As Matt said, it is fairly easy to avoid duplicate queries being sent to merchants.

If you have enough resources to effectively communicate with members and merchants promptly, longer periods of validation required by some merchants is not a major issue. If you look after your members well, keep them updated on pending queries and likely timeframes, most genuine members understand and are happy to wait for reasonable periods. But surely, a 45 day period should be enough for most merchants?

While it is important to look after members, it is equally important for a cashback site to protect the merchants from undue pressure, fraudulent transactions, damaging their brands by blaming things on the merchants etc. If merchants are exposed to fraud by some members, all the members of a site will be affected eventually.

Cashback site operators should also put in effort to improve confidence amongst merchants and consumers by setting minimum standards. We have been working closely in The Loyalty Association on setting these standards, getting our services audited by others etc.

AW and cashback sites:

I can honestly say there is nothing wrong with AW, their tracking or the way they deal with member queries. AW are an absolute delight to work with and they were pioneers in taking the initiative to develop "cashback site friendly" features. Hundreds of thousands of cashback consumers are benefitting from AW's inititiatives as they set the standards for many networks to follow.

We operate 58 Whitelabel cashback sites, 6 owned by our company eDeals UK, including our own 100% cashback site froggybank. We have been in the cashback industry for 4 years - AW is in one of our favoured networks from Day 1, until now.

Whenever our techies build a new integration feature, AW data is the easiest to integrate and gets done first.

Fraudulent transactions:

Only a very small proportion of members of cashback site deliberately do fraud. If a cashback site operator is not vigilant and does not have systems in place to detect fraud, identify it early, ban emails/IPs etc, the fraudulent traffic will look many fold (due to same individuals offending over and over again with different merchants and different names)

Most networks and merchants do not recognise the difference in standards and efforts made by some loyalty companies and see all cashback sites the same. If no recognition is given for extra efforts put in and it is all about volumes, there will be little incentive for newer companies entering the market in future to monitor/reduce fraud.

[Graham@Buyagift]

What I can see possibly happening in the future is quidco starting their own network and 'persuade' merchants to join.

Would it be cost effective for quidco to do this?

I think there's a massive difference between running a cashback site and running a network.

[Rpoints]

Mmm... this is all a bit ugly.

It does highlight how important the 'untracked sales' issue is to loyalty sites. Though the 'untracked sales' process that many networks now have in place (incl. AW) is far better than it was 12 months ago. For the first few years of running Rpoints, we had difficulty getting any network to acknowledge a responsibility to query untracked sales with their merchants! Of course, those were the good old "pre-100% cashback" days when sites like ours had the margin to take such things on the chin and reward our members regardless (which Rpoints still does).

That said, we are very happy with how AW deals with untracked sales and, in the absence of a response here from Quidco, it does appear that that the sureshop issue may be something of a red herring. The move is being spun as a means of improving reliability (which of course goes down well with members who are set to lose out on cashback from big name merchants), but (from comments here) it appears to be primarly a commercial move.

Nothing wrong with that. To all networks - we're happy to take a share of your override any time you want to offer it

I've seen comments like "The customer is always right" bandied about in this debate. Well, I usually define "customer" as the person who is paying the money. Who's paying the money that funds our cashback model? The merchants. So those operating a cashback site always have to strike a balance between the desires of its members and the merchants. The Loyalty Association was created partly in the recognition that some merchants felt this balance was not always right, and our members recognise the need to address their concerns on issues like long term value, effects on brand and fraudulent sales. In particular, we have to be reasonable in our demands about validating untracked sales, which is yet another time pressure to already-stretched companies.

Quidco could hardly quit a network where the average payment is enough that the member would not be concerned about losing another £5 membership charge (say a mobile phone contract or car insurance).

Not an issue for Cashback Kings, as we waive the membership fee for those switching from another cashback site that's already deducted it

CBK will certainly be happy to work with AW to make up for any sales 'shortfall' from this move, as I'm sure will many other cashback sites

[devilsAdvocate]

I agree with rpoints that this is all spin and the motives on both sides are entirely commercial. I am involved in running a few merchant affiliate schemes where Quidco is quite a big affiliate (top 10). Some of these merchants are exclusive to Awin, some are not. I'd rather not say which schemes, because the following comments are my opinion only. But I welcome any feedback/ education from those who don't agree with me. I should point out that I'm not on Quidco or Awin's side here - but I am a merchant and a quidco member.

1. I DO agree that Quidco going behind Awin's back and informing merchants directly of their decision to drop Awin was well out of order.

2. Interestingly enough, Quidco moved their tracking from Awin to another network a few months ago on all of the dual network schemes I work on. Even though my implementation and order validation process is far better and more efficient on Awin. I assumed at the time that there must be some over-ride sharing (kick-back) going on at the other networks - and as a merchant I didn't really care - it wasn't affecting my CPA. If Awin had struck a better deal with Quidco I'm sure they would have moved back again - I do feel that Quidco are out to make money first - and serve their members best interests second. Awin's latest post certainly seems to suggest that the main reason for the breakdown in the Quidco/ Awin relationship was actually Awin's refusal to give Quidco a kick-back.

3. Sureshop. As a merchant I don't think this is a bad thing if it brings in more sales by improving end-user confidence. Clearly I need to keep on top of my order and query validations anyway - or I wont get as much affiliate business - particularly on Awin as validation speed contributes to my Awin Index score. I have automated reports for checking order status, am happy to pay for genuine orders, and will always decline any incomplete or cancelled orders. A Quidco member can re-submit their query multiple times and I'll keep declining it if my systems show the order was not completed and paid for. It doesn't waste much of my time. One of the networks I work with already de-dups previously submitted queries for me - before sending the batch through to me for validation. I doubt it takes them long. I don't really see any major issue with this system for most retail transactions (drawn-out order processing exceptions aside).

3. Awin have made a big deal out of their opting out of sureshop - and been given big props for their actions by members on this forum. I respect other members' opinions, but I'm wondering if the sureshop thing actually had anything to do with the relationship breakdown, or if it was actually a wee bit of Awin spin, when it was really all about kick-backs. IMHO it wouldn't be the first time I've seen Awin spin events in order to look good to the affiliate community. I don't have any problem with this standard business practice and I'm sure Awin aren't the only network who write things up to put themselves in a positive light, but perhaps we should read between the lines here?

4. So why didn't Awin give Quidco the kick-back they wanted? Are they acting purely to protect their principles, their merchants and the affiliate industry? I think this is perfectly possible and do believe they generally try to do the right thing. But could it also be because they offer such small over-ride commissions to merchants in order to sign them up on an exclusive basis, that they can't then afford to share? Let's face it, this is also a valid scenario. Obviously low over-rides are nice to have for merchants' CPAs, but is this saving worth it when a big affiliate like Quidco walks away and you're stick in an exclusive contract? Well I'm sure it varies scheme by scheme, but in some cases I've looked at it would be worth the merchant paying the kick-back themselves to keep the Quidco business. Unfortunately I don't see how they could do this if they wanted to when they're under an exclusive contract with Awin - as Awin have surely damaged their relationship with Quidco beyond repair with their public laundry airing.

I'm actually a big fan of Awin - great service and innovation, low over-ride commissions, but don't think they're necessarily acting out of anything other than their own financial interests in this case, and this will almost certainly hurt most of the merchants they have on exclusivity - to what extent remains to be seen. I also love earning cashback through quidco - but am sure that they put their own business and earnings first, then look for a way to spin their actions to appear "in the interest of their members".

Am I being cynical or objective?