DVD players - non tracked sales

[NeilDurrant]

It's rare that I bring a direct complaint to the board but in the case of this merchant I have met with a resolute and uncooperative response in the face of evidence of valid transactions.

I have two transactions with full customer contact details and copies of the actual retailer's receipt however the sales where not tracked.

I asked the retailer to investigate and received the following response:

"We are unable to issue manual requests for commission in such instances."

Not satisfied I suggested they reconsider to retain our ongoing referrals to which they replied:

"Whilst we have no issues with rewarding affiliates by payments of commissions for referred business we cannot do this on an ad-hoc basis."

So this shortsighted merchant has lost my ongoing business.

What irriates me most is that I personally have been a customer and provided them with a nice editorial comment praising their customer service.

It's short sighted merchants like this with no grasp or understanding of the value of ongoing affiliate relationships that are destined to fail with their programs.

Running an affiliate program isn't hard, there are only a few basic rules to follow with a dose of common sense. In this case I would have expected common sense to prevail but apparently not. That's my rant over - I've got some links to delete now!

[Luke]

That's amazing.

Serious common sense failure.

[missey]

This will always be a risk for very successful online businesses - they get rather too confident in themselves. Trouble is most big business owners can afford to retire within a couple of years - so why should they care about the "little" guys who build their businesses for them?

I have seen numerous cases where companies offering things via affiliate networks abuse their affiliates. It's much the same as a company who doesn't value it's sales team. Unfortunately for us, if they have 10,000 or 100,000 visitors a day and 10,000 affiliates, then even if you account for 2-3% of their sales it can be very difficult to get them to listen.

I provided around 0.5% of the customers to a PLC valued at over £200m - did that mean I should have been paid £1m? Yes, but would I get paid that? - of course not. I needed to be a 100% shareholder (i.e. own the business) to realise the value of my efforts.

Still, having a rant usually helps on an individual basis.

At the end of the day, if you are selling someone elses goods you will always play second fiddle to the boss of the outfit.

[Luke]

I know you summed that up brilliantly Missey, it's unfortuntaley so true.

Still it still beggars belief particularly in this instance as because of the operation Neil runs he can actually provide proof that there were valid sales, and clearly he has a few from his members where there were transactions but no tracking confirmation.

In case you didn't know he runs a cashback site so I would imagine some of his members said "oi I bought a DVD player from this site and you haven't recognised it".

Whereas with my site my punters don't care as I am not giving them anything back, so if the tracking is not working it goes unnoticed usually, and even if I did a test on it and found it wasn't working I have no proof that the previous 500 clicks did or did not produce a sale.

Don't quite see the point in running an affiliate programme in the first place if you can't be bothered to be reasonable and look after your affiliates? After all it's not like their are no other sites selling DVD Players people can turn too...

[missey]

I think Amazon have got the model right, but most "businessmen" can't see the long term aims of something like Amazon.

One business (who again needs to remain nameless) gave me a tought time when I actually visited the MD's office in order to press the case for telephone tracking sales. He simply said "do you get telephone tracked sales from Comet?". No was the reply, but he was blatantly looking at his short term aims rather than realising who was putting food on his table so to speak.

Trouble is he is now so big and successful that he believes his own brand can carry him without the need for affiliates (which was probably his underlying thought 3 years ago), but my prediction is that he will be "overtaken" at some stage. But then again he probably doesn't care - once you've got £10million in the bank and your Ltd company limits your liability to £1 why should you?

I guess I wouldn't either if I was in his rather smart shoes.

Well done to anyone who makes a million as far as I am concerned. We all know the rules before we start playing the game. The only people I have real problems with are those who break the rules and don't pay. The rest I just have to swallow my pride and just get on with making a living.