Dixons 0% On Toys

[getvisible]

Has anyone else sold any what can be classed as "toys" and recieved 0% commission on them?

[accelerator]

In my Awin account, when I go to "Your current commission group levels", I see that Toy says 2.5%. There are however a number of categories that give commission as 0%. That's something I hadn't noticed before and does seem a bit worrying because it does seem it could be a source of lost revenue, e.g. Memory - Flashcards 0%. Someone buys a camera but you get nothing for the memory card when you could have sent this customer elsewhere.

Rgds

Accelerator

[getvisible]

I don't remember them coming in to.

But before I promoted them for this product I checked the commission (naturally) and saw that it was at 2.5%. Although woefully less than the competition I added them to some degree for user choice.

There was no category that it could fall into to attract 0%.

I look forward to hearing from Julia and Dixons.

[Julia Stent]

Hi Lee

I can confirm that all products in the Toys range should be at 2.5%, not zero percent.

I'm looking into the order IDs that you sent across to find out which commission group they have come through within and what items were sold.

If they were Pleos, they should have been in the category for Toys and should have received 2.5%.

As soon as I have more information I will let you know

Best wishes

Julia

[Julia Stent]

Anther quick update on this - I managed to catch Dixons before their office closed and they have looked into these order IDs.

The sales did contain Pleos and have been passed in the wrong commission group. We are looking to match a list of order IDs of Pleos sold against a list of affiliate sales of the same value so we can apply manual commission to the amount that should have been awarded.

We will be reviewing a list of all Pleo orders - however, if you have any particular concerns about Pleo commissions please submit details of the orders including sale amount and transaction times to dixons@affiliatewindow.com. These will be reviewed and we will contact you to let you know of the outcome.

Lee - I will include all of your transactions with zero commission in this review.

If you have any further concerns please feel free to contact me directly - 0844 573 0823.

Best wishes

Julia

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Can ALL affiliates (or whoever wants) have a list of ALL products sold and have an audit on ALL their sales via Dixons, as I can't imagine it's only Pleo products, sorry , well I am not actually, but the more i read & see anything pertaining to Dixons, the more suspicious I am getting.

Not only is 0% products in feeds wrong, but they are wrongly categorising (one of the downsides of commission groups (which can have it's advantages if done correctly) & errors pertaining to this), deliberate hoping we won't notice (especially a popular toy) or not deliberate (unprofessionally careless) ... people can infer themselves & make their own mind up.

[confuscius]

Can AW confirm how sales of zero commission items are handled in AW affiliate reports?

Bit of a whiff somewhere.

[getvisible]

Hi Julia

Many thanks for your messages and trying to get hold of me offline!

I look forward to the Dixons commissions come through - I hope you had a great new years eve!

Lee

[HarveyC]

Hmmm:

Merchant: Dixons
Category group name:
Delivery and Services
Quantity: 1
Value: £149.00
Commission: £0.00

That was an expensive delivery - and no commission - what's going on here?!

[nickhx]

I had one of these as well with a washing machine that was sold via Currys:

Commission Group: Washing Machines
Sale Amount: £197.30
Commission: £3.95
Commission Group: Delivery and Services
Sale Amount: £384.66
Commission: £0.00

Total Commission: £3.95

Is it because Currys are not paying out on extended warranties perhaps?

[HarveyC]

Not sure, but mine came in all on it's own - can't imagine that's a warranty...

[Qui Gon Jinn]

How are back do these incorrect commission groups go?

[getvisible]

How are back do these incorrect commission groups go?

Paul means "far" but he was still in shock so its excused!

It may just relate to my Pleo's. Most of those sales were in the last month/two, but some straggeled buck to then.

[Julia Stent]

Hi

Following an investigation at Dixons, we have identified why products have not been assigned the correct commission groups. When a product is added to the Dixons back-end system, it is assigned to a category. For example, these categories might include WashingMachines, DABRadios, etc. These categories relate directly to the commission groups operated by Affiliate Window.

More than 95% of all Dixons products are assigned to the categories. Of the remainder, around half are add-ons/ accessories and fall into the commission group ‘Essentials’ with Affiliate Window. This is a commission group that Dixons do not pay commission on, as has been discussed extensively elsewhere.

When certain new products are added to Dixons’ system that do not fit within their category system, they have been defaulting to the Essentials category as well within the Affiliate Window system. This meant that commission was being awarded incorrectly. This issue did not come to light until we investigated the missing commissions from Pleos as reported by Lee McCoy. Our thanks go to Lee for identifying this. Until this point in time, neither Affiliate Window nor Dixons had any knowledge that this was occurring. It was understood that all commissions were being awarded on products as per the Dixons commission structure.

We will be running an audit to ensure that all past transactions have been correctly rewarded. Dixons have identified all product lines that are not assigned to a category. They are producing a list of all order IDs that have included these items since May 2007. Affiliate Window has arranged to check these order IDs against orders that have been tracked through affiliate links. We will then award manual commissions where applicable.

There are 48 products on which this has been an issue since launch, which apply to 2000 orders from the Dixons site as a whole. We will be identifying how many of these 2000 orders match to affiliate sales over the course of this week.

Moving forwards, Dixons will assign as many of these remaining products to a category as possible - however due to the functioning of their back-end system there will be some that will remain un-assigned as this would affect the way products are displayed on their site. Dixons will conduct a bi-monthly review of which products on their system are not assigned a category. For all commissionable products that are not assigned to a category, a list of order IDs will be passed to Affiliate Window to match against affiliate sales and apply manual commissions where necessary.

We would like to apologise for any inconvenience caused by this process. We expect the amounts of commission that will be awarded manually to be minimal. Unfortunately this is unavoidable given the current operational system used by Dixons. Both Affiliate Window and Dixons aim to be entirely transparent about this process – at any time, affiliates may contact Affiliate Window to query orders that they would like investigating by sending them to dixons@affiliatewindow.com, however please allow a suitable time period as they may be picked up in the process outlined above.

If you would like to discuss this please feel free to contact me on 0844 573 0823

Best wishes

Julia

[getvisible]

Thanks Julia

So:

• it's caused by their inability to categorise new products (totallying 48) in to a suitable category for affiliate purposes because they're restrained by their system which forces them to categorise various unique products into ones that may not generally be seen as logical.
• They're also going to review how they categorise products
• Recategorise where they can
• conduct a bimonthly review to check any products that may have been missed
• go back an manually add commissions for those products since the last audit
• review 2000 orders since May 2007 to make sure that the correct commissions are associated
• manually add those commissions to our accounts

I hope I got it right .... But thanks again for looking into it.