Littlewoods massive rejection rate at TD. Is Buy.at the same

[davidtube]

Hi. I've just posted this £19,000 rejected sales in three months with Littlewoods in the tradedoubler section. Will Buy.At be causing any of the same issues? How long does it take for cancellations to be shown with Buy.At and how long for payments to be sent?

[Dave Booth]

Hi,

Its hard for me to comment on the traffic on tradedoubler however I wouldn't expect your rejection rate to be so high with us although there are rejections on the programme which can be for a number of reasons. We are looking to add more visibility on the reasons for this in the future.

All sales have a 40 day clearance period, this is to allow for delivery and then the 28 day return period. Validations are then done monthly so once the sale has been cleared it will be processed in the batch at the end of the month. You will then be paid in the next payment run which is normally around the 22nd/23rd of the month.

If you have any other questions about the programmes, please don't hesitate to mail me or call on 0191 241 6500.

Regards

[drivetowin]

Dave

That payment period sounds horrendously slow - wouldn't it be better for Litlewoods to pay a lower commission, factor in reversals and so pay straight away on order?

Taking your scenario at absolute worst case, if someone ordered on 22nd December, then 40 days would be up on 1st February, so that would get validated 28th February and commission actually paid to affiliates on 23rd March, a full 90 days after the sale was originally made.

I don't know about others but I would rather have 3% now than 6% in 90 days time.

Also, shouldn't this protracted payment process be shown in the programme terms - at the moment the terms have all the transparency of a thick black bin liner.

[Dave Booth]

Hi,

This has been the payment method since the programme moved to a net dispatches model. The payment method was announced to all affiliates when the programme moved to this model.

The model allows Littlewoods to make sure they are paying commission on genuine sales. Moving to this model has ensured the wider Littlewoods business can have greater confidence in the channel, something that is raising the profile of affiliate marketing internally. I'm sure you'll agree this is great news for affiliates and we hope the benefits of this will be seen by affiliates working on the programme.

I'm sure you will appreciate the need to take account of rejections. As affiliates are rewarded only for driving sales the commissions paid out do not have to be reduced to take account of rejections. I'm not sure all affiliates on the programme would agree with you and want to receive a lower commission. The benefits of driving genuine sales are improved, something that has got to be positive for everyone.

Regards

[davidtube]

Originally Posted by Dave Booth I'm sure you will appreciate the need to take account of rejections.

If they didn't take them into account before, why were reversals already at a fairly high rate of around 30%?

Originally Posted by Dave Booth I'm not sure all affiliates on the programme would agree with you and want to receive a lower commission.

To be honest, 3% would be a massive increase on the 0.6% I'm actually getting paid by Littlewoods. Also it's giving affiliates a big misconception about how much they will get paid (that's if, as TD tell me, the average reversal rate is around 60%) and costing them thousands in advertising.

[dessie]

David,
Rejection rates for Littlewoods rears its head every couple of months or so.
Take a look at this thread +60% Deletion Rate On Littlewoods Direct Catalogue which outlines what specifically happens at TD and which reports to run to show you your actual rejection rate.

So the rejection rate I have been told about and have seen is in the region of 35-40% on Buy.at, which was a little lower than the rejection rate I had at Tradedoubler.

In terms of speed of payment Buy.at are far superior to TD. I will get my payment on 28th of this month for my November sales generated at Buy.at, whereas I still haven't received my payout for September sales from TD which is frankly shocking, especially since those September sales are still listed as "due but unpaid by advertiser", which means God knows when they will turn up.

Even if they got paid today by Littlewoods I wouldn't get payment until Feb which is 6 months after the sale. I don't believe that Littlewoods are sat on the money, but that TD don't feel they have to rush to pay their affiliates as Littlewoods have already left the network. I would write and complain (again) but when you do write to them (even to specific people rather than generic help e-mail addresses), you don't ever get a response (even more frustrating when you see the same people making posts on this forum promoting their network!).

So in conclusion the rejection rates I have seen are lower that the ones you are quoting, you get paid much faster and Buy.at actually answer e-mails (super fast).

There is probably a number of reasons why the Littlewoods Group consolodated all their affiliate brands with one network and hats off to them they picked the best one by a mile.

[Dave Booth]

Thanks for the comments dessie, much appreciated!

David - Its hard for me to comment on your traffic on TD. The nature of Littlewoods and their core clothing products does mean many shoppers will order multiple sizes sending back the ones they don't want or will order clothes, try them on and may return them.

A lot of our programmes have some sort of validation process, so I wouldn't say this is a misleading aspect of the programme. The terms for the programmes on buy.at are as follows:

Commission: Earn 6% standard commissions on all confirmed net sales!

Commission is calculated as a proportion of the sales price, exclusive of VAT. Commission is calculated on a ‘net despatch demand’ basis meaning that commission will not be awarded for sales that are not processed or that are processed and subsequently reversed if due to users’ fraudulent activity or customer product returns.

If you have any questions, please get in touch.

Regards

[dessie]

[quote=Dave Booth;369835]Thanks for the comments dessie, much appreciated!

Dave,
No problem, this industry harps on about relationships all the time, but from what I see rarely follows that up with real action. I have probably only sent 4-5 e-mails to Buy.at but all were replied to quickly and efficiently. There are other networks with whom I have generated much higher commissions who don't even bother to reply.
I find it unbeleivable that some companies can be so indiffernet to the needs of their customers (as that is what the affiliate/network relationship is). It is always easy to complain about things (me being one of the worst culprits!), just thought that "good stuff" should also be highlighted.

David,

Another thing to consider (and it would be great if Dave or Littlewoods could contribute to this), is that with the credit crunch I understand that more and more people are being rejected for credit. SInce Littlewoods tend to trade on the "interest free credit" message it may well be that more people are turning to them as they are getting rejected elsewhere and since there is a tightening on credit checks a higher proportion of these people are getting rejected.

Being perfectly honest I don't think you would buy many electronics from Littlewoods unless you were looking for credit, as they certainly aren't the cheapest in the market. When I look at my rejections in detail it is the highest priced orders that tend to suffer most.

At the same time (and for me something that all too often gets overlooked during these discussions) the conversion rate (for me anyway!) for Littlewoods is one of the best in the market. So a net commission rate of 3.5%ish plus excellent conversion rates means this is still a merchant that will take some beating

Dessie

[Elaine]

wouldn't it be better for Litlewoods to pay a lower commission, factor in reversals and so pay straight away on order?

oh and what about those affiliates that don't attract reversals, we can like it or lump it, can we?

If I was that concerned about getting paid immediately and with no risk I'd go back to my £7.42 per hour at the Halifax, or I'd have accepted that insulting 2% from Next.

[drivetowin]

Not at all Elaine - my point was that having to wait for reversals stretches the payment cycle to 90 days rather than 14 which it could be if buy.at were as quick at paying as say either Affiliate Window or Webgains.

My main complaint though was that the programme terms don't mention this protracted payment cycle at all - I appreciate there were emails when the terms changed but that is not a lot of use to an affiliate signing up to the programme today.

[Elaine]

Just checked my end of January payment and all the paid transactions are for the month of November - no matter which merchant - so you're not waiting any longer for the Littlewods payment - don't know why Buyat take longer than o