The Big CJ Stitch Up!

[john-pp]

I'm not surprised so many merchants and affiliates have been leaving CJ lately.

We only use (soon to be "used") them to promote 4-5 merchants and having generated around £50,000 worth of sales plus other leads in just the last 3 months (each month's sales increasing by about 100%) you'd think they would at least try and help out when they make a cock up!

Just before Xmas we were promoting 3-4 shopping catalogues and the sales were rolling in every day. Just as we were getting to the absolute busiest period of the entire year the "powers that be" at CJ decided to de-activate our account for a "review".

During the review we were informed that as we were promoting some of the merchants via our email newsletters etc we would have to change our account to indicate "Special Status". What this turned out to mean was that commissions for ALL sales would be frozen, and we would have to reapply to each of the merchants we were already promoting, if a merchant decided not to take us on we would lose any commissions earned to date!

After providing them with full details of our operations we received an email to say we were actually operating within their T&C's after all and our account would be re-activated immediately.

We were assured that if a merchant subsequently accepted us again that any sales made would be paid to us. However not only did the main merchants we earned a hell of a load of sales for reject us (even though the same merchants accepted our applications through other networks!!!) so we lost those commissions, but all the "valid" sales made during the "review" period to merchants that accepted us were showing as coming from "invalid clicks" so we lost all those as well!!

We think both CJ and the unscrupulous merchants that were given the option by CJ to reject us during our account review and did so, have acted appallingly and we feel that we are at least owed a decent explanation but trying to get any sense out of CJ for this whole episode has been nigh on impossible!

After only receiving "cut & paste" stock responses that have absolutely no bearing on our specific concerns we've decided to cut our losses, move on and have now signed up on other networks.
Now I know our account is only "small fry" to CJ but their customer service and the way this has been handled by them has been absolutely atrocious!

So my advice to any affiliates thinking of using CJ is - THINK VERY CAREFULLY before doing so, especially if you:

use email to promote your merchants
ever anticipate needing to contact their customer services
do not already have a working relationship with the merchant(s) you want to promote

And finally.... we found that all the merchants we were promoting through them were also offering their services through other networks so be sure to check out other networks first!

John-pp
GFG

[ep90]

Sorry to hear this John - I'd also add to this Commission Junction affiliate links / cookies are quite often blocked by software like Spybot.

[Qui Gon Jinn]

I really do sympathise, I've been there on a number of occasions & so have others.

1. May I ask were you liasing with the UK or US office?
2. Also, was there a telephone communication or was it all by email?
3. May I ask which merchants this pertains to?

[john-pp]

Qui Gon Jinn - in answer to your post:

Contact was initially in response to emails we were receiving from (we assume!) the US office, we then contacted what we thought was the UK office and were told it would be "looked in to", after that we even went through another of the merchant's agents direct via telephone as well.

I've detailed the merchants and problems encountered below.

The worst culprits were these 3 merchants:
Great Universal | Marshall Ward | Littlewoods Direct

Having signed up and been successfully accepted on their programmes went on to generate thousands of £'s worth of sales for them - when given the chance to reject us during our account "review" by CJ they promptly did so!! Who'd blame them really? lots of sales and no commission to pay out! but during the review period we signed up successfully with the same merchants on other networks! Work that one out then.

24Studio
after review they accepted us back on the programme no problem - but we lost sales made during the review period (which apparently shouldn't happen if they subsequently re-accept) also had lots of "invalid clicks" and no valid sales for quite a few days after account re-activation.

Additions Direct
almost identical as above except they keep "extending" payouts for subsequent payments.

To be fair I've just had a PM from Jason - Publisher Account Director @ CJ who says he will look in to it for us, but to be honest I think the damage is done.

John-pp
GFG

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Have you had any further joy yet? I do hope so.

Here is a little light reading to one of numerous problems we have had & illustrates how it is unlikely that lessons will ever be learned.

CJ Network Quality at Commission Junction Needs Taking Down A Peg or Two : www.cj.com » Affiliate Marketing Blog

Are Commission Junction the School Playground Bully? » Affiliate Marketing Blog

[gadget]

Sorry to hear your tale John. I dumpted CJ a long time ago for similiar reasons.

[john-pp]

Have you had any further joy yet? I do hope so.

Not yet... our MD is hoping to speak to Jason from CJ today and I'll keep you posted.

John-pp

[Matthew Wood]

This sounds terrible, I do hope you get this rectified as this is certainly not your error.

I would ring the London office +44 (0)20 8785 5870 and ask to speak to Alison Guise, UK Country Manager direct on this instance and explain your dilemma - It's something that affects the trust and reputation of the UK office and must be addressed by them.

[dessie]

John,
My heart goes out to you, without going into massive detail more or less exactly the same thing happened to me.

I had only been really promoting Argos on their network and had actually stopped promoting them once as I was hit with an "investigation" which took a week to sort out and also the poor payout of 25p for all reserve and collect orders.

I even asked the question at the end of the investigation “would you as a network prefer it if I didn’t promote any of your merchants?”

I got the reply that no everything was fine, but still didn't promote any of their merchants.

Then I got an e-mail directly from Argos asking me to promote the site as they were running a free delivery offer. Thought this would improve the commission rates and gave it a go and obviously since I had been given a clean bill of health on the previous investigation thought everything would be ok this time around.

How wrong could I have been! The amount of money that has been withheld is relatively low, but due to the frankly appalling method they have of dealing with their so called customers means I am not going to let this drop.

My brother in law is a barrister and has had a look at all the correspondance and he is helping me put together a small claim against CEO of Home Retail Group (Argos Owner) (Mr Terry Duddy), as they are the ultimate beneficiary of the sales I generated.

To sign off a little insight into how they treat their customers (I wonder if merchants on CJ realise how they represent their companies).

During the investigation I was quoted a number of different parts of the agreement that I was/could be in breach of. I looked all over the site and couldn't find the agreement anywhere, so I e-mailed asking if they send me a copy/tell me where it is. I got this word for word reply

"As far as the publisher service agreement, you had to read it in order to sign up, unless you simply ignored it and acted as if you read it. That would be your mistake, not ours."

[john-pp]

The sad thing is up until this episode we really didn't have any problems with CJ, they always paid up on time, most sales seemed to track fine and never really had cause for concern.

But looking back over their correspondence on this there really does appear to be some kind of aloofness or even arrogance from them that suggests "you're as guilty as sin and you know bl**dy well exactly what you're doing wrong!".

Here's a quote from their first message:

"Review of your Publisher account and its traffic indicates your use of promotional method(s) that Commission Junction deems special, requiring a special indication and description in your Publisher Account as detailed in the Publisher Service Agreement you agreed to follow."

Pretty ambiguous eh?

After a few emails asking what these "promotional method(s)" were our MD managed to get this out of them:

"Please note that publishers that promote advertisers via email MUST disclosed that to advertisers through the Special/Incentive flag."

Not only do we only use affiliate links in our newsletter and confirmation emails etc to our own customer base, BUT we had already indicated this as a method of promotion in our CJ account area where it asks you to list what promotional methods you use!!

After pointing this out to CJ this was subsequently acknowledged by them who then sent us this:

"After reviewing your account with the facts Commission Junction currently has determined that you are in compliance with both the Commission Junction Publisher Service Agreement and the Commission Junction Code of Conduct. "

!!! Bit late seeing as we lost 3 major merchants and a bucket load of commission. No apology and no indication that they would look in to recovering the lost sales!!

Don't get me wrong, I'm not having a rant, that's a job for the MD and this hasn't effected us severely in a monetery way, our main "bread & butter" is in the financial sector, I'm merely comunicating our experience with CJ so that others can be made aware of what can happen even when you think everything is going fine.

John-pp
GFG

[KirstyM]

The way CJ tends to deal with these things if you don't have an in-house contact can be a bit chaotic and senseless. I had $4300 clawed back after a year a while ago and in the end my only recourse was poetry!

Dunno if it will make you feel better, but here's my Ode To CJ....

Ode To CJ - A Tale Of Affiliate Betrayal *Sob*!

I found writing it made me laugh about it, perhaps all affiliates should try poetry therapy when networks poop on them from above?

[gadget]

Dessie - if only more affiliates would follow your example. Affiliates have got to start standing up for themselves against such appaulling behaviour like this. Good luck.

[Steve North]

John-pp,

I represent, Additions, Great Universal, Marshall Ward, Littlewoods and Littlewoods Direct and I can assure you that I was not aware that any of this had happened.

Please contact me directly so we can get to the bottom of this.

Regards,

Steve North

Affiliate & Partners Manager
LWSDG
0870 263 2611
steven.north@lwsdg.co.uk

[dessie]

Thanks Funky, hopefully I won't need too much luck. Although I would like to be a fly on the wall of the office of the person who handles CJ at Argos, when the CEO rings to find out wtf is going on!

[Qui Gon Jinn]

Steve, thank you for addressing the forum

I can assure you that I was not aware that any of this had happened.

That's not the first time i have heard that from a merchant about CJ & a little concerning when that is the case.