Does Commission Junction Cheat (duplicated from Affiliate Lounge)

[fleetnet]

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I am most concerned with major discrepancies between the volume of traffic that I can substantiate is being sent to advertisers via CJ and the traffic that CJ is actually recording against our affiliate account.

All traffic sent via CJ from our web sites is first sent to unique URL's on our server before auto redirecting to the CJ advertiser using the correct syntax and text link yet less than 30% of the traffic we know for a fact we have routed via CJ is actually being recorded by CJ.

We have even performed three of our own purchases via CJ links (BetFair, Last Minute and FindWhat) using a link not used anywhere else on our sites. In all three instances the click was recorded yet none of the sales were recorded even though we ensured the CJ tracking cookie was accepted, remained on our PC throughout and went so far as disabling our firewall and anti virus applications as well.

Another classic example of CJ not tracking our traffic and sales is clearly demonstrated by our links to Comet. As soon as we were able to move the Comet links back to UK Affiliates our recorded sales volumes and visitors more than doubled overnight even though the traffic to the domain promoting Comet actually declined.

I have taken this up with CJ who only followed up with me after I gave up waiting for them to respond and approached one of the merchants most affected directly but have had no feedback from CJ since then.

Another area of concern is CJ sales not being recorded when the merchant site is loaded inside a frameset causing the cookie to be rejected as being third party.

CJ was made aware of and acknowledged this at CJU in London this year but have not posted any warning to this effect on their web site despite saying they would raising the question of whether or not they get to keep all our/your commissions when the cookie is rejected (if they also do not get paid when the cookie is rejected due to a frameset surely they would make this known to their publishers?).

Very similar tracking issues have also been noted by us with Trade Doubler whose Nick Roveta at least had the decency to acknowledge and advise that they are working on a solution.

The only affiliate management systems that we also use and have no reason to question are OMGUK, BuyAT, Affiliate Window and UK Affiliates (NOTE: We do not use any other affiliate management services so please do not assume we are saying we do not trust any others not mentioned)

Are we alone in this or do you also have similar problems with CJ / Trade Doubler?