Smart Quotes (IPT)

[Mike_M]

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Can anyone who's worked with any financial merchants via Smart Quotes please share their experience with me?

How have you found their rejection rates and reasons for lead rejection?

I would be most interested to hear feedback on the merchant Loanline.

Thanks,

Mike

[Basko]

rejections are 50-65%

[Michael_Anthony]

And they pulled the program as of mid January.

[Mike_M]

rejections are 50-65%

These are the figures I've had too, until January.

In January they rejected 80% - is it a coincidence that soon after they close the program, the rejection rate shoots up? This has cost me about 4000 quid.

They are taking the p*** - they've closed the program so they've decided to reject as many leads as they can possibly get away with.

Who's to blame here (apart from me for being so naive)? Smart Quotes or Loanline?

Does anyone have any advice for me - is it worth taking further? I would like to out of principle more than anything else.

[dealfin]

Hi Mike, I cant comment about the smart quotes campaign, however we worked with trade doubler for loan line.Although the route is different the company receiving the leads was and is the same. We had leads accepted by them to which they still owe us 5k. Loan line rejected 85% of leads but still to this day owe us the money.Trade doubler did nothing to help at all and I complained to them that they had I would expect earned of these leads, and I know that loans paid out for Loan line but they still havent paid.

I stated that I would take it as far as I could, but loan line said as the leads came via trade doubler we should take it up with them. Despite asking for information and out come on all leads presented nothing has happened.

I would gladly add my experience and commitment to yours to take steps to gain the funds back as we as with many on here have the cost of generating leads and these cowboy companies make money but dont pay us.If I could take legal action I would.

[RobOxeva]

I've worked for IPT in the past.

You may notice over time that anyone who's worked there, never deals with them once they leave!

Rob

[jhulott1]

Having been a loan affiliate and merchant during the last 8 years, I have noticed this trend. I have moved out of this vertical now as it really is bad. I think the issues are not necessarily with the affiliate network. Their tracking seems to works fine. It is when the broker get the lead at the other end. They have really poor MI systems and probably lose track of the originating lead source (whether on purpose or not) and alot of these brokers do tend to decline an awful lot probably because they can't figure out where the lead came from. I think you would need to go direct to the broker now and leave the network out of it. They will not be of any help as they will not feel any responsibility- their tracking worked. I would imagine that 80% cancellation rate would hurt an affiliate network just as much as you with their 30% overrides.

I would ask the broker (in this case LoanLine) to provide you with a full MI report on the leads you provided via Tradedoubler. I would be interested to see what they would say to that.

Good Luck!

[gramtrad]

Loanline is now back on Smartquotes.

Check the terms and conditions for acceptance of leads !! Someone is taking the michael.

[beejeebers]

Loan Line is the worst. They steadily increased their rejection rate from a reasonable level to over 65% in their last month. Now they're coming back thinking affiliates would forget about getting taken to the cleaners by them.

Do not deal with Loan Line.

They are in first place in a long list of companies that will screw you. Plus there is no way any affiliate can make any money promoting a secured loan company paying out £40. Last year loan line was paying £110 per lead, (but rejecting 50% plus to their real payout worked out to about £55 per lead.) I warned smart quotes last year about these crooks, but was told "thanks for your input..." I was insulted when I recieved another spam from smart quotes telling me loan line was back again. I told them again what a horrible company they were dealing with. They don't care though, as long as they make their commission.

£40 per lead is impossible and couple that with a company known for screwing affiliates and you've got a really raw deal. I hope they go down in flames.

Here's their new "we won't take anything" criteria for screwing affiliates:

All secured loans clients return rejected leads within 48 hours under our normal rejection criteria. These are:

* Wrong telephone number
* Fraud e.g. not on electoral role
* Loan value not in excess of £10000 unless otherwise specified by the client
* Denied application
* Incentives offered
* Multiple applications
* So adverse nobody can lend
* Customer only wanted a quote
* All leads supplied to Loanline must be online leads that have been manually completed. No leads will be accepted from call centres whatsoever.

Really? So if they're denied an application you won't pay the affiliate? Wow. Why not just say this?

Terms and Conditions:

All secured loans clients return rejected leads within 48 hours under our normal rejection criteria. These are:

* Last name or first name begins with a letter of alphabet
* Phone number has digits in it
* Loan amount contains numbers
* Person is alive
* Person can speak english or any other language
* Person lives in a house
* Person wears clothes during the day
* Person eats food any day of the week, (including weekends)

We will basically reject everything and tell you to go F*&! yourself when you question any rejection we give you. We are in this for ourselves and do not care if you had to pay for your advertising costs. That's your problem not ours.

Did I mention Loan Line sucks yet?

[Sarah Hunter]

Dear Smart-Quotes affiliates

At Smart-Quotes we take comments from affiliates very seriously and try to work in the interests of all. We looked at the Loanline campaign after problems with high reject rates last time we ran it and tried to construct a deal that would better suit the affiliates and merchant alike. The strategy was to reduce the cost per lead and to lengthen the form so that the reject rate would be much lower and provide for a higher EPC in the long run. However, regrettably this has not been the case and the reject rate has actually risen.

Based upon this and the various comments on the forum we have taken the decision to suspend the campaign until such a time when all issues can be fully resolved. If the campaign does not work for affiliates then it also does not work for Smart-Quotes and so would rather lose the campaign than run the risk of alienating our affiliates.

Should we be able to revive this campaign then we will look to do so, however, should this not be possible then we will end the campaign, and all affiliates will be kept aware of this.

We are also investigating any leads that were rejected to check if this was the case. We shall also provide lists of rejects to affiliates affected so that they too may make their own spot checks where possible.

Kind regards

Sarah Hunter
Affiliate Marketing Manager
Smart-Quotes

[cyates]

sarah...
you need to ditch loanline for good !

its because of them i've stopped promoting merchants on SQ heavily and now just let you have organic traffic as opposed to PPC traffic

get rid of loanline as they are doing your image no good at all

Chris

[Sarah Hunter]

Hi Chris,

This is exactly what we are doing and will only consider taking Loanline back if all issues are dealt with. We have to offer equal consideration to both affiliates and merchants and allow for issues to be rectified. We appreciate all affiliate comments and take action where appropriate. Rest assured that we shall not take this campaign back lightly.

Kind regards

Sarah Hunter
Affiliate Marketing Manager
Smart-Quotes

[cyates]

good to hear it

[Michael_Anthony]

Hahaha - I wonder if this has anything to do with the "chat" we had with Loan Line just after the relaunch!