Originally Posted by BoyAlley

What I'd say is that this module is poorly conceived, and even more poorly implemented.

I think that what happened is 1 client of theirs said hey we'll move to your software if you can make it do X, and Nats made it do X and released it to everyone else as well, perhaps without putting enough thought into it.

Look at it this way:

What percentage of "unverified" signups become real-world refunds or chargebacks? That's the REAL number everyone should be asking about.

If 99% of "unverified" signups turn into real-world chargebacks or refunds, then 1% of "unverified" signups are legitimate, and affiliates are losing 1% of that income.

While I have no data, coming from an information security and user profiling background, I can tell you I HIGHLY HIGHLY HIGHLY doubt that this system would be ANYWHERE NEAR that number.

So if the system is 99% effective on "unverifieds", affiliates lose 1% of sales of those. What happens if it's 90% effective? Affiliates lose 10% of "unverified" sales that are actually legitimate.

That starts to add up to a LOT of money, and if there's no way for an affiliate to know they'll eventually get credit for those sales or not, they have every right to be bitchy.

What this module NEEDS to do, is take those "unverified sales", and automatically make them "verified" so that affiliates get paid out on them, after X period of time has elapsed without refund or chargeback.

THAT's what needs to happen.

This way you're saying to the affiliate: Hey we'll give you instant payout on these sales that we're comfortable with. There are a few sales that are a little questionable to us, so we're going to hold those until the regular payout date, when you would have gotten payment for them anyway.

I don't think anyone would bitch about that.

It sounds like flashcash was mostly using this system to protect themselves with their free signups program (from what I understand), but now that it can also be used by programs for paid signups as well, the ill conceived notion of this entire system becomes amplified.