What do you do when a sponsor has terrible customer service or shaves?
 

There is a sponsor I have been promoting for a while. Converts okay, very nicely put together site, although I haven't sent it mad traffic yet or anything. I was surfing around their site to put together sales materials to send them more traffic.

I think it is safe to say that, having been online for a very long time and having had a professional presence online since 1994 and pay sites since 1999, I can probably generally tell if I'm about to make a purchase. In this sponsor's case, I literally just hit reload on a page and their system charged me for a bonus membership. So I went to their customer service and, not identifying myself as a webmaster, I requested credit.

Their support did not apologize for the inconvenience, kept having different people reply, kept giving me conflicting answers, and finally closed my account, with no explanation of what that even meant, telling me there must have been dangerous unauthorized access to my account, even though I clearly told them what happened. So here is my dilemma:

(1) I am not comfortable sending my surfers to what may be an unpleasant experience, but I think this sponsor could do really great for me. I can hope this was an isolated incident, but how do I know if it was?

(2) In my sponsor stats, I normally have no visibility to what the sale actually was, just my $. In this instance, however, it sure looks like my payout is being shaved hard.

What do I do? I really wanted to promote this sponsor more.

strongly worded email.

Links pulled. It's the only answer really.

They shave AND fuck with members, seems like a simple answer. Pull links, blacklist and if you feel like it, smear em too. Won't be long until they stop paying you completely too if thats how they work now.

Seems like you've pretty much answered your own question. I wouldn't promote them knowing full well you can't trust what they're doing. I wouldn't reward them for their behavior. And I'd personally call the site owner and let him know my thoughts on the matter.

By continuing to promote someone you've confirmed isn't above-the-board ethically, you're perpetuating the problem.

As long as the post-join page didn't hang, I doubt they'd refresh it after the sale went through, though I suppose a few might. I'm not sure you could ever prevent it, but a review site might want to mention the possibility as a matter of course. I'm guessing this is what happened? You joined after unchecking a bonus offer, then it went through, then you hit refresh?

Why would you send your surfers somewhere that could be charge back hell? It's just bad business practice.

Sadie Dazzle

You make an excellent point that I could rest easier on the surfer customer service if I included a warning on text upsells. There are still banners, but I might feel better. Frustrating stuff.

That is not exactly how it happened, although you are correct that it shouldn't be an issue except in situations where a page doesn't fully load. (I don't think I can describe it in more detail without outing the sponsor and I'd rather just get people's opinions on the situation for now.)

As I just had a Time Warner service call today and they had a truck parked outside all day yesterday, I think the page loading issue which caused me to refresh was wholly an ISP thing and not at all the sponsor's fault.

exactly what I was thinking.

I had 3 chargebacks today from 2 different sponsors. And those are 2 of the sponsors I generally like more than other. They offer good support. I can only imagine a sponsor with no support.

:2 cents::2 cents::thumbsup

Never know who might screw up
 

Made a purchase from a mom&pop company last week on a credit card with super credit. Got the merchandise. Got a call today that I made a chargeback and wanted to know if I was unhappy. Said I was confused, I didn't do that.

After us both checking, seemed she hit a wrong button or two. Most customers just use the online form to use their credit card, but I called the CC number in for safety.

All is well, but for a few tense moments thought big bank had canceled the card or frozen the credit limit.

First of all you need to decide whether you are going to police the industry or not. If you are, a boycott is in order. Most likely a lonely and ineffective one, but hey, that's what you get for being a cop.

Let's assume you are not.

You need to come up with an optimization strategy and that is all.

How much work are you putting in?
How much is your time worth?
Aside from labor, how much cash are you spending to promote this sponsor?
How much are you spending for each dollar you are putting in the bank?

Work this out for all your sponsors, then concentrate on the ones that give you the best ROI. If your campaigns are optimized based on your overall EPC and the formulas you use to determine that are solid, then it doesn't matter who shaves and who doesn't.

Do frequent test joins of your sponsors so you know what happens to your traffic.

Also look for the WebsiteSecure.org seal on join pages.
If you see one, it means we have read their terms... checked out their sites and continue to monitor them.
It's part of why the seal is trusted and improves ratios for many ethical merchant sites in mainstream and adult.

If I can be of service to you let me know.

Promote your own sites and stop whining how other people run their business.

Honestly, I usually do boycott any sponsor I think is treating surfers shady (however lonely and ineffective my boycott might be). Always really. Except, in this instance, it is someone I've been promoting for a while, with fairly minimal effort and cost, and good ROI (even if they are shaving, which they appear to be). Which is why I was all up in their site putting together promo in the first place. So I feel really conflicted. Normally, I would absolutely pull links, but it is not like everything is converting awesome in the current economic climate and I have kind of specific niche traffic for the most part to begin with.

Any program which doesn't upsell other sponsors is (a) leaving money on the table and (b) foolishly selfish and (c) leaving money on the table.

So what you are saying is that you are getting top dollar for your traffic. It sucks to know that you could be making more if they were more honest, but you have no way of changing them, and it appears the situation could definitely be worse for you (like for example, if you weren't making money) So unless there is an easy way to swap them out with someone whose ethics are more to your liking, don't fix stuff that aint broke.

In this economy, and given the current state of the industry, it could be worse, and it probably will be eventually. For now just cash your checks and keep your eye out for something better.

Why even bother sending to these people ... Try something new look at my sig .. I've been with this sponsor for years the best people to deal with and check this out!

PayPal payments, Wires, and the kicker checks are in British pounds ( kick-ass on the exchange! ) don't waste your time and money .. invest in a long term white label dating program that is stable and pays like clock work.

Did I mention they have over 4 offices in 4 different Euro countries :)

Cheers!

Pull links and name the sponsor. Why would you even think about sending traffic to a program that you believe is shaving?

about bad support, i always try to contact them once, then twice, then sometime third time, give them max two days, if i see them alive and nothing happenned, i send them email that im going to ask on gfy, mostly i get reply soon, if not, i post on gfy and send them email with thread on gfy, problem solved very soon ... if sponsor shave, i write him what is up, he write me that i have send him this or that info, i say nope man, im going to make another test in near future, if there is problem again, i wait and make third test signup, if nothing again, i write them that they will be published on gfy, and i will post on gfy that sponsor is not counting sales ... my first reports, successful shave or how they call it reports, coming soon on gfy ... you hear mostly that affiliates are dicks and similar, i wish that only affiliates are dicks :)

Find a better sponsor.

drop them...

pull links and find a better one. There are tons of them out there.

One click upsells from members areas can be very deceptive and shady - I've seen them where there is no disclosure until AFTER the charge has been made. Curious members sees some content that is really promo content for an upsale, he doesn't know that, he clicks to check it out and voila - he's been charged for another website or an upgraded 'premium' membership.

No it's Crush Kill Destroy


https://youtube.com/watch?v=RwH4quvjRQg


Drop them in an instant.