Marcia - 10:25 am on Apr 19, 2008 (gmt 0)

that makes it their responsibility that everything is in order

Nope, it's the merchant that prepares and uploads the feed. All that SAS needs to see is in order is that the feed is available for affiliates to access. Their responsibility begins and ends there. Or have they started offering free datafeed preparation services in their merchant contract?

no way would CJ or Linkshare tell me to contact the merchant

So CJ or Linkshare has a department that prepares feeds for the merchant at no charge?

Either CJ & LS give merchants free database services, or some CSR would contact the merchant to fix it themselves, as an intermediary. But it would still land right back in the merchant's lap to correct a problem.

Sounds like this is simply a matter of who's sending an email to the merchant - unless the network is managing the program inhouse, which they all do, for a price.

Added:

BTW, if anyone wants a lot of hand-holding for feeds, they might also want to check out Avantlink.

[edited by: Marcia at 10:28 am (utc) on April 19, 2008]