Forum Moderators: skibum
In the 4th quarter of last year, we sent a significant amount of sales to a flat commission based affiliate program selling tangible goods. December rocked hard, people shopped like mad before Christmas. January comes along, the ACH wire hits the bank account and it's all good and dandy.
Around mid-February, I check the Linkshare Analytics account, only to realize that the account for the particular merchant was showing nearly negative $100,000 in sales. Confused and worried sh*tless, I dispatched half a dozen emails and phone calls to the affiliate support, trying to figure out what was going on.
What I learned was that this particular merchant had missed out on integrating their returns feed into the Linkshare system (after a backend upgrade), causing all affiliates to get paid on returned good as well. Christmas time carries a larger-than-usual return ratio, which is to be expected. While I realize that their TOS states that aff. partners are to have returns / canceled orders deducted from their payouts, I find it somewhat preposterous that I am going to have to slave away for about a month and a half before getting our numbers back to the positive and getting paid commission on our sales - over their mistake. I do not see why my income should suffer for weeks because their inability to coordinate a system upgrade properly. Christmas was a very busy shopping time, with February and March being obviously slower, we're not going to see a penny in commission for X weeks.
If it weren't for hundreds of archived links placed across our site promoting this merchant, I'd drop them in a heartbeat and let my account sit in the negative. F**k 'em.
Am I overreacting?
But look at it this way. You've got the money. Because of their error, you have been, in effect, paid IN ADVANCE for the first few months of this year.
Here's how I figure that. Let's say you were paid $300 for Dec. (I'm sure it was much more than that, but small numbers are easier to work with). $100 of that should have been counted as returns. Sales are down after the holiday, so let's say that you will earn $50 each in Jan. and Feb., which counts against the returns.
So as it stands, you got paid $300 at the end of January. You get to keep that.
If they had done the returns properly, you would have got $200 at the end of January, $50 a month later, and $50 two months later.
I really don't see how you lose out to get money earlier than you ordinarily would! And it's not as if they've asked you to actually give the money back.
