Forum Moderators: phranque
Is anybody familar with referrals showing as NULL?
Partnership program whose affiliates show NULL as referrals...where are the hits coming from?
I can't see a surfer typing in an sponsor URL, including some affiliate's code.
just my guess.
I just had a close friend of mine doing the following:
She logged unto an affiliate page, clicked on the corresponding sponsor link and closed a transaction for which she got her receipt.
All the while I was watching the partner account being hit. The transaction occurred at the credit card processor level but it was never recorded at the affiliate level. Where did it go?
About the above I am positive. The transaction for that particular account, for that specific date and time never happened. In fact, there were no transactions for the day and after 5 hours the transaction had been closed, it was still missing.
TOS for the affiliate program states transactions are recorded in real time. I know some programs have a 3 to 12 hours delay in reporting untill they are 'sure' the customer is not cancelling. Not this one.
So what happened with the money?
My friend, the owner of the affiliate page, hasn't contacted the Sponsor yet since he is unsure. There are bugs and there is fraud. My friend, the girl who made the purchase, has a receipt for the transaction, has the statement from the credit card company and has also the information reported by the Sponsor...what is one to do?
These 'bugs' may just go unnoticed to affiliates since they may stay under the radar, happening every once in a while.
Another friend who works for this specific sponsor (I know, I am a very frienly guy) has told me some accounts in the program have an inordinate amount of NULL referrals, so I thought that some of this never-occurred transactions could just be dumped into a NULL category...and then decide what to do about them. Thus, my question.
(my hunger for knowledge one day will get me into trouble...)
