How to deal with a merchant with stats reporting problems

...but who doesn't want to acknowledge them

[Publisher011]

I have had a profitable relationship with a certain merchant for a pretty long time. Their stats software, which has never been the greatest has started to act up lately giving inaccurate reports and sometimes even looks like it swallows sales. The more I bring up these obvious problems, the less this company wants to deal with me. I'm pretty surprised that this is happening, given that we've been working together for years. They are a bigger player in a small market and their products sell very well, that is when their systems are functioning properly. There are very few choices of merchant for this product and most pay poorly because they don't have the same purchasing power as this company.

Now my emails usually go unanswered and they are making changes specifically to my account that make doing business with them less appealing. The only thing they have said is that they looked into it and there are no problems. I'm very surprised at the way they are handling things. I am being treated like it's me who's done something wrong.

Has anyone here ever dealt with a situation like this?

[eljefe3]

Welcome to WebmasterWorld. Great first post.

With not having a choice of merchants to deal with, you are in a tougher situation then if you can simply move your traffic to another supplier.

Are you running your own stats/database where you can show the merchant that their tracking and sales software is not working properly? Have you placed test orders that do not show up on your stats? If the answer to the above is yes, the best thing to do would be to give the merchant a call and discuss in a porfessional manner the issues that you have along with the evidence that you can show them.

If this is a good merchant, they will look at what you have to say and will follow up to reconcile the problem.

I'd love to hear of a favorable outcome for you.