Working for percentage of sales

What's resonable

[webtress]

I'll try and make this long story short. I designed and currently maintain (non-product related maintenance) a site for a % of the sales. This has worked well, however lately site owner has been issuing refunds for products they can no longer get and has had 1 chargeback (the only 1 in 4 years). They think these amounts should be deducted. I feel that I should not have theses deducted from the gross total when calculating my %. I have done my part in getting the customers to the site and making it user friendly. The site has inventory management features which they refuse to use, they can also disable products from showing on the site without removing them from the database or disable the buy buttons on the products. If they would just use these feature the customers would probably chose something else. I would just like to here from you guys/gals what's your take on a situation like this.

[otc_cmnn]

your % should be after returns, chargebacks, fraud, out of stocks, etc. etc.

If someone comes along and orders 100k worth of stuff fraudulantly, (and the merchant is silly enough to ship it) should the merchant be out the product AND a % to you? I don't think so... that is just mean.

Out of stocks issues happen and are part of day to day business. Sure the customer *may* have ordered something else but they should also order something in the future. Or when the product is back in stock they may order it then, in which case the merchants pays your commish twice!

No offense, but it sounds petty on your part. And it should be an extremely small, insignificant % of overall sales. Why be petty over such a small amount, maintain a cooperative fair relationship.

IMHO, but I am biased as a merchant myself.

[otc_cmnn]

They should at least disable the buy buttons as they are still being charged CC processing fees etc for the transactions, not disabling OOS items is ... well ... stupid ...

[webtress]

Otc-

No offense, but it sounds petty on your part. And it should be an extremely small, insignificant % of overall sales

it's not so much about the % but the principle of the fact that this can be controlled. I am not unreasonable and would not expect to be paid on a fraudlent sale that is something out of a site owners control. I only mentioned the chargeback to state that overall the site has had an good online experience. I guess it just that they don't use the stock management features and seeing the deductions for refunds due to out of stock is starting to get to me.

[pete_m]

webtress:
I can see how the situation must be frustrating to you, but I think that otc_cmnn is right here.

Just look at it this way: if they used the inventory management, then the sales in question would never had appeared anyway. You're not actually losing money from the refunds, as you would never have got that % in the first place.

[Wael_Ghonim]

Technically speaking, revenue is recognized when the product/service is delivered to a customer. In these cases only you should be granted a percentage of the sales.

If the company fails to utilize its resources to gain more profits, you should evaluate the option of having an exit specially if you don't see enough cash coming in for you. Otherwise, you should push the company to focus more on not losing any deals.