So I’m currently running this offer on a highly reputable Network and have been for over a month now. My AM sent me an email on April 5th stating that there was an error in Cake that has affected the payout rate on the offer. She claims to have sent me an email on the March 1st outlining the new payout has decreased from $3.20 to $1.60 (an email I did not receive and had i have known, would have stopped running the campaign). They are now claiming that they can only pay me on the lower rate of $1.6 for all 1,000+ leads i have generated since March 1st.
I have spoken to my AM and a network manager and I have argued that:
1. I did not receive any emails stating that the payout would be decreased
2. It was their error by not updating the payout in cake
3. Why has it taken them a month to realise?
After arguing my case, the network manager offered to work with me by giving me ‘bumps’ on future offers, but i still find this unacceptable.
Please advise.
Wow that's tough!
This may be obvious, but have you checked your junk folder? Also check your affiliate network account settings to make sure you haven't turned off email notifications.
When you set up your conversion postback from aff network to tracker, did you set up a payout token to reflect the actual payout amount? Or did you manually input a specific dollar amount?
Payout decreases happen all the time. It's very unfortunate when communication gets lost somewhere.
Amy
Thanks for the reply Amy!
Thoroughly checked my emails and haven't got email notifications turned off and the postback is setup with a payout token. They have already stated that there was an error in cake and that the payout had not been updated but I am arguing that even if they had or hadn't sent that email, if they had correctly updated the payout in cake I would have noticed immediately.
What would you advise me to do in this situation?
First of all it comes down to what the network says in their TOS regarding issues like this. For example if they have a clause in there that says something like "we reserve the rights to change offer payouts at any time without notice" then there's probably not a whole lot you can do. Taking legal action will probably not be worth it in your case, since the amount isn't big enough to justify the fees involved. Please note: The above is just personal opinion and speculation, which in no way represents the position or opinions of STM.
Another possibility - and I'm neither advising for nor against doing this - would be to identify the network involved and hope that they'll chime in with their side of the story. However, be aware that doing so can affect your future relationship with this network. Again I'm not suggesting for or against - this is just something I've seen other members do.
Sorry to hear about this unfortunate situation - I do hope it will be satisfactorily resolved for both parties. Good luck!
Amy
i suggest you fire the aff mgr and set up a NEW account with diff account manager. The network don't pay you are out of luck 100% of the time. You can't sue them. 1. they are hq in other countries and 2. you go broke doing. 3. you will die trying.
The offer was on their network for a month with wrong payout and now they want to pay half???
I say out the fuckers and move on to another network. I hate incompetence.
Thanks for the reply guys. I have since tried to contact the network manager and asked for them to meet me halfway (by reducing the payout to $2.4 instead of $1.6) which would be an acceptable loss for me. Instead, I get no reply. As much as I would have liked to avoid outting them, I find this extremely unprofessional.
Have similar experience with them in the past, but I just moved on and go direct with the advertisers since then.... Life goes on and I know how it feels mate.
Hi noob88, glad we could finally have a conversation and resolve the issue asap. Reputation is king in this industry, which is why we pride ourselves in having a great reputation in the space, and work hard to keep it that way. Glad it’s resolved, and we look forward to now focusing with you how we can get that payout bumped back up.
Please Out them! Not paying you the agreed rate is unprofessional... This forum is all about sharing affiliate knowledge... Because you're not outing them, some other poor affiliate is going to run their offers and not get paid too...
The network is above, and appears the issue was resolved.
With thousands of offers in a network, every now and then an optimization can be missed either in communicating with the advertiser, communicating with the affiliate, or like some people had suggested if mail ends up in spam/junk box. Things happen. How the network deals with this is important. If you go to a restaurant and order a steak Medium, and they give it to you well done, the restaurant should incur the cost of preparing another steak Medium. At the same token, if a network makes a mistake in communication, they should incur the expense of compensating for their mistake. Simple as that. If the fault lies on the affiliates end, then just like the network, you should write off that as an expense and a learning experience.
We have a checks and balance system in place that ensures that optimizations are done properly for our advertisers and affiliates. We mark down on our end when we sent optimizations, we make the publisher confirm acknowledgement of the optimization, and we now have a new system that we implemented to provide all campaigns & changes in a place that both us as the network and the affiliate have access to and can see any changes made with dates/times/etc.