A
affiliate
Guest
I am one of over 20,000 affiliates who does business with a business who serves as our online service provider.
People are most familiar with this type of situation with Amazon.com and it's affiliates.
In this case, the service is travel reservations, rather than books.
Anytime an affiliate client makes a reservation through the provider's booking engine, there is an agreement that the affiliate and the provider will split the sales commission 50-50.
All of the marketing material this company uses to recruit affiliates refers continually to "your customers" "benefits to your customers", and such.
The Affiliate Agreement which is signed by affiliates and the company, refers to "Affliate Customers", and states in one instance that the "Affiliate Customers are also the customers of (the company)".
All of the language in marketing material, as well as the Affiliate Agreement, leads an affiliate to reasonably believe that they retain the primary rights to their relationship with their customers, with the company recieving at best a secondary, or "shared" relationship with the affiliate's client.
It has come to light, that over the past 18 months or so, the company has been "harvesting" the email addresses of the affiliates' clients.
The harvesting of these email addresses was done without the knowledge or permission of affiliates, and in most cases without the knowledge or permission of the affiliate's clients.
These harvested email addresses have been used to create a maillist for the company's weekly email newsletter which advertises the company's services and "specials". The purpose of this newsletter is to get recipients to purchase directly from the company. There is no mention of any affiliates in the newsletter. There is no mechanism for affiliates to get credit for, or share in it's rightful commission split from sales derived from the newsletter.
In essence the company has "cutout" the affiliates, and created an exclusive client base, which deprives affiliates of their rightful share of the revenue.
There are several problems here, and I'd like some advice on possible legal remidies, for myself, and thousands of other affiliates.
The company appears to have violated both the spirit and the letter of their aggreements with affiliates. The marketing material is at best deceptive or misleading. The marketing material, in combination with the affiliate agreement, in combination with the harvesting of email adresses, in combination with the newsletter which serves to cutout affiliates, appears to be fraudulent.
Up until the past 10 days, affiliates were able to track their customers purchases and identity through an online statistics program, and email confirmation of reservations. The client's name, email address, and reservation details (except for credit card information) were all made immediatly available to affiliates through the statistics and email confirmation. The statistics program also allowed affiliates to track the collected and uncollected commissions from third parties. These collected and uncollected payments were indentifiable by the client's original reservation information. This process had been going on for over a year now.
The company's recent and unannounced policy change, withholding the name and other identifying data of affiliate clients, deprives the affilaite of the ability to identify and track their own customers, and deprives affiliates of the ability to verify their own share of collected and uncollected commissions.
Which means there is no longer a mechanism for accountability concerning commission payments.
Affiliates have been intentionaly "blinded" by the company, so that affiliates no longer have access to identifying data that is the ownly means affiliates have of protecting their righful share of commissions.
There is also a strong suspecion among affiliates that they company has been "less than forthright" about it's accounting and payments concerning affiliate commissions.
Thoughts, comments, questions, advice?
People are most familiar with this type of situation with Amazon.com and it's affiliates.
In this case, the service is travel reservations, rather than books.
Anytime an affiliate client makes a reservation through the provider's booking engine, there is an agreement that the affiliate and the provider will split the sales commission 50-50.
All of the marketing material this company uses to recruit affiliates refers continually to "your customers" "benefits to your customers", and such.
The Affiliate Agreement which is signed by affiliates and the company, refers to "Affliate Customers", and states in one instance that the "Affiliate Customers are also the customers of (the company)".
All of the language in marketing material, as well as the Affiliate Agreement, leads an affiliate to reasonably believe that they retain the primary rights to their relationship with their customers, with the company recieving at best a secondary, or "shared" relationship with the affiliate's client.
It has come to light, that over the past 18 months or so, the company has been "harvesting" the email addresses of the affiliates' clients.
The harvesting of these email addresses was done without the knowledge or permission of affiliates, and in most cases without the knowledge or permission of the affiliate's clients.
These harvested email addresses have been used to create a maillist for the company's weekly email newsletter which advertises the company's services and "specials". The purpose of this newsletter is to get recipients to purchase directly from the company. There is no mention of any affiliates in the newsletter. There is no mechanism for affiliates to get credit for, or share in it's rightful commission split from sales derived from the newsletter.
In essence the company has "cutout" the affiliates, and created an exclusive client base, which deprives affiliates of their rightful share of the revenue.
There are several problems here, and I'd like some advice on possible legal remidies, for myself, and thousands of other affiliates.
The company appears to have violated both the spirit and the letter of their aggreements with affiliates. The marketing material is at best deceptive or misleading. The marketing material, in combination with the affiliate agreement, in combination with the harvesting of email adresses, in combination with the newsletter which serves to cutout affiliates, appears to be fraudulent.
Up until the past 10 days, affiliates were able to track their customers purchases and identity through an online statistics program, and email confirmation of reservations. The client's name, email address, and reservation details (except for credit card information) were all made immediatly available to affiliates through the statistics and email confirmation. The statistics program also allowed affiliates to track the collected and uncollected commissions from third parties. These collected and uncollected payments were indentifiable by the client's original reservation information. This process had been going on for over a year now.
The company's recent and unannounced policy change, withholding the name and other identifying data of affiliate clients, deprives the affilaite of the ability to identify and track their own customers, and deprives affiliates of the ability to verify their own share of collected and uncollected commissions.
Which means there is no longer a mechanism for accountability concerning commission payments.
Affiliates have been intentionaly "blinded" by the company, so that affiliates no longer have access to identifying data that is the ownly means affiliates have of protecting their righful share of commissions.
There is also a strong suspecion among affiliates that they company has been "less than forthright" about it's accounting and payments concerning affiliate commissions.
Thoughts, comments, questions, advice?