Commission Junction (cj) fees warning
I thought I would share a sad story about Commission Junction that will hopefully warn others about this problem.
Due to my niche, I only have one item on Commission Junction (hereafter as CJ) and it can happen that there are periods of inactivity during which sales are (s)low, or even non-existant.
This isn't really a problem for me and commissions sort of 'trickle in' to that site.
Anyway, at the end if last year, my laptop was stolen and I'm finally getting around to getting things sorting out. Imagine my surprise when I logged on to the CJ site recently and saw that my income was ZERO.
I checked the transactions and basically, they had decided that I was now dormant and had started applying fees of $10 per month until my balance with them was zero and then put my account on ice. There was a link that mentioned this which also claimed that they send a warning email.
I made a website support ticket to ask what was going on and told them that I hadn't received this email and asked then to check that it had indeed been sent. According to the timescale, it would have gone out towards the end of the summer, well before my laptop was stolen. I only 'hard-delete' mails after several years and I could find nothing from them about this.
I didn't mention the stolen laptop, but I was hoping that they would check their mails and confirm that it had been sent, ideally with a copy. I also had a faint hope that they might realise that there was a cock-up and reinstate my balance.
After about a week or so, they finally deigned to answer my question and in a somewhat long-winded mail, told me that they were glad to see that I had reactivated my account, the dormancy fees was something that I agreed to, the mail would have been sent, sad day for me.
This is where it gets weird. I logged on to the CJ site, looking for some way to delete my account. I couldn't see any way to do this, so I replied to their mail, stating that I no longer wished to support their business model and asked them to delete my account, as I would no longer be using it. Fortunately for me, the item I use there is available on another similar site, so I applied there and was accepted.
Here's the automated response I received:
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A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
SMTP error from remote mail server after initial connection:
host sj2-smtp.vclk.net [64.156.167.188]: 554-smtp.vclk.net
554 Your access to this mail system has been rejected due to the sending MTA's poor reputation. If you believe that this failure is in error, please contact the intended recipient via alternate means.
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The site is actively blocked, due to "poor reputation" - what a bunch of !"%?ers, was my first thought.
Then I thought about it and have a slightly uneasy feeling. When I look at the SMTP settings, the outward mail server is smtp.siterubix.com.
Have Commission Junction blocked Wealthy Affiliate ????
If this is true, then they suck more than I thought and I would suggest that we all look for an alternative.
I will ask the support people here to look into it and report any findings here.
For now, CJ can sit on my extended middle finger and swivel.
Has anyone else had similar problems with them?
The thing that I find unacceptable is the fact that they drain your balance and then mark you as dormant. They could just as easily mark the account as dormant and leave the $$ alone. Their business practise is a disgrace and should not be supported.
Recent Comments
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That is so unethical. If I ever come across something I'm thinking about promoting through them I will give it a huge miss. My account is dormant (again) and I have no intention of ever resurrecting it.
Wow, Derek! That's terrible and so unprofessional! I had a similar experience with Amazon. I began making some good profit with hundreds of affiliate links on 3 sites of mine. Then, out of nowhere, my account was deleted. Customer service didn't help me in the least. I had to re-register and to redo all my links on all my sites. Profit gone. That's not the worse part--it was then deleted a second time once I had built the money up again!
I had gotten an email the week before saying they were giving me 90 days to increase sales or my account would be deleted, but then they deleted it the very next day without warning and my account was, once again, put to zero. Why would they delete it if it was making money, and why did they give me 90 days if it were making money? Crazy!
Needless to say, my 3 sites remain inactive now and I moved on to a WA promotion site that's doing awesome! So sad you had to go through that experience--I know how you feel.
Interesting that I came across this post. I, too, have had CJ take unpaid commissions due to "inactivity" which also terminated any other prior relationships.
I suspect "inactivity" means failure to log in and not inactivity due to impressions and clicks.
It's for this reason that I really try not to provide affiliate links through CJ as much as possible. If vendors have direct affiliations, then I do that. CJ is only a last resort, and a reluctant one at that.
That said, I guess there are some vendors where I have no choice but to work with them through CJ. And for that, I have to remember as part of my SOP to log in every month, which I try to put on my calendar or do a "CJ affiliate check" by logging in while doing monthly finances or something like that.
But definitely something to watch out for if dealing with CJ.
Of all the affiliations that I've worked with, this one was by far the one I least want to deal with.