I’ve still not received the commission due – and in all honesty don’t expect to now.

It sometimes beggars belief how some merchants treat affiliates and I have simply added eConsultancy to the list of merchants I’ve no interest in working with now or in the future.

Others can make their own minds up. I’ve stated my case above. I obviously believe that the commission should have been paid. EConsultancy obviously see things differently. They presumably need £39 more than they want me as an affiliate – which tells me everything I need to know.

@Clare & eConsultancy .. given that you said that “I responded immediately because we’re not in the business of upsetting people! “, then don’t you think that you should resolve the clear upset that that already been created by eConsultancy … either by commission or by offering a refund?

How are you demonstrating best practice otherwise if you tear up your own T&C and make it up your own retrospective tems as you go along?

This must damage eConsultancy as a brand as their credibility goes up in smoke.

Were it me, then I would ask for a refund now.

In open forum, they have acknowledged that they didn’t meet their own T&C attached to the sale. If they don’t want to pay the commission, then they should at least offer to terminate membership and refund in full .

It can’t do eConsultancy much good with potential customers researching them and coming across this unethical behaviour.

Changing the permalink to ‘who-do-econsultancy-think-they-are’ might prompt some moves and more potential customer visits here … lol.

@ Dan – no, nothing to update really. No sign of the commission being paid. Some companies talk the talk, but don’t walk the walk. You live and learn with merchants. To be fair to POR, I understand that they did ask for the commission to be paid.

Why should George pay for eConsultancy’s learning … you expected George to pay for his training materials.

You acknowledge that your T&C did not allow you to void the commission and simply say sorry without offering to reimburse.

Come on, it doesn’t matter whether the sale was TO an affiliate or BY an affiliate .. you budgeted for the commission and had no legal right to claw it back.

Claire – The honourable thing would be to reverse the decline and only decline sales made after the new T&Cs came in .. or is eConsultancy saying that they are not bound by agreements?

What;’s next? retrospective halving of commission rates? ….. because eConsultancy decided that’s what they needed to do?

I am amazed that you talk about the best sales coming from ‘Affiliates… with respect’. The most sales will be made through businesses with respect …. and this behaviour hasn’t earned any respect for eConsultancy from me.

C’mon Claire – to say that you are sorry the retrospective change is at George’s expense is ridiculous. I would encourage George to submit a claim for a refund … after all, there were two parts to this agreement to purchase and you didn’t honour the contract terms. Instead you varied them after the event. Would you be happy is a till operator came running down the street afterwards and asked you to hand over more money because the store had decided to jack up its prices but hadn’t reflected them at the till?

The deal was done based upon a set of T&C. There is no question that you should honour them – you admit that it is eConsultancy’s mistake and then don’t put it right?!

Ridiculous!!

I’ve learned a lot too and now that I can I see exactly where you are coming from I can completely understand why you still won’t be paying me the commission due:

Your company values “best practice”

Your T&C were wrong

A daft affiliate wanting to promote a merchant properly took them at face value

You then void the commission based on what the T&C SHOULD have been

You don’t reinstate said daft affiliate’s commission but thank him instead for pointing out incorrect T&C

Your company values “best practice”

I did explain to them about the full response you should’ve received from us, and if you didn’t then apologies again – it should’ve been there. (The person who was managing our affiliate scheme left Econsultancy on 26 Feb, though I was involved in the decision to go with this approach as it was the first time we’d done it, as I mentioned before. That’s not intended as an excuse, BTW – simply how it happened)

Anyway, good to talk. I’ve learned that people do in fact read T&Cs which are now in better shape, thanks to your input. And I hope that if not acting as an affiliate, you’ll at least enjoy the benefits of Econsultancy membership which I trust will serve you well over the next 12 months. Good luck with the book too.

The full reason I received was as posted. If it had also said “if you did make any further sales, we would of course honour the commission” things might have been different.

I did query the void commission via Paid On Results on 27th of February and full credit to POR, they responded the same day despite it being a Saturday. I was told that any response I sent would be forwarded to the merchant and I did respond saying that it was unacceptable to void a commission when there was nothing in the T&C regarding affiliates buying membership through their own links.

The first I have heard back from EConsultancy is your comment above.

For the sake of a few pounds, you have lost a potentially good affiliate.

It might not count for much as far as you’re concerned, but you were actually the first person we declined on this basis – obviously with unhappy consequences! However, my belief is that testing is an important part of discovering best practice – so a learning for us here, and apologies that it was at your expense. We are now updating our T&Cs as a result which is something we’d overlooked till now.

As for affiliate marketing, we do have some best practice guidance based on our own experience as a B2B e-commerce site that you may find useful Here’s what we’ve found works for a handful of very successful affiliates we work with:

- Successful affiliates tend to be individuals who are respected in their field, with some sort of following, whether through a blog, Twitter, business they run etc.

- They also tend to be familiar with our research, reports and training, so they can draw on them in the relevant context (as you’ve said you intend to on this site and once you start promoting your book – so we’re agree on that.).

- Most importantly, they act as guides for their audience, taking them to the content they feel is relevant for them. With this in view, text links in a contextual setting always, always win over banners.

- Though it’s not always possible, we would generally recommend declaring it’s an affiliate link. (For discussion on this topic, see post/comments on our blog – http://econsultancy.com/blog/3805-social-media-and-affiliate-marketing-a-slippery-subject.)

- And finally, our experience of what works in affiliate marketing is close contact with the affiliates. You are welcome to contact us (as a member and/or an affiliate) to discuss what your particular interests are, and we will always guide you to what we offer that is most relevant to you.

All the best,
Clare