Amazon's Affiliate Program Fraud?

[Flitterbug]

Found an interesting article on amazon associates that call out the program as being fraudulent, often not crediting associates for some of the purchases made through their links. Is this a handful of naysayers? Many people seem to make a lot of money out of the program, amazon is a well known trusted vendor so good for affiliate marketing. Plus they sell a vast range of goods so you can get all your referrals in one place rather than have several affiliate accounts across the internet... What do the people who have experience of this on here think?

The article is here: http://candle.hubpages.com/hub/Is-Amazon-Affiliate-Program-A-Scam

 

[rebeccajlsk]

I haven't yet cashed out on my account but I know plenty of people who have..so maybe it could be that some associates are breaking the rules somewhere?

 

[Flitterbug]

It's not that they're not paying out what's been earned but rather not crediting them for the sale. Some say I had an affiliate link on my website and 10 people click on it and purchase something apparently amazon is only crediting 6 of those 10 sales to the associate. The associate wouldn't have a way of tracking this so how do you know? How does anyone know for any affiliate program? Or are people earning enough so they don't particularly care if the odd few get missed?

 

[Flitterbug]

It's not that they're not paying out what's been earned but rather not crediting them for the sale. Some say I had an affiliate link on my website and 10 people click on it and purchase something apparently amazon is only crediting 6 of those 10 sales to the associate. The associate wouldn't have a way of tracking this so how do you know? How does anyone know for any affiliate program? Or are people earning enough so they don't particularly care if the odd few get missed?

I think that it would be quite easy to check this out and I wouldn't worry about it.

In theory, you could just get someone that you know to make test purchases using your links to see if the system works accurately / honestly.
I suspect that many people have done this when starting out (wink wink) to check that their affiliate code actually works. Interestingly, if you make a purchase from your own computer within 24 hours of clicking on your own links the sales are always recorded as transactions, but never convert into "delivered" commission payments because Amazon know that it is you and won't pay you commission for buying stuff yourself. My personal experience of this satisfies me that the system works. Also, Amazon relies heavily on its affiliates for sales and I don't think that they would jeopardise their reputation in this manner - especially when it is so easy to check and detect.

Fair enough the people in the comments of that article seem to think amazon are getting away with some mass scale fraud! But of course it's the internet you always get people for/against everything

 

[Flitterbug]

I was about to answer your comment on WA with something along the lines of "it's definitely not there" when I thought well one last try won't hurt... And all of a sudden the option is there!

It's always easy to come up with a conspiracy theory than accept that perhaps you aren't doing it right :
I bet most of those contributing to the article also think that the US government was responsible for 9/11 and that the moon landings were fake too ???

True that, people definitely always look for a possible reason for something way before accepting they might just be wrong! Like some parents looking for 'learning disabilities' with their child when actually the child just a bit badly behaved or slightly below average at reading/writing etc!