Fraud on the other foot?

Is it me, or has the perception of affiliate fraud changed?

When I first started in this industry a few years ago everyone was saying that affiliate marketing was doomed because of affiliates fraudulently sending through leads that were false.

You had the perception that there were hundreds of spoty teenagers running incentivised sites putting false data or completely irrelvant leads through credit card, loans and other merchants - and taking a pretty nice sum for it.

For me it wasn't a perception, I knew people that completely ignored any sense of morals. I won't name the person in my mind, but I'm sure everyone will think of one person or another.

But now, I'm really worried about another type of fraud. I know I've got to be careful naming companies but for me virtually every affiliate could name transactions that just disapear.

Previously we've blamed people having cookies turned off, other affiliates over-writing the cookies with adware, network tracking being broken, mal-formed links, merchants deleting tracking code by mistake etc.

Today, I'm extremely worried about merchants illegimately rejecting legitimate sales as "fraudulant orders", "credit card not validated", "incorrect contact details" etc when in actual fact there's nothing wrong with the order.

In certain industries, such as consumer electronics and mobile phones we expect a percentage of orders to be rejected. But we never expect our own orders to rejected when the products have actually been recieved or dispatched.

I say this because I recently ordered a PC with Dell (on Tradedoubler) and the order I put through on the 16th Feb was in effect cancelled and a new one created on the 18th. I never recieved any notification or explanation from Dell saying why this happened. And I can't think of any reason why it would be.

I'm not saying it was an attempt to prevent affiliate commission being paid on the order. But with the current climate of suspission every merchant should attempt to be as transparent as possible.

Take for example Advanced MP3 Players. I had a shed load of rejections in one day - a few hundred quid. I contacted them and Josh got back giving me a full rundown of what happened and I was happy with that.

You've also got a possible problem with Currys where it has been mooted that the order was cancelled and then put back on with the telephone customer service's details against the sale. I personaly knew someone that worked as a GUS/Argos customer service person in Widnes and they frequently "have to" cancel web orders and put them back through over the phone. The conversation I had with them was about 3 years ago so I don't know the current situation, but I'm sure this is a massive problem for the affiliate industry.

It's about time the networks provided a thorough solution to this. Some merchants offer lifetime commissions based on an individuals account. To implement a solution will mean that merchants would have to update their backend systems to provide a solution whereby any sale from a particular name/address within a given time will garner affiliate commission.

There has to be a solution before the industry is destroyed, not by the unscrupulous, spotty oiks with an overactive desire to be rich; but by merchants that either have an unhealthy desire to meet "targets" or by the niave one's that don't think long term and don't think affiliates can collectively bring a merchant to it's knees.

It can and will happen if merchants don't buck up their ideas and play the game properly.

What I'm listening to: Kaiser Chiefs - I Predict A Riot! ;-)