I just had an ordeal with Amazon.com’s Associates (Affiliate) Program that left me fuming. I thought I would just paste the actual emails below and let them tell the story. I added images just for effect and I will admit I should have allowed myself a few minutes to cool off before I replied but I didn’t.


Just to set it up a little one of our Ad Tracking member’s abused Amazon.com’s affiliate agreement and Amazon.com jumped to conclusions and suspended my PERSONAL account. That account is in my personal name and has nothing to do with  YourAdTracker.com. I have never promoted any of their products on that domain. Here’s the exchange, you be the judge:


no_one.jpgGreetings from the Associates Program.

We recently noticed your Associate links are appearing as sponsored links on search engines under the term “kindle” and variations of this term using incorrect information (i.e. “FREE BONUS”).  We have also found that you are framing the Kindle detail page with the URL 4u2bn.com/ih46.  Please note, per the Operating Agreement:

[Exerpt of Amazon.com terms removed]

As you have failed to comply with these terms, your Associates account has been closed.  Thank you for your interest in the Amazon.com Associates Program and best of luck in the future.

Best regards,
Thomas – Associates Account Specialist

http://www.amazon.com


brian.jpgHello Thomas, Thank you so much for taking the time to check into things and not jump to conclusions and closing my account. Oh wait, what was I thinking, of course you are so much busier than the rest of us you shouldn’t have to take the time to check your facts or ask a question.

Anyone with half a brain should be able to tell that 4u2bn.com/ih46 is a short url and ad tracking link. A simple view source would tell you the affiliate link is: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00154JDAI?tag=YOUR_ID_HERE-20

I assure you it’s not my affiliate link but since you didn’t bother checking a single thing before you closed my account you know where to stick your Associates Program!

BTW, The next time I want to buy a book I’ll gladly go to borders.com It will be a cold day in hell before I spend a dime on your site again. I have to go blog about this now,

Good day and KMA,
Brian D. Hawkins

no_one.jpgHello again from the Associates Program.

Thank you for writing back to us. We did notice that the link was incorrectly tagged; however, because you are the domain holder of 4u2bn.com, you were held responsible for the advertising content which used this domain as the referring URL and also frames our web site. Based on the multiple violations occurring using your domain, your account was closed without warning. We regret any frustration or inconvenience that this may have caused for you.

The person using your domain has since contacted us about this issue and confirmed that they were responsible for the violations.  As a result, we would be willing to reinstate your account if you so choose.

Please let us know how you wish to proceed.

Best regards,

Edward – Associates Account Specialist

http://www.amazon.com

brian.jpgHi Edward, With thousands of members it is impossible for me to check every tracking URL that is created on our site. I have kept a very clean service and I’m proud of our reputation. We made the very unpopular decision last year to stop offering free accounts and go to an all paid membership site. We did this to help prevent our service from being used as a spam and phishing resource.

It clearly states in our terms that we require all members to only shorten and track URLs to third party sites that allow such activity. It’s funny, the same people that are violating your terms are violating ours as well yet you want to punish me because I own the site.

Have you canceled the personal accounts of Kevin Gilbertson of tinyurl.com or Ben Braman of shorturl.com? When an affiliate violates your terms do you go after their ISPs and hosting companies? I seriously doubt it and no one would expect such an unreasonable reaction.

I don’t know if that’s the official policy of Amazon.com or if it’s simply your discretion. In either case there is obviously no way for me to prevent future Amazon.com term violations from our members short of closing the site so I must decline your reinstatement offer.

I have updated our TOS and posted an article on our blog clarifying the relation of our ‘cloaking‘ feature and ‘site framing‘. A notice will be sent to all members this weekend as well.

Sincerely,
Brian D. Hawkins
http://youradtracker.com/

There you have, now wasn’t that interesting? :)

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