It’s now four weeks to the day since my rant about networks who don’t pay or just seem to make getting paid a hassle, and time for an update. This time, however I won’t be with-holding names as I feel they’ve had every opportunity to sort out something simple like paying your affiliates the money they are owed.

Case Study Number One: IPT

I’ve been trying to get stats out of IPT for leads sent to them for WebBrands, dating back to December 2006 – This never got as far as invoicing, as they wouldn’t even reply to my emails, let alone provide stats for me to invoice. Following my blog post, I sent them a final email, saying I would remove them from all of our sites, and could they please provide me with a final figure to invoice.

I actually received a reply (which surprised me!), basically saying “fine, we don’t want to work with you anyway.. thought you’d have got the message when we didn’t reply to your previous emails.. don’t let the door hit your arse on the way out”. They also included our final stats up to the end of May, which we have invoiced for.

Result: No payment yet…

Case Study Number Two: Clash Media

Everything was running smoothly up until January this year – We would email our invoice to Diana, and we would be paid around 30 days later. For some reason, as of January, we kept sending our invoices, but Clash stopped paying them.

Six emails were sent asking what was going on – Not a single one was replied to, although read reports were received for every single one of them.

Following the last blog post, Jason (who works with me) managed to get hold of Emma at Clash, and ask her what the hell was going on. Emma then emailed me two weeks ago, and informed me that I should not have been sending my invoices to Diana, which was why they had not been paid. I did ask why therefore they were still asking people to send their invoices to Diana on their homepage:

Emma asked me to “leave it all to her” and she would get things sorted. Two weeks later, I’ve not heard a sausage, still not had a penny that I’m owed, and affiliates are still being told to send their invoices to the wrong address on the Clash homepage.

Result: No payment yet… 5 invoices outstanding, for commissions dating back to December 2006.

Case Study Three: PrimeQ

I’ve been given the run-around by PrimeQ, another of the Direct Track brigade. Invoices were sent to the same person for over a year, then all of a sudden started bouncing back in June. May’s invoices also remained unpaid.

Following an email conversation last month with a condescending member of staff who clearly thought me to be an idiot incapable of sending an email, it transpires that PrimeQ changed their email addresses (from .co.uk to .com) and didn’t tell anyone.

So, when it came to send this month’s invoice, and I noticed that the previous 3 still reamined unpaid, I emailed Mr. Condescending asking why this was the case – He was after all quick to point out previously that they pay “on a net 30 basis”.

Mr. Condescending did not reply to my email. Instead he forwarded to Mrs. Slopey-Shoulders, who informed me that “I don’t pay affiliates, but I know Mr. Never-in-The-Office who does”, and it looks like you’ll be paid next Monday.

Monday came and went, as did the whole of last week, when all of a sudden this morning, a cheque arrived in the post, not only for the 3 overdue invoices, but also for some “missing commission” they had found – bonus!

Result: Paid finally, but what a palava! Doesn’t inspire me with confidence to do any volume with them. Thankfully I understand their new platform is coming soon – hopefully this will include self billing automated BACS payments, and training for their staff in not playing pass-the-parcel with affiliates.

Case Study Four: Commission Junction

Wasn’t going to blog about CJ, as I am getting paid every month, but they managed to bodge up the simple task of providing self-billing affiliates with an invoice today.

First we received two invoices – neither of which were ours! They then followed this up with an email asking everyone to please ignore the previous invoice(s), and in doing so, did every affiliate’s favourite blunder – included every affiliate’s email address in the cc field, allowing affiliates to see the url’s of their competitors.. well done CJ, got to hand it to you again!

Result: Still got paid as always, and got the right invoice eventually, but what a confidentiality mix-up! Also, the 17th of the following month is a bit late to be sending these invoices out. I have been doing June’s accounts today, but if I was doing month three of a quarter, I would have already sent the paperwork off to the accountant well before now – I don’t fancy telling the VAT man “Sorry I was late paying you.. I had to wait for CJ to organise something properly” – although if the taxman was an affiliate, I’m sure he’d understand…

Conclusion: I’m well and truly hacked off with spending all my time chasing muppets who give me the run-around over a simple thing like payment. So therefore, all our business will be put through networks that pay us on time every month, offer self billing, BACS, and all automated. There’s no reason for me to go around chasing people for money when I can concentrate on making more money for the networks that actually pay me!

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