Is CJ ripping me off?

Hi all,

After four long weeks of testing I have come to the conclusion that CJ is ripping me off. Here is what brought me to this conclusion.

02-15-05
I got an e-mail from a customer who purchased a backpack off of one of my travel sites. The e-mail was not at all related to Commission Junction, the customer had just gotten the product and had a few questions about the best way to use it. This instantly struck me as odd because I had not seen anything on CJ about the product being sold. In fact not single backpack had been sold for three weeks, I have only seen money coming in from rail passes and hostel bookings. The customer faxed the paper that came with the product and sure enough it had been purchased from e-bags through my affiliate link through CJ. I contacted CJ and was told it was not reported from e-bags. I contacted e-bags and was told it had been reported to CJ. Someone is lying right? Next step, find out if it would happen again.

02-28-05
I ordered a backpack myself using a Paypal debit card with a business name on it that differed from my CJ account name. Pack shows up 5 days later, CJ gives me no credit whatsover. Keep in mind these are several hundred dollar backpacks. The big travel style packs so surley I would get a commission of some kind. Huh, maybe my link is being highjacked right?

03-09-05
I ordered a pack in my name, the same name the CJ account is in. This time I ordered a much smaller one so as to not spend a fortune on trying to figure this all out. Guess what happened? I made 6 bucks off the sale.

So it cant be the affiliate code, it seems to work if I order in my own name but if someone else orders through that company I get nothing. Neither company is taking blame, or even taking a step to look into it from what I have seen.

Anyone else have situations like this? This could really hurt me as backpacks are a part of my keyword optimization and I am ranking quite well. At this rate I could be selling a crap load of backpacks and getting nothing for it.

Thoughts?

[temi]

Paul is the affiliate guru around, any ideas why Eric is not getting his due credits from CJ ?

Sorry, maybe my brain is numb today but what the hell is CJ?

[crowebird]

lol, guess my post is pointless, but would like to know the same thing

[temi]

CJ stands for Commission Junction (www.cj.com) its and affiliate marketing site.

Thanks for the explanation

[Paul_KY]

Eric,

Check out how many others are having trouble with CJ. You'll be here for hours though.

I wouldn't recommend joining this forum if you're thin skinned, but there is some valuable information regarding parasiteware and how it's used to steal your commissions. Some of the information is correct and some is not. You be the judge.

Also, anti-virus programs such as Norton have been rumored to block all CJ cookies (Cookies are how sales are tracked - No Cookie - No Commission).

forum.abestweb.com/forumdisplay.php?f=158

forum.abestweb.com/showthread.php?t=56221

forum.abestweb.com/forumdisplay.php?f=34

This is the guy who cold busted the networks:
benedelman.org/spyware/

For the record, I used to make a killing through CJ, but I moved to other networks do to this problem. I now only promote one merchant from their network and I hardly notice the little $200 and $300 monthly direct deposits. That pales in comparison to a year ago when high 4, low 5 digit direct deposits were the norm. Now I've partnered with networks, which don't seem to have tracking problems. I would HIGHLY recommend to anyone - do the same. Just my 2 cents.

[TeamPlayer]

I`ve just joined CJ so I`m hoping by now that all their earlier hijack-of-link, or cookie problems are a thing of the past.

[gkd_uk]

Please let us know how you get on

[TeamPlayer]

Smooth sailing so far, got a number of immediate approvals, with others who `hand check` each application.

No rush though, I want to wait a few days to see what the final tally is, then do a sort of selection process of my own to decide which ones I`ll place on my sites.