For those that don't know, Dabs.com is merchant on TD selling computer type stuff, and they have an offering for home users on Dabs.com, and a site for business customers called Dabs4Work. Business customers reach Dabs4Work by visiting Dabs.com and then following a link called "buying for a business".

I've mentioned previously that my two purchases through Dabs4Work didn't track. I've since placed orders through Dabs.com homepage (without transferring across to Dabs4work) and they did track OK.

At the weekend, I placed an order and went through Dabs4Work, and suprise suprise, for the third time running, the sale didn't track.

So what we can say in summary: My orders through the Dabs4Work have a 100% failure rate when it comes to tracking. My orders through the Dabs.com homepage for "home users" have all tracked OK. My superior powers of detection lead me to believe that something isn't quite right here.

Last time it happened, I reported it to TD and got the commission manually added to my account, but no info as to why it didn't track. So, is it just me, or have you ever successfully placed an order through Dabs4Work that has been tracked?

Labels: dabs4work, tradedoubler

I recently started a website called Problem Exchange, which is a place people can post their problems and get advice from anyone that cares to reply.

Some of the problems posted have taken on a rather personal bent because of some keyword advertising I did, which marketed it as an agony aunt website.

Two of the problems posted seemed to have aroused the ire of TradeDoubler. One problem, labelled Dogging, was from a bloke who was thinking of going Dogging and another was from someone who suspected their partner had been looking at "teen porn" - with the almost unananimous response being she should goto the police. Fairly responsible stuff you might have thought.

Not so according to TradeDoubler who took the rather extreme action of "permanently deleting" my account and withdrawing the commission that is currently outstanding. I wonder if they will be returning their commission to the merchants.

Their email was as follows:

Hi Rob,

After conducting a checks of affiliate sites on the TradeDoubler system, we have identified that your site as a cause for concern. Your site http://www.problemexchange.com/ is of great concern to us due to the nature of the uncensored content in the forum.

Uncensored forums such as "Dogging" and "Teen Porn" are unacceptable content for our merchants and we can therefore no longer allow you to remain on the network.

We have permanently suspended your account and removed the commissions earned as a result of our investigation into this.

I sincerely apologise for the inconvenience caused, but we were left with no option other than to take the course of action we have done.

Regards,

Publisher Support.

It seems their "investigation" was rather shoddy as it came up with a completely flawed conclusion. They say "uncensored" forums are unacceptable, yet this is a moderated forum with posts routinely being deleted and IP addresses being banned. Users of the site also have the opportunity to report inappropriate comments. They never contacted me to enquire about the "censorship" or moderation on the site, so I really have no idea as to what form their investigation took.

Obviously the posts they mentioned are risque, so maybe they just don't like adult themed discussions? This would be believable if they hadn't been pumping out a product feed to my sites from one of their merchants offering products like "Pussy Rub", "Edible Cock Ring" and a variety of dildos and sex toys. Maybe they didn't know what "Pussy Rub" was? Someone should tell them that isn't for cats.

So where does that leave things: TradeDoubler, for no plausible or explained reason and without any warning or meaningful investigation, has permanently deleted an account and are withholding money earned from legitimate sales that would not have occured for their merchants without the hard work of an affiliate. As well as that, they have disabled my logon so I don't even have access to previous invoices etc.

I've asked TradeDoubler to elaborate on their actions but no further information has yet been forthcoming.

UPDATE

I just received this reply from TradeDoubler:

Many of our merchants would see this content as unacceptable for their brands and as such, this is the reason why your account had to be permanently ended. To be honest, many of our merchants do not like working with sites that use forums as there is always the potential for somebody to submit a posting that could be offensive and not in the interests of the merchant to be associated with it.

...

Under your original account, you broke the terms of the publisher agreement. However, you can create a new account (excluding your site http://www.problemexchange.com/ from that site) if you wish and start again as this would be a new publisher agreement.

So, the conclusion seems to be: my site was so bad it warranted the permanent suspension of my account and the loss of all outstanding commissions (none of which was earned from the site in question)... but if I want to reapply, then that's just fine and dandy. All this despite the fact that my site was no more risque than the ads that TradeDoubler itself publish on their AdFeed?

What kind of crackpot operation is this?

Labels: affiliate network, tradedoubler