Commission Junction Rant
Commission Junction has a reputation of poor customer service in the industry. This reputation stems from the fact that they treat affiliates like second class citizens.
About a year ago CJ announced that they would be changing all their links to JavaScript. This decision was made without regard to their affiliates and the backlash was strong enough that they backed down.
CJ also has a history of bending over backwards for the program managers and screwing over affiliates in the process. I’ve never had this happen to me, but it is quite easy to find several people who have had this experience.
The thing that really irritates me, however, is the way CJ uses email. If I sign up for an affiliate program where I have to wait to be approved, CJ doesn’t send me an email when the program makes its decision. If I contact CJ technical support, they don’t send me an email when my ticket has been updated. If an account manager of a program I belong to wants to contact me directly, I don’t get an email. Instead, I have to go to cj.com and check everything through their slow website.
This wouldn’t be that bad, except CJ does send me email about new affiliate programs that I don’t care about 99% of the time. I’m guessing these programs pay extra to have CJ send out spam on their behalf.
Thank you, CJ, for sending me junk mail that I have limited interest in while refusing to send me email that is vital to my business.
Over the next several months I’m going to be joining several other CPA affiliate programs and moving everything off of CJ. Now that I’m doing online marketing full-time, I realize how important business relationships are and I don’t think CJ values its affiliates as much as other networks.
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I’ve recently had problems with CJ and one of their advertisers. In the terms it said that PPC advertising was restricted according to the Special Terms. The Special Terms said that PPC couldn’t bid on any of the restricted keywords set out in the Schedule - but nothing about not being able to use PPC at all. Now the advertiser’s Account Manager contacts me (after I have generated myself £1000 of revenue and the advertiser much more than that to my own personal expense of £250) and tells me that you have to have a licence from them to use PPC for their scheme and that they’re not allowing affiliates to apply for said licence. They’re still however happily providing links for keyword bidding!
The Account Manager has not replied to my email asking whether I will be paid and stating that the terms differ from what he has told me.
I’m genuinely concerned because I’ve spent this money in good faith but nobody at CJ or the advertiser seems to give a toss about this.
Surely they can’t do this to me and stop me being paid when I have generated clicks in exact accordance with their terms?
Please do help with this if you can…
I can’t really help, sorry. I don’t have any pull with CJ, otherwise they probably wouldn’t approve of me writing this rant! Hopefully they will pay you and if they don’t, make sure to start threads at every forum you can think of telling people about your experience with CJ and that merchant. The merchant may then decide to pay you to save face. Good luck!
He’s got a server log and he’s got a contract / agreement. If all is as he says, he’ll get paid … either before he files a claim with the courts or afterward.
However, here is not the place to air his complaint and hitting a bunch of forums with careless postings could result in getting his own toenails sued off for libel.