A warning for anyone using Amazon Affiliates
- Thread starter Evostance
- Start date
soulcollector
Senior Member
- May 10, 2014
- 832
- 313
I'm not surprised by this when "jeff bozo" got yelled at for allowing fake reviews and fake sales through to his site. Now that investors have been "tipped" off it seems bozo the clown will now relentlessly hunt down anyone his team of monkeys find to be out of place. You were never supposed to make money from their affiliate program. Its current design was for you to spread their logo and word of "low" prices (I laugh hard at this one) and were never supposed to be paid from it. They won't touch eBates as that brings in their money maker for idiots to pump money into more stock and private investment accounts for Bozo to go booze off the money from it.
Never paint a company or anything entirely white, the shits stains are merely on the other hidden side of the fence. In this case Amazon got jealous they were paying you to send them traffic and conversions, saw a profit loss, and banned you.
Never paint a company or anything entirely white, the shits stains are merely on the other hidden side of the fence. In this case Amazon got jealous they were paying you to send them traffic and conversions, saw a profit loss, and banned you.
hekke
Senior Member
- Jan 31, 2014
- 1,085
- 2,462
I genuinely think that it was that you showed the prices of the products and that they were not up-to-date. Sure, you showed what date the prices was updated on but if a reviewer (or let me say "account specialist") miss that they might ban you. It all relies on another person reviewing your site - and if it is the end of the day for them, or their caffein intake was low, they might look over it.
I would fight, because there is a lot of money on the line. However, I doubt that they are going to reinstate your account as they have really vague ToS that they can turn around and make it so that you broke their ToS. Unfortunately.
I would fight, because there is a lot of money on the line. However, I doubt that they are going to reinstate your account as they have really vague ToS that they can turn around and make it so that you broke their ToS. Unfortunately.
adflydimix
Newbie
- Jul 29, 2012
- 22
- 8
I directed the same question to one of the "Assosiate Support" Idiots, and they told me that "all links must be reported"
Me: but what if someone else posts my link?
Them: all links must be reported.
Me: I understand, but what if I am unaware of that?
Them: that is highly unlikely.
Me:....
Them: It seems that you have been idle for more than 45 seconds, I'm closing the chat now, Have a nice day! Please feedback my service!
Evostance
Junior Member
- Feb 26, 2015
- 129
- 67
The prices aren't, and shouldn't be the issue. They state that if you have prices on your site, they must display the date and time they were last update, as well as having a disclaimer which states they may not reflect the current prices. My site did exactly that, every product with a price had a statement and the update time, as per their terms, which they agreed was OK.
I assume the problem though is indirectly related. Jess on Customer Service might see the prices, the time stamp and disclaimer and says its OK, however Dave in the account specialist team might just see the price and automatically think "Ban!" and then ban me. Since each account gets 1 account specialist, if they ban you, that's it, no second opinion.
This isn't just a problem with prices, it's a problem with everything - even though one person says it's fine, another might think it isn't and there goes your account.
JuggernautJukey
BANNED
- Dec 10, 2013
- 528
- 227
That's some bad luck man! They are stubborn as fuck.. You will never see that money, unfortunately.
You should look through CJ and find merchants through there. They cover a lot of niches, so you will probably find the same products. I would much rather have my money going through CJ from 10 different merchants, than just through Amazon. At least for 5-figures, anyway.
You should look through CJ and find merchants through there. They cover a lot of niches, so you will probably find the same products. I would much rather have my money going through CJ from 10 different merchants, than just through Amazon. At least for 5-figures, anyway.
asdolo
Junior Member
- Jul 27, 2015
- 107
- 15
Seriously?? How the hell one can control if all the world have a high chance to spam your links? ......
Google Prince
Regular Member
- Dec 24, 2015
- 209
- 182
I've never listed prices on any of my sites and have had no problems at all,
Kinda worries me to rely on Amazon for an income.
All you can do is move on and consider this as a loss, sorry to hear this.
Kinda worries me to rely on Amazon for an income.
All you can do is move on and consider this as a loss, sorry to hear this.
hekke
Senior Member
- Jan 31, 2014
- 1,085
- 2,462
Exactly my point, maybe it wasn't clear enough.
moonshine7000
Elite Member
- Mar 4, 2013
- 4,356
- 4,006
You have a point there.If a competitor wants you out of business,Just spam their affiliate link all over the internet with scrapebox and then report the affiliate id to amazon.
ajithrocksca
Senior Member
- Dec 23, 2010
- 1,104
- 595
I once had a commission issue with them. They refused to credit my commission citing that it was purchased for my address or through my credit card.. I had no reason to buy 50 wooden toys, i tried to reason with them, but they were not receptive, they simply said that their algorithm picked that transaction. However, they still offer better commissions compared to walmart.. I consistently get around 8 to 8.25% referral rate which is better than many other affiliate programs with such a variety of good. So, we have to live with it.
Evostance
Junior Member
- Feb 26, 2015
- 129
- 67
It was a review website. The Product API was used to get the prices.
Prices were kept up to date daily and had a date/time stamp next to it i.e. $22.99 - Last Updated on 01/01/16 15:58 PST.
I also included a disclaimer that stated that product prices an available are accurate as of the date/time.
I had this checked out and it was fine.
- Apr 4, 2014
- 6,453
- 4,860
UrsuAke is absolutely right.
If you follow the ToS, you're fine and they are happy to make more money for you as it means that they make more money... and they have ToS for a reason as they have a lot of rules to follow just from EU.
And the second great advice from UrsuAke, if amazon doesn't want you and you bring traffic, there'll be many who'd want to pay you commission for sales and AliExpress will be happy to work with you and they are considerably bigger than amazon.
Just remember... Amazon is not the only company in the world which would pay you commission for sales. Amazon is not the only company in the world.
Typlo
Supreme Member
- Sep 22, 2010
- 1,356
- 516
If you know a lawyer, find one to write a letter to their legal department requesting your commissions to be returned to you. Hopefully you have a paper trail showing their support saying your website was fine? It may not result in anything, but companies usually are more responsive when a lawyer contacts them. With Amazon, how they hide their account specialists and give no details, they feel like they can do whatever they want without consequences and don't need to do their jobs (speak to the accounts they are managing).
This scared me.
I have added "Clicking this image will redirect you to product page on Amazon" to all images with cloaked aff links. I see they are banning accounts because of showing prices on website (without using their API), will it help if I add "Last update : mm/dd/yyyy" by every price tag on my website?
BTW. my account was banned once, but I didn't really care because my website was getting ~50 visits per day.. It was my fault, I was using custom designed buttons with their logo. That is not allowed, so take care guys.
I have added "Clicking this image will redirect you to product page on Amazon" to all images with cloaked aff links. I see they are banning accounts because of showing prices on website (without using their API), will it help if I add "Last update : mm/dd/yyyy" by every price tag on my website?
BTW. my account was banned once, but I didn't really care because my website was getting ~50 visits per day.. It was my fault, I was using custom designed buttons with their logo. That is not allowed, so take care guys.
Jobless
Junior Member
- Apr 10, 2012
- 146
- 187
Can attest to this. Amazon was my main gig for the past couple of years, but I started a new site a few months ago using prettylinks to send traffic from my site to Amazon to get re-targeting data for adwords, and completely forgot about this rule, and POOF, income is gone lol.
Unless you changed the message they sent you, it says "Additionally, you must either include the following disclaimer adjacent to the pricing or availability information or provide it via a hyperlink, popup box, scripted popup"
Now unless you had a disclaimer that they required beside every price point on your site, then you failed to follow their TOS. It's a shitty deal, but when a company of Amazon's size feels like they're competing with you for traffic, and only paying you because you're ranked above them in SERPs, then they definitely will get picky and try to come up with any scenario to ban you.
They basically kicked you in the nuts and spit on you while you were on the ground, but at least you know for next time. If you've got there once, then you can do it again.
For anyone else, I'd recommend removing all dollar figures on your site immediately.
SH-M
Power Member
- Sep 13, 2013
- 744
- 578
Interesting. I am looking forward to joining an affiliate network soon and shift from the social media to SEO, but this recent trend of banning is quite worrying.
If you certainly didn't do anything wrong (against their TOS), it may as well be shaving, but in a classical way, through banning. In that way you can't complain and would probably lose a legal case since as a member mentioned here they can turn the situation where you broke the TOS, even if you didn't according to your words.
If you certainly didn't do anything wrong (against their TOS), it may as well be shaving, but in a classical way, through banning. In that way you can't complain and would probably lose a legal case since as a member mentioned here they can turn the situation where you broke the TOS, even if you didn't according to your words.