Your stand against unpaid submissions

I will like to know how you handle unpaid submission issue. I am not talking about “spam” submit where you can tell by just having a look that this is spam. I am talking about real submission where the user submitted from your site and didn’t pay intentionally or whatever other reason.

In start, I was properly responding to such submissions thinking that it might be some kind of error at my side but after that I started deleting those after a certain period of time.

Last week, I got almost 9 submissions where the site was good, description was written properly & was submitted in proper category. I thought it might have something to do with me doing some updates/changes recently. So I sent a follow-up email to their submitted email and well, so far there is no reply. (And I am getting sick of it )

My question is, since I am getting this a lot from past few days, what do you think I should be doing??

(1) Do nothing and delete the link.
(2) Send them e-mail and let them know about pending payment and wait for reply?
(3) Suggest me something better ......

I am thinking to start adding them in my “Black List/Hall of shame” if they dont respond and then give them proper “Respect” by making them public in my blog.

 

I used to send them a polite email reminding them for payment...
Now I delete and ban the ip...
I have no time or tolerance for idiots any longer.

 

First forget about the Hall of shame.
Second, what I do is I added an email template for unpaid submissions. so when I receive one I review the website, if it is acceptable then I set its status to unpaid and an email is sent stating that the listing is pending payment with a direct link to pay. If it is not paid after few days, the it is deleted.
If the site is not acceptable I just delete it, not even sending a disapproval email.

 

Why not just let the directory script handle unpaid submissions i.e. if payment is not forthcoming the script just deletes the submission without it ever showing in the review queue?

We don't use phpLD but I'd guess that feature would still be available.

 

They simply get deleted. You will just be wasting time emailing these people who obviously had no intention of paying. Think about it...if they REALLY meant to pay and get listed but maybe something went wrong during the payment process, they could just contact you about making payment.

 

I send a polite mail, reminding the link owner for payment and wait for 2 days and if no reply from their side, I simply delete them.....No other option

 

Just delete them. Personally i wouldn't ban them, what if it was a mistake and they have many other links they would be willing to pay for.

 

I ban because out of the 200 submitters that I did email that didnt pay, none have completed payment. So if they submit and do not pay, they had no intension of ever paying. So banning their ip will help to stop them from doing it again in 3 days.

 

If this is happening regularly you should check and make sure you links terms are clearly shown and also that it matches your Paypal setting.

 

Do (2) first and if they don't reply, then do (1). There is a high chance that they will respond. There was one particular submission I received which was submitted as featured but was not paid. I sent a polite email and the client responded saying that he had an issue with PayPal. Long story short, he paid in the end. Imagine what would have happened if I had just deleted it? I would have lost a potential client.

 

Not necessarily. I've made submissions that didn't complete payment through no fault of my own and some of the directories don't have contact information so I couldn't contact them. Even when contacting directories about incomplete submissions, sometimes they can't/don't help.

For example, I tried to submit to http://www.apahcinc.org/ a few months ago and got an error so I used the contact form. I got no reply so I wasn't able to complete the submission. I also tried to redo the submission but couldn't because the submission form said it was already submitted. Oh well...

Also, when I tried to submit to http://www.jodeeswebdirectory.com/ about a month ago I got an error, so I used the contact form that was right on the directory but I got a reply from the owner asking which directory because they have more than one. Well, since I used their directory contact form immediately after making my submission and got an error while trying to complete the payment, the fact that they needed to ask me which directory didn't make me feel very confident about working it out so I just let it go.

IMHO, that would be a very bad thing to do for the reasons I just gave above.

Additionally, can you imagine a scenario where someone might make improper submissions of a competitors website and not pay, just to give them a black eye in your hall of shame?

 

it is very much desturbing, i first check the paypal, then check the submission, email then, wait for there replies, which never comes!
And at last those submissions gets deleted, the only things that's lost is time, of both submitter and the reviewer!

 

Well, that certainly sounds like the owner is not that serious about his directory. I do occasionally get messages through my contact pages from people who had trouble during the payment process. It's not that hard to email them back with a paypal link. Maybe the apahinc guy's contact form is broken and he doesn't even know it.

Yea...that just makes no sense at all. If the owner doesn't know how to setup a contact form in such a way to tell him which one of his sites the message came from, then I would be worried too.

 

I would tend to think the latter is more likely. Apahinc is owned by the same person as Aviva, and we all know how serious Aviva is.

 

If submitted without paying or seemingly no intention of paying, I would simply consider that as spam.

It's annoying thing, but I can't take their responsibility to read guidelines and do the proper business with me. If they don't follow my rule, they are out!

 

I was in the habit of doing the same thing when I started. If the site was not following something, delete is the right option to do. But the problem is, I never got a response back after sending so many e-mails. And I was doing all that manually (no e-mail template for such unpaid submissions)

I also that at some point that if something went wrong (which I highly doubt) they should be contacting about it. But now I don't think many people care to do that. For them (submitters) it is a waste of time.

Banning IP is not a solution. You know that everyone is not connected to internet using static IP so with such an act, you are going to lose more than u get.

I know what you are talking about. I am in the good habit of checking things on regular basis and there is as such no issue of that sort.

I know and I agree with you. That is the only thing stopping me from doing that. I was more like sharing my frustration by saying that... (I do maintain such a list but that is for "internal" use only)

The current problem is, I am actually not reviewing any site submitted. My editor (who is a great friend) is doing all that work and weather paid or not, he has to review every site in details and send me the report. So, this is just getting a bit out of hand at this time.

He is reviewing and wasting his time.
I have to mail them for unpaid submission and I am also wasting my time. (Let me add, I send every such mail myself with site info)

I even add that of it was a mistake or you haven't actually submitted, just let me know so I can clear it on my end. (For God's sake, they can at least reply to that part)

 

Sometimes due to some problems like disconnection or timeout, there can be non-payment submissions.

I add "payment link and details" to help them pay manually in "link submission notification" - has helped me often.

 

Well that depends...

If its been submitted and they didnt pay the review fee then its deleted.
If they do it again then i ban the site and its IP..
If they still persist after that i accept it and place it inactive ..end off story.

thx
malcolm

 

Great idea!

 

never thought about that, ha ha, nice method, looking foreword to use it! i have a persistent submitter