I run a small affiliate program for a small business -- a day with more than one sale is a good one. I recently had an affiliate join and get credit for 5 orders in 3 days -- each order being the same -- to different people, but I failed to notice that 2 of the orders went to the same address with a different name. Each order was for an ebook that comes with a 3 month money-back guarantee and a regular physical book. The physical product, a regular book, has no return policy. The book that I mailed to the two people with the same address was returned -- no such street. And I just tried to email the email address that were associated with those orders. Undeliverable mail. Obviously the credit cards processed properly. I'm thinking that this person is going to collect their affiliate check and then generate a return request for the ebooks. Does anyone have a suggestion for how to handle?
You can make your payout date longer then it is, lets say monthly so if those credit cards should be stolen they will get a chargeback on them. Also you shouldn't "fail to notice" when dealing with money. review your orders.
I would not send out the affiliate check until you know for sure they paid for ebook. I also would not send full amount back to person if they ask. If you pay affiliate and they ask for refund take what you paid them out of the refund.
If you had a satisfaction guaranteed policy and someone asked for a refund, you wouldn't refund the whole amount (you'd withhold the affiliate's commission)? I don't think so -- think about it from the customer's perspective. Or in this case, perhaps the stolen credit card owners' perspective. I guess I will withhold payment from this particular affiliate and wait to hear from them. I have reason to say that the charges looked fraudulent -- two addresses are invalid and two emails are undeliverable. Guess I'll check all the email addresses by sending a quick "Hope you are enjoying..... " follow-up. My suspicion is that the affiliate won't contact me. Actually if they had stuck to the ebooks, they would have skated by undetected. But... when the post office returned the books as undeliverable it's hard to not notice. So no one else has encountered this problem, or heard of others?