Affiliate Links & Donating to HPC:Factor

Very neat plugin!

Nice! I'll be taking note of these.

Great, thank-you. My goal is to reduce the running costs a bit, I've been paying for everything for years and the costs only ever go up. So if this can help cover some of it, it would be beneficial to me.

I've written a wordpress version of the plugin too, so I aim to release it sometime soon if you want it for your site stingraze.

Cool, Wordpress version will be great, will be happy to support HPC:Factor that way. I get some visits about my PDA posts once in a while, so I hope it might help.

Edited by stingraze 2018-06-09 12:52 AM

If you also make yourself one for Amazon.de, I'll use it for my next big order

Done! It's hpcfactor0f-21 (updated on page 1)

Okay! I'll keep that in mind for my future orders! I also happened to need something from Amazon.com a few days ago, also used your tag for that, hope it worked

I cannot see who, just what. There were $4 of earnings last month on the .com between this site and my site.

Well that's just a kick down. I got an email overnight from Amazon.com stating

"we noticed that your web site announces that a portion or all proceeds of Amazon.com orders will benefit a particular group, charity, or organization. Associates are not allowed to offer incentives to visitors to purchase through their links by stating a certain amount will be donated, rebated, etc."

They closed the account and gifted themselves the balance it would seem.

I've emailed them demanding they review this because it's clearly bogus. Nowhere is it even hinted that referral fees are gifted to any third party and quite frankly you can go to literally any YouTube/blog site with an affiliate link and hear something similar to "help support us by using the affiliate links in the description below".

Absurd!

That *is* bizarre.. Hope you can get this sorted out, that's really ridiculous..

Did they think amazon.de is a third-party group?

So far they've ignored me.

It all sounds like outright theft to me. I'm just waiting for it to happen for the others now as I'm assuming their automated process here is aligned.

The language is almost as if it's forbidden to represent as an organisation, as if the programme is only valid for individuals - "I" not "We", "my costs" not "our costs".

"gifted themselves the balance" is ... umm ... diplomatic. Maybe you should be on hand for the Trump visit!

*shudders* I'll pass thanks.

Still nothing at all back from them... we might need a letter writing campaign here.

I received a response; be it one repeating the completely unrelated statement that donations to third party charities are not allowed.

Having had a read around on this, it basically looks like they have an extraordinarily inconsistent, highly subjective method of applying any sort of policy on this. There are cases of massive YouTube channels where you can clearly see them asking for support by using affiliate links and getting away with it while there are reams of other people online whose blog got stamped on and they lost several months of income because the subjective view of someone in Amazon who passed by their site was that they were in violation of the TOS. From what I can also see, that policy is not codified properly; anywhere. Where there is some codification, the language is vague and non-explicit.

Reading on it suggests to me that whoever decided this didn't like the fact that there was a statement made on the homepage that Amazon purchases would be used to "support us [the site]"; they did quote the line in their response. So I was mistaken earlier, it would seem that Amazon wish to pretend that the links are there for altruistic purpose, and force people to hide the fact that they make money from the programme. I find it difficult to accept such pedantic use of language or the imagined presence that anyone in the programme is doing it for any benefit other than paying their expenses - they are sure as anything not doing it out of blissful love and devotion for Amazon Inc. Yet it genuinely seems that they want to portray this.

I was going to link you all to the meagre T&C content on this, but just discovered that you have to be in the programme in order to view it, you cannot pre-view it. As I no longer have an account, I can't see them either.

I have removed Amazon's branding from the homepage and footer. They won't get any free brand advertising out of me if they want to act in this sort of way. I will retain the programmes and attempt to re-register the US one and will leave the Forum and HCL integration. Looking at other commentary surrounding this exact issue, we can forget the idea of getting the balance of the account back, they've stolen that. In the absence of proper, clear programme requirements, I think their first port of call should have been to send a "we have a problem with your implementation of the Associates programme for reason xxx, you have 48 hours to resolve these problems or elect to close your account otherwise it will be closed for you for more information on your responsibilities as a member of the programme please see http:/...".
What I received was “we have closed your account because you are donating a portion or all of your referral fees to a third-party charity”. I am sure that you can see, from a legal standpoint that this is whole in error. I’m a first party in the agreement, not a third party, there is no charity involved and the account holder is not donating any income anywhere – it goes to the account holder, stays with the account holder and pays hosting fees.
If Amazon.co.uk were currently pulling this, they would not have a leg to stand on in a small claims process after introducing such ambiguity.

My reporting this just dents their brand, and I'm sure has irked many of you too to hear this.