For years I have had great experiences with Amazon’s Associates program but recently it’s been one problem after another. And it’s not just me. A quick look at Amazon Associates Discussion Board you will find many people are having the same issues.
First, my earnings for September 30th was at 4% rate even though I have reached 7% level for that month. According to other associates who have contacted Amazon, they stated they were aware the problem and working on a fix but it’s been 2 months and the payments have all been issued. So I don’t think they will do anything now.
Well, just one day and not much difference anyway. No biggie. So I thought.
Then, in November I started seeing disappeared earnings. Again the commission rates were calculated incorrectly on some of the days. It got corrected a few days later.
Then there were missing orders. When I checked my November earning reports from different reporting options, it showed inconsistent results. It appears that 10 ordered items has vanished from the summary report but they showed up in individual tracking ID reports.
Only 10 items. Still not a big deal, right.
Well, today it really hit me hard.
This morning when I logged into my associates account, on the home page it shows MTD (up to Dec 3rd) order # total: 1,104 items. But when I click on “View full report”, it shows the total ordered is 1,231. There is 127 items missing.
Then I checked the “Tracking ID Summary Report” which also shows 1,104 items; and discovered that that one particular tracking ID has no record – no clicks, no orders, and no earnings. This one happens to be my best earner so I knew right away something was up.
I then looked up the “Orders Report” only for this particular tracking ID for Dec 3rd (unchecked the “Combined reports” box) and it shows there are 127 items ordered.
I then looked up the “Earnings Report” for this tracking ID for Dec 3rd and there are 63 items shipped & with earnings but at the bottom the “Items Shipped”, Revenue, & “Advertising Fees” are all 0s. This is apparently wrong. See screen shot below.
The missing earnings for this particular tracking ID on Dec 3rd along is several hundred dollars. We still have 3 weeks to go for this year’s Christmas shopping season. If this goes on I could be losing several thousand dollars.
The integrity of Amazon’s tracking system has deteriorated. This is quite disappointing. These are just the errors I see. Who knows what else is going on that I don’t see?
I really hope Amazon will get their acts together and soon. If I can’t trust Amazon to track my sales then I really can’t invest my time & money building up Amazon traffic.
UPDATE 12-06-2012: After 2 emails to Amazon’s support they finally corrected my account. I’m still seeing some discrepancies but not severe enough to let me lose sleep at night! BTW, it looks like we will have another strong Christmas season. I am really excited!
Related Posts:
AWeber proves it to thousands of businesses every day.
Learn how email marketing software
can get you more sales, too.
