If it wasn’t for flexing your communication muscles I doubt the distraction and time spent was worth 88USD.
Most reasonable would be to ditch after the first answer from the CEO. They will likely disappoint in the future.
How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
161–170 of 270 posts
Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
#162Very well done. Personally, I believe that resolving issues in a calm organized and firm way helps you as well.
I recall one of my bosses telling me if you want to fire off an angry response, close your computer and take a walk outside. This works, I would come back and write a calm but firm email. Angry responses typically do not help.
I typically hate responses on twitter
Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
#163Given how much time you've wasted with this, my feeling is that overall you still lost. They owe you money for the time spent as well. Good on you for publishing this, but you should have mentioned their company name in the title, so that hopefully it show up in search engine results and this alerts others to not collaborate with them.
Passive income gets mentioned a lot here. He's collected over $100 for previous conversions and about $60 after that, and he'll keep collecting as long as the affiliate program runs. It's not a lot of money in general, but you don't start a keto blog with dreams of billions either.
Shouldn't he earn more? $100 is just $1 per 1000 views.
>The site has grown steadily over time, to the point where it now has over 100,000 pageviews per month.
Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
#164The OP is uncovering affiliate fraud and he agreed to settle for a small amount. Is this a victory? Is this even a debt?
Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
#165I got into a dispute with an electricity company (they later got fined for doing to me what they did to about a million customers...) and I used a similar approach, I kept been polite, firm and finishing everything with "if you can't resolve this matter, can you please refer me to someone who can" and ended up talking to one of their directors.
Amazingly at that point the entire thing was resolved in less than a day and not only did they finally get the billing amount correct but they then waived it entirely.
I never had an issue with paying them what I owed the problem was their figure and mine didn't match and they kept screwing up the collection.
Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
#166Tough numbers to make work. A hundred referrals and 88 bucks owed is... not a life changing number. Far more interesting is the revenue inflection point, going from an ongoing relationship worth zero to one worth 700 bucks a year. But... apparently still not worth keeping: > I’ve since removed all mention of Kiss My Keto, as I no longer have any interest in helping them earn money, regardless of what they pay me. To…
>someone is selling bread for a 20 percent markup
They currently advertise a discounted 4 bread pack for only $39.99 . I feel the markup is not exactly 20%.
Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
#167I appreciate you actually naming the scumbags. It's tiresome how people are overly diplomatic these days.
People are afraid of libel / slander lawsuits, and this drives any sort of hesitation on public naming and shaming.
Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
#168Author here. Happy to answer any questions or take any feedback about this post. I wrote it a few months ago and submitted it at the time[0], but it didn't seem like it was a match for HN. I was quite surprised when I woke up to find a tweet from a friend letting me know it was on the front page. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24144103
It sounds to me like you've uncovered potential affiliate fraud and were willing to settle for a small sum. Honestly, they should be more scared about your article uncovering their bad business practices -- they'll lose more from that than the $88 you settled for.
However, despite the title including the word "debt", this is not a "debt" you were collected because the exact amount was not discussed. Instead, $88 just seemed like a mutually agreeable number. But it could have been a lot higher or a lot lower.
Basically, you just agreed to settle and not continue to press your valid claims of potential affiliate fraud.
Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
#169I'd say this depends on the situation you're negotiating. If your only means of communication are e-mails, your best bet is to keep the line of communication open, and present data that builds a case that they cannot ignore without risking a (heavy) loss.
If, however, you participate in face-to-face negotiations, you open up a whole slew of other possibilities of influence only limited by your personality and personal morals. As an example, a CEO friend of mine told me that he'd always make sure to get really drunk the day before an important negotiation, so he'd be grumpy and mean when he finally sat down at the table. Let's just say that his methods were in stark contrast to those promoted by Dale Carnegie.
Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
#170Respect and courtesy are nice but I think the reason this style is so effective is different. It makes the counterparty believe that you are collecting the paper trail to file a lawsuit. And behaving like you are preparing to file a lawsuit is much more effective than just claiming you will be filing a lawsuits.
I imagine that when presented with a choice of $88 payment or having to deal with a lawsuit, 100% of decision-makers will chose the former. And it’s not about the lawsuit outcome. Even if some complete garbage is filed which has no chance of success, the burden it creates on the business is clearly much higher than $88.