Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

mtlynch.io

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

251–260 of 270 posts

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#251

Post by jldugger »

mtlynch wrote: post #245
jldugger wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pardon my ignorance on the keto lifestyle, but do you think that 10 bucks per loaf of bread is a reasonable price? Even the reviews on their website indicate a lot of people think it's expensive. Obviously your keto site has a lot of products, but given the energy in this particular affiliate writeup, have you seen their product in retail anywhere?

Thanks for reading! > do you think that 10 bucks per loaf of bread is a reasonable price? Even the reviews on their website indicate a lot of people think it's expensive. Eh, it's sort of like anything else. People spend thousands of dollars on speakers, which is an unreasonable price to me but a reasonable price to the buyer. If you want bread that fits into the keto diet, "reasonable" is just a matter of what it's…

> I put in the effort on chasing down the money more out of principle than hopes that I'd get any significant money out of the deal.

Right, I'm just wondering what due diligence looks like before you go to the effort of putting a new affiliate program into effect. Like 'is this a real product, do they actually sell things, and deliver them.'

Their 'find us in retail locations' lists GNC as a retailer, and GNC lists "Keto Burn capsules" as their only product line carried from KMK. I... am suspicious of that.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#252

Post by fourstar »

mtlynch wrote: post #104
fourstar wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s incredibly scattered. Like you just dumped whatever was on your mind and clicked publish and walked away.

Thanks for the feedback. I did spend several hours writing and editing it over a couple weeks, but I understand it might not feel cohesive. The challenge was that there were a lot of details to cover to explain the background. The email exchanges were a bit convoluted because they involved a lot of backreferences to previous events or other screenshots. I wanted to tell the story in an interesting way while presentin…

Cheers. Wasn’t trying to be a prick about it on purpose. I’m brutally direct.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#253

Post by Ma8ee »

MeinBlutIstBlau wrote: post #194
pavel_lishin wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> cops are extremely respectful I'm glad you've had only positive experiences with the police, but this is a hell of a take in 2020.

The majority of cops outside of major metro areas aren't entirely shitheads. Half the time they're just traffic cops.

Most cops are polite to white middle and upper class people. Most black and some poor white people have very different experiences from cops.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#255

Post by simonebrunozzi »

> I intentionally steered the conversation away from stats, as I had no way to prove anything about Kiss My Keto’s internal sales numbers,

Well, the author could have used one affiliate link to visit Kiss My Keto and make a purchase. That way, he would have had proof that at least ONE converted.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#256

Post by 0xfaded »

true_religion wrote: post #199
0xfaded wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good way to contact an online business directly and say "It seems you pay a 20% affiliate fee. I would like a 20% discount?" Amazon kinda does this with smile and donations, even though I don't use amazon anymore. I go out of my way, with link strippers, cookie removers, adblockers, to the point of often manually copy and pasting links into a private window if necessary, to avoid affiliate links. When I do…

The affiliate fee is a payment for someone who did the work of marketing the product and finding new clients that would otherwise be inaccessible. You didn’t do any of that. You are just a customer at best and don’t provide any additional value on top of the money you pay for the product. Charging less then is just the company shorting itself for a single customer.

That's one view. But my view is that affiliate links have created a massive race to the bottom, polluting search results and creating a new style of prose optimized for inserting key words and links.

I may not be able to stop that, but I certainly don't want to support it.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#257

Post by greenkey »

mtlynch wrote: post #118
greenkey wrote: post #74

I like this post but “unscrupulous merchant” seems harsh for a company that may have changed their policies and didn’t realize they had to inform the referring agent of those changes. It’s not uncommon for policies to change; that initial marketing spiel for bringing agents aboard doesn’t look like a contract. The reselling agent probably didn’t have a case here, and the merchant went out of their way to assist when…

Thanks for reading! > I like this post but “unscrupulous merchant” seems harsh for a company that may have changed their policies and didn’t realize they had to inform the referring agent of those changes. Even giving them an extremely generous benefit of the doubt, I can't think of a way to describe them as anything better than "unscrupulous." If it truly was an honest mistake that they forgot to tell affiliates the…

> Oh wow! Thanks for telling us!...

In the US, admitting you did something wrong could open you up to a class action suit where some customers could be eligible for damages due to negligence.

You and others assume the merchant is unscrupulous, but they provided a remedy, so when you then called them out on it and gave them bad PR, you’ve given less incentive for other businesses to provide even that.

You could’ve written your post without specifically mentioning the merchant’s name, if your intent were really only to help others.

Even worse, if the merchant were unscrupulous and your aim were revenge, if it were to turn out that the merchant gets more business because of the PR around your stunt, they might tell other unscrupulous merchants that they should not pay their agents and hope for a windfall from rewarding only one of them with their due.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#258

Post by tsjq »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #124

I like the article. It presents the way that I believe we should all behave with each other in a professional environment. Respect and Courtesy are important at all times (IMNSHO). Some folks seem to feel that being respectful is a sign of weakness, but cops are extremely respectful, as they explain to you why they will be writing a ticket for an eye-watering amount (at least, good cops are). Many moons ago, when the…

> but cops are extremely respectful,

YMMV.

In India, the rank-and-file cadres that the common public interacts with: have the dirtiest and most disrespectful people one would ever face.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#259

Post by account42 »

stickfigure wrote: post #198
0xfaded wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there a good way to contact an online business directly and say "It seems you pay a 20% affiliate fee. I would like a 20% discount?" Amazon kinda does this with smile and donations, even though I don't use amazon anymore. I go out of my way, with link strippers, cookie removers, adblockers, to the point of often manually copy and pasting links into a private window if necessary, to avoid affiliate links. When I do…

Sure. Email them and ask. Keep in mind though that affiliate programs are not necessarily sleazy. By default nobody knows about your product. Some of our partners have been making tutorials in other languages and building API integrations into their products. They deserve the money we send them.

They may not be "sleazy" but they incentivize reviews/referrals/recommendations based on what the affiliate gets rather based on what product is the best. This pollutes the entired internet, making it significantly harder to find what you want as a consumer. On the whole, affiliate programs are a net negative for society and anyone taking part in them show reconsider their ethics.

Re: How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant

#260

Post by jdmichal »

greenkey wrote: post #257
mtlynch wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for reading! > I like this post but “unscrupulous merchant” seems harsh for a company that may have changed their policies and didn’t realize they had to inform the referring agent of those changes. Even giving them an extremely generous benefit of the doubt, I can't think of a way to describe them as anything better than "unscrupulous." If it truly was an honest mistake that they forgot to tell affiliates the…

> Oh wow! Thanks for telling us!... In the US, admitting you did something wrong could open you up to a class action suit where some customers could be eligible for damages due to negligence. You and others assume the merchant is unscrupulous, but they provided a remedy, so when you then called them out on it and gave them bad PR, you’ve given less incentive for other businesses to provide even that. You could’ve wri…

I can't get behind your interpretation. Not counting the bread, sure whatever. Maybe that's just a missed exclusion clause in the program documentation.

But then sending out discount codes to affiliates explicitly saying, "Boost your sales by giving out these codes!" Then to exclude those purchases from the affiliate program? I mean, come on. Where do you draw the line? Because that's definitely crossed out of my "innocent mistake" threshold.

> In the US, admitting you did something wrong could open you up to a class action suit where some customers could be eligible for damages due to negligence.

This is not a customer relationship, it's a business one. Presumably with some sort of written agreement. Violating that agreement or their own advertising around that agreement is what is going to get them in trouble, not an admission of fault. Besides, paying the author as they did could be submitted to a court as an admission of fault anyway. (That's why real settlements come with an NDA and explicit written agreement that fault was not assigned.)

> You could’ve written your post without specifically mentioning the merchant’s name, if your intent were really only to help others.

I think calling out the merchant is helping others, specifically others in or thinking of joining their affiliate program.

Post reply on HN