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Comment by greenkey | Hacker News Reader

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 presented with a good argument.

So, this is less about the “unscrupulous merchant” and more a warning to businesses to be clear and contractual with your policy and policy changes in order to avoid PR disasters like this.

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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 they changed policies, their reaction upon finding out should have been, "Oh wow! Thanks for telling us! We owe hundreds of people money, so we'd better review our transactions and pay everyone what they're owed." But instead, they (as far as I know) only paid me and never informed any of the other affiliates.

Also bear in mind, that you can't just "forget" to tell people that you changed the terms of your business relationship with them. If I hired hundreds of employees by advertising a $20/hr wage, I can't just privately decide that their pay is lower and secretly reduce their paychecks until one of them notices.

> 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.

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.

I disagree that “unscrupulous merchant” is harsh. If only for the fact that they create a referral that's not for their flagship product and not for promotional products. Which they then go on to blast the visitor with.

I cannot read that scheme and not agree with “unscrupulous merchant” as a apt description of the company

> ...a company that may have changed their policies and didn’t realize they had to inform the referring agent of those changes.

Presumably the law varies depending on country, but in the UK you're absolutely obliged to inform any involved parties of substantial changes to the terms of any agreement you have with them. Deciding not to pay commission to affiliates on a flagship product is a pretty big change, if I was an affiliate I'd definitely want to know about it so I could reconsider my position.

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