Is this Network/Advertiser screwing me over, or is it a plausible mistake?

[Sutra]

A few weeks ago I published an article promoting a particular advertiser on the CJ (Commission Junction) network. I got it ranked in top 3 Serps. It then started getting traffic, clicks, and sales. Over the course of 3 - 4 days I made $1500 in commissions. A couple days later I received an email from CJ support. They said they were investigating my account and asked me to explain exactly how I drive traffic to my site. They also asked to me explain why all transactions originated from the same IP address. If I didn't reply within X amount of days it would be considered an admittance to liability and my commissions would be reversed and my account closed.

I quickly replied, outlining all the ways I drive traffic to my site, the keywords I used for the article, etc. I also told them that I don't know why all transactions came from the same IP (I really didn't know).

A couple days later they replied that after further investigation they found that all the transactions originated from the advertisers call center but were accidentally tracked to me. Due to this, all commissions would be reversed.

Ok great, I'm clear of any wrongdoing but the whole thing seemed strange to me, and I lost the $1500. I wrote back to them asking them to explain how it's possible that transactions could originate in the call center and get tracked to me. I also said that according to the terms of the agreement I only get commissions when a customer makes a purchase, not fills in a form. So it's not like a customer, or someone in the call center, could accidentally fill in a form and have it tracked to me. Actual transactions needed to take place.

Here's exactly what they replied with:

"We were able to verify that all of the transactions came from the same IP address, and the click date for all of the transactions was on March 8, 2017, at 9:39:07.0.

Per our Publisher Service Agreement, which you agreed to when you signed up with CJ, "[m]ultiple Leads from the same individual, entity or IP address may be considered non-bona fide Transactions. You shall not earn Payouts for non-bona fide Transactions." (Publisher Service Agreement, §1(d)(ii))."
​

So now I'm left wondering:

1. Is it really possible for that to happen? I don't know what the operations are like in the call center. So maybe some employee clicked something that marked transactions as taking place, repeatedly, over several days? That seems like a ridiculous possibility to me, but I can't say for sure because I don't know.
2. Is it possible this was a ploy by the advertiser? Refute the transactions, so CJ requests my traffic generation strategies, gives that info to the Advertiser, then they use that to start ranking their own page(s) and fuck me in the ass? It's an established advertiser, not some newbie crackhead operation, so this seems unlikely, but with how strange it all sounds I just don't know.

I have not replied back to CJ again. Don't think I'll be seeing that $1500. But figured I'd get ya'lls input before I do anything else.

What says you about all this?

 

[contract]

ALL affilate networks, excluding in-house programs for the most part, are shady.

I'm not even surprised...

Some of you that have been around for awhile know the dark history of Linkshare and CJ.

Who's going to even hold them accountable? Who's independently verifying the reporting?

No one.

Also how can something have an IP, if it's from a call center? (Someome from the call center just clicked on your link and started placing orders for customers?) If you were ranking and tracked clicks/etc. Surely you'd have made some sales on your own...

 

[Ryuzaki]

I don't really know. That doesn't sound well explained. It sounds like they don't know either and it's an easy way to pocket some cash on their own end without shaving. The only possibility is like you said, some compliance guy checked your site out, hopped over to his call center duties, and you started racking up credit.

I do know that a lot of big players set up their own tracking for these purposes. You can at least (and I haven't either) set up outbound click tracking even if just on affiliate links, in Google Analytics or Clicky. This way you can at least tell if your own CTR is matching up to their reported click numbers.

 

[CCarter]

I got it ranked in top 3 Serps.

Was it ranking in the top 3 SERPs for the brands' own name (even partial)? Or were the ranking for generic terms you would use in that industry to gain knowledge and then find the solution is the product you are push. The answer is very critical.

 

[Sutra]

Was it ranking in the top 3 SERPs for the brands' own name (even partial)? Or were the ranking for generic terms you would use in that industry to gain knowledge and then find the solution is the product you are push. The answer is very critical.

Not straight up for the brand name but partial, yes. i.e. if the brand name was "Wilson Athletics", the ranking in the top 3 would be for "best basketballs made by wilson athletics".

 

[miketpowell]

Advertisers make all sorts of mistakes like this but usually or at the start of implementation.

Is this advertiser new to CJ?
How many bars does the advertiser have to denote "size" on CJ?
How many clicks did you send over that 3 day period to the advertiser?
Is the $1500 commission a single order or a bunch of orders? How many total products?

 

[Sutra]

I prefer not to speak about those details in this thread. I'll PM you the info.

 

[CCarter]

Not straight up for the brand name but partial, yes. i.e. if the brand name was "Wilson Athletics", the ranking in the top 3 would be for "best basketballs made by wilson athletics".

For some reason I think a manager at the call center instructed the team to have visitors google the topic of your article and confirm "See In-flight magazine just rated the Wilson Basketball the best", and then the users went on to make purchases through your affiliate link. So the call center drove the customers to the search term and caused the problem.

"We were able to verify that all of the transactions came from the same IP address, and the click date for all of the transactions was on March 8, 2017, at 9:39:07.0.

Another possibility - It sounds like the idiots at the call center went to your website at some point and then going forward started processing transactions for the customers on the website (or backend) - not realizing the fuck up. I have a feeling that "same IP address" IS the call center's IP address.

Incompetence shouldn't be a surprise when humans are involved.

 

[azswe]

They fucked up with the tracking, (in a perfect world) they should compensate you at least avg. EPC*hits. This is especially true if it took them multiple days to inform you you´re not eligible for commission. In a real world may need some leverage, ie. the advertiser/network giving a fuck losing (performance/track record would go a long way).

EDIT: Tbh above is not happening without track record. Assuming you´re legit it´d be kinda intersting to figure out how this could happen accidentally, do yo know how they re doing the tracking exactly?

EDIT2: I´m bad at this stuff but intellectually curios enough to hear how this could happen? They re pushing conversion data to backend and some1 used wrong parameters for a batch?