Wholesale customers double dipping
Printed From: ProductCart E-Commerce Solutions
Category: ProductCart
Forum Name: Using ProductCart
Forum Description: Running your store with ProductCart
URL: https://forum.productcart.com/forum_posts.asp?TID=1989
Printed Date: 28-September-2024 at 6:37pm
Software Version: Web Wiz Forums 12.04 - http://www.webwizforums.com
Topic: Wholesale customers double dipping
Posted By: katharina
Subject: Wholesale customers double dipping
Date Posted: 20-September-2008 at 2:19pm
We have a problem with some wholesale customers beating the system. They sign up as wholesale customers and then as affiliates. All with the same name! First they get the lower price as a wholesale customer and then they get 10% commissions for being an affiliate. We've just noticed this problem by accident and it really hurts our business. There should be some kind of safeguard in PC preventing affiliates on earning commissions on wholesale orders. Has this been addressed in version 3.5?
Katharina
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Replies:
Posted By: Hamish
Date Posted: 20-September-2008 at 4:07pm
Hi Katharina,
Personally I think that's a tricky one - although of course it's nonsense for the wholesale customer to use their own affiliate link to get extra discounts. For some businesses it would be legitimate for their affiliates to sign up new wholesale customers.
I certainly think it should be an option to prevent it, or perhaps pay a differing affiliate rate for wholesale sales - which in your case you could set to zero :-)
Do you manage the sign-up of wholesale customers and affiliates, so that they are only activated when you explicitly allow them? That could help you police it, along with your terms of business for wholesale and affiliates, where you should be explicit about what is allowed/disallowed.
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Posted By: katharina
Date Posted: 20-September-2008 at 6:19pm
We have the rules up for wholesale and the affiliate thing. You are not allowed to earn affiliate commissions on your own order regardless of wholesale or retail. Affiliates and wholesale customers have to get approved by us. The problem is that we have over 200 affiliates at this point and about 60 wholesale customers. We are mainly retail, but you know how it is they want wholesale options. So we offered it to qualified businesses only. They have to bring proof of being a business before they even get wholesale. Most wholesalers are honest, but we had this one lady. She did rack in some good affiliate commissions on her own orders. At least we caught it before we did mail out a nice check. Well she no longer gets wholesale nor is she an affiliate any longer. There should be some kind of checking on this one, because we cannot monitor it all by ourselves. Amazon does that kind of checking so affiliates dont get commissions on their own purchase. Sure there is always the possibility of getting another email etc, but lets make it harder in the first place. We don't offer referral bonuses to wholesaler that refer other wholesalers. I personally don't want to end up in some kind of MLM business. There are tight laws about that in the US and some of it is illegal because it is some kind of chain business that could bust.
Katharina
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Posted By: ProductCart
Date Posted: 22-September-2008 at 12:05pm
Katharina, if we can, we'll add a last minute change to version 3.5 to support the exclusion of wholesale customers (no affiliates would earn any commissions on any order placed by an affiliate customer).
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