Since late July, we promoted a survey site called Tickbox offering £2.10 for registering. This tracked fine but we had around 100 transactions which went to an "extended" status. On further investigation, it seems that the merchant had subsequently removed these transactions. We got the following explanation from the affiliate network (the intermediary between us and Tickbox):
As of today, the program description does indeed state "Payable Action: New registration & survey (MUST double opt-in and complete first live survey)" and we did not explicitly state in our offer that it was necessary to complete a survey. However, I have a strong suspicion that the program description didn't state that requirement either at the time. Unfortunately, I have no way to prove thisoriginally the campaign was setup (to track) on the registration page. The reason for this was the advertiser was unable to (track a transaction) after the first live survey was completed.
Since the payable action was not per registration but per live survey completed we had a very high reversal rate. To answer your question further your leads would have been reversed because users did not complete the first live survey after registering and therefore did not fulfill the payable action criteria.
So the bottom line is that we're not going to get paid for these transactions. My question is: what should we do about the associated cashback (circa £200) for affected members. It seems to me the choices are:
1. Reject them all
2. Award them all
3. Award them on request (i.e. if a member submits a query)
You can make an argument for all these options; my preference is #3 as it is likely to cost imutual less money but still allows individual members to claim the cashback if they feel hard done by. Please vote in the above poll; I'll abide by whatever the majority vote for
I'd also be interested to know if affected members believe that they did actually complete a survey
