Warning: This post is a pure rant. But it’s a warning that might save you some heart ache too.
I recently did some affiliate promotions for a product that was sold through the affiliate processor Plimus. When I say recently, it was probably over 3 months ago now.
Let me say, it’s something I’ll not do ever again. In fact I advise that if you’re reading, it’s something I advise you to avoid doing too… Here’s why:
It started out everything was cool, I’d generated something like $3500 in commissions. Then came the actual receiving of the payment.
First I had to change the way I receive my payment from check, to Paypal.
I find out that any change in my payment preference won’t take affect until the following pay period, even though I change it before the date the current months payment is supposed to be sent. Very annoying and I’ve never seen it before, but… security reasons, fair enough I guess.
So I’m supposed to be receiving a check that’s sent on the 15th of the month.
Next I get an email saying that my balance has been reviewed and for security reasons, only a portion of it will be released this month, something like 30% of the total.
I ask why and they say that unless you continue to make sales in an ongoing fashion, again, for security reasons, the amount of money they can release to you gets limited and segmented… This is particularly annoying since I had no intention to promote this product in an ongoing way, it was a one off email promotion, and so I was informed that it could take months for the entirety of my commission to be released.
Again, not something I’ve ever seen an affiliate network do, again extremely annoying, but I guess if it has to be that way and my whole business isn’t relying on it (shame if it was!) then so be it.
But that’s not even the start of the trouble.
So I’m waiting for this check to arrive. I’m in Toronto right now, closer to the US than some American cities, so I estimate that it might take 3-4 weeks at the worst to get to me.
That time passes and no check arrives.
Now I have to get in contact with them to find out why my thousand something dollars, “part payment” hasn’t reached me yet.
I call them up. No one at the accounting department answers.
I leave a message as instructed. No one at the accounting department returns it.
I call again, rinse and repeat, still no answer and no return phone call.
Finally by email, I get in touch with someone who tells me that if the check didn’t arrive they can cancel the check, re credit the balance to my account and send the payment out via paypal, which is the method I freaking wanted them to use in the first place.
I say “great, how long will that take?”
They say they’ll return it to my account and pay it out in the NEXT pay schedule. in another 3.5 weeks time.
Try to imagine my frustration at this point.
So I say ok, fair enough, by the 15th of next month, it’ll be released by paypal and this will all be over. Keep in mind this is more than 3 months since I actually earned these commissions.
The big date comes, August 15th, the day the payment’s supposed to be released by paypal… and I just suspect something’s not going to go right.
Sure enough, I get an email saying that “of the balance that was re credited to my account, $322 of the total $1288 will be released to you today”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
So of the amount that was ALREADY cleared, it RE entered the stupid “security process” and it had to undergo review AGAIN before it could be released to me. It was already supposed to be sent to me in the mail by a check but thanks to THEIR mistake, it wasn’t!
What do I do? No one answers my calls, email support takes 2 days to reply. It’s like what I imagine affiliate marketing to be like if you lived in HELL.
Talk about a harrowing affiliate experience. 5 years promoting products as an affiliate and I’ve never seen anything like it.
If you promote through Plimus, boycott them today.
Click the links at the bottom of this post to Tweet this to your followers and share it with your social network subscribers and spread the word around. This kind of treatment is not good enough for a company dealing with your money.
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that’s crazy man… I’m definitely not going to touch that site!
thanks for sharing bro!
Dbk
Feel free to check out FastSpring.com E-Commerce as an alternative to other payment processors.
I have always found a quick letter from my attorney gets things like this cleared up pretty quickly.
A single page saying the problem appears to be on their end and instructing them to pay the balance with in a week usually gets the job done.
Nobody believes you when you say you will sue. They believe you mean business as soon as they see the attorney letterhead.
Wow, that’s shocking! How can such an affiliate treatment even exist in these modern days when all companies are competing to win more customers?
Thanks for sharing about your experience with Plimus. Now a lot of affiliates know to stay away from it.
On an interesting thought, I’ve been using Plimus to sell some of my products for a couple of years and they have always been very prompt with the payments and support.
But I haven’t ever used their affiliate program and have a built-in software of my own, so didn’t know how bad it is. I guess they only take care of the vendors and not the affiliates.
Ladan
Ladan, you’re absolutely right. Throughout the process I often wondered why they didn’t just withhold payment and enforce these security measures from the vendor (who’s responsibility it is to maintain high security and keep refunds low etc) rather than the affiliate! Crazy.
Hmmm. Maybe an affilliate agreement/contract in the beginning would have been the way to go; then you would have had them over a barrel–because you would never have agreed to a payment later than 30 days right?
Good things, written agreements.
Alex
Sorry to hear about your troubles Andrew. I had heard of Plimus, but I had not signed up with them. Now I know I will not.
Thanks for the warning!
Luckily, this is not an everyday experience for affiliates. I’ve myself only been cheated once by Buydomains.dk – never a reply from them, but they only owe me around $200, so it’s probably not worth sending a letting from an attorney.
Hey Andrew,
Thanks for the heads up about Plimus. I’ve never promoted anything with them before and will never in the future, thanks to your sharing of this post.
I guess what Bob said makes sense. Nobody is going to believe you when you say you’re going to sue unless they receive a formal letter from the attorney office.
Hope you get your all affiliate payments soon.
Cheers,
Welly Mulia
Wow man, can’t blame ya for ranting about that! Since affiliates are what keep a lot of these networks going and what makes quite a few businesses the most money, you should treat the affiliates in the best way humanly possible IMHO.
Affiliates are their paycheck really!
I was never really convinced that Plimus is a top notch affiliate site. HOwever I have been promoting 1 product through them for 2 years now and have been paid on time every month. However probably because I promote on an ongoing basis. I’ll be sure to remember the short burst of sales of a product though them, don’t do it.
Update: My last email to them has gone unanswered for almost 5 days…
Ouch! That story hurts because I’m sure more than a few of us have a similar story and your pain brings back ours! lol!!! I’ve got my own $3000 soap-opera going on. And it involves one of the so-called “gurus” that you’re always bitching about, Andrew. Frankly, I guess I’m naive, but I thought these guys were above such slimy tactics . . . but I just got to say that just because your dealing with a “celebrity” on the Internet (in the IM arena anyway) doesn’t mean you should throw out good business sense when getting involved with them. Ok, there’s my rant too …..
Hi Andrew,
Yikes, not nice.
I have been with Plimus for over a year (have 3 accounts with them) and have been paid via check, paypal and wire transfer in the hundreds of thousands of dollars without any hassle.
They even assigned me a personal account manager who is available 24 hours a day via his mobile.
That being said, it is always a good idea to have a backup payment gateway in the event something goes wrong. The last thing you want to do is to start looking for one when things go wrong and you have a popular product as all sales will come to standstill while you are looking for a backup.
Whenever I alunch a new site, I implement the payments on my backup processor as well, so if something goes wrong (it might even be a trivial as a network failure), I can simply swith to the backup in under 2 minutes
Actually as bad as it sounds I understand them, they have to protect themselves from chargebacks and fraud, if you just doing this promotion and not selling with them than once they send out your money they are stuck with any refund or chargeback that will come…
in addition as a vendor who use them than I know its part of the agreement, all you have to do is read before you sign up
I’ll use Plimus anytime. regarding payment cycle. i’d go for Wire transfer always on time within 2 to 5 working days, not to mention am in africa half a world away. Wire transfer is $21 compared to check =by mail which is $4. Generally for commissions more that $1000 : $21 is mere pocket change.
If you don’t make sales on an ongoing basis and the product you were promoting had a high refund rate, then its commonsense that they had to hold onto your commissions to cover themselves on this.
If you read the TOS the customer is in contract with Plimus as a seller but not the Vendor as seen in some networks like Paydotcom.
Some other interesting scenarios on plimus is: if a customer is known to ask for refund most of the time after sometime he/she will not be accepted to make a purchase on plimus network. I got an email from a client who was confirming that he has been denied to make a purchase from my website via Plimus because of his past refund record.
On another scenario as a vendor am notified of some pending sales where the IP location of the purchaser differs from the shipping address.
Some of these experiences as a vendor in plimus has me at some point furious but i’ve come to accept plimus as prudent network – do no evil
That’s my experience and i’ll stick with it
I use Plimus and I have not any problem, the best way to be payed is Plimus Prepaid Card.
I know how you feel, I also experienced problem in Plimus and didn’t get my commission money maybe around $1,000+ in total. The scenario is this, I got accepted by the vendor then I promote the vendor product that accepted me as affiliate. Then later I never realize that i was being taken out by the vendor as their affiliate. They didn’t tell me that i was being taken out so my campaign continues and make some sales that make my commission reach more than $1,000 in total.
I wait for the payment time and didn’t receive it on my paypal. When i contacted the support they said that i was taken out by the vendor as their affiliate and said that i should contact them directly. The links provide to me is working and the stats appear on my Plimus account. If the vendor cancel me they should cancel also the link and it should never works.
From this for sure the Plimus get the money which should be mine.! They suck the affiliates money! Do not ever join them! They are FRAUD! Let all your friend know it or they will wasted time and money in using this aff. network!
After gone through the complete information it make me scared.
I have $6788 pending commission of last month on plimus.
I dont know whats gonna happen with my money
Ya. If you don’t make ongoing sales AND the product you are promoting has a high chargeback rate (generally poor product) then they will withhold a percentage to cover chargebacks that take place over the course of 90 days.
If you promote a quality product or promote a product regularly you don’t have to worry about this. Its something I can personally understand.
Hi Andrew!
I came across your post while searching the internet for Plimus holding back money.
I am in this situation myself now.
There is one thing which doesn’t stand.
The whole idea of their holdbacks is to protect themselves in case customers who purchased your products want a refund.
But, per Plimus own license agreement, the customer can only request a refund within 30 days of the purchase.
So I can’t see no reason why they should holdback seller money more then 30 days after the purchase was done.
However I saw many people on internet which didn’t complain to their support asking for a clear clarification, since the 30 days since the customer purchase are over.
So, in my case, I can understand why they holdback my payment on the last payment cycle, there was less then 30 days since I had the sell.
However, I hope I will get it on the next payment cycle.
If not, I want to get an attorney.
Unfortunately, I am not living in US. Can please someone help with that?
As someone said, it should be enough if a formal letter is sent from an attorney office. And if it isn’t I will be ready to spend enough money to bring them to court, even if it takes time. I will be surely ask then ask them to pay all the money I spent on attorney and for all the stress they caused to me.
I totally understand why Plimus is doing that. The credit card issuing banks actually allow all sorts of chargeback or dispute requests for up to 180 days! Plimus is essentially hedging their bet against the worst case. Having said that, they should have spelled out the policy clearly to begin with.
Yes but I clearly said that buyer can confirm he will not ask for any refunds, even sign any necessary papers. I have only one sale and one buyer.
They just don’t want to respond on that.
Also, it doesn’t make sense. Your money is being held and you are not paid.
If buyer acknowledges that he wont ask for a refund, what’s the problem?
I am starting to think that Plimus is taking advantage of this situation.
Plimus shut down my vendor account about 1 month ago without any notice! Luckily I have already switched over to a new processor when this happened.
I have e-mailed plimus support and also opened a ticket but no one bothered to answer this in 30 days. When I logged in to the ticket system my ticket had a successfully closed status without receiving a reply from them at all.
Their support is the worst I have seen in my 8 years since I’m working as a webmaster! You can’t actually talk to a human person, no live support, only one e-mail and they also fake reply dates on their forums and ticket system so it will look like the problems were solved within minutes. Would NOT recommend them at all!
It’s more then 4 months since they got the payment, If they won’t send me the payment I will get a lawyer.
I guess your experience hasn’t been the best and I don’t blame you. I have been with Plimus for 6months. My first check was sent being only $36.75 and it cost about $10 to cash because I live in Brisbane. I think my bank charged me $10 to process the cheque to our currency which would leave me with $26 not worth the trouble. So I sent a email to Plimus if I could cancel the check, or send it back to them. They said it wasn’t nessecary to send the cheque back, they would credit my account. Support passed it onto accounts that contacted me about 3-4 days later. They credited my acc and then added the balance to my next months payout which they did without a drama. I got paid out by paypal instantly when the commissions were due following month. I wouldn’t say boycott them. They are better than alot of other crappy affiliate networks. I can say though, don’t ever go with cpa networks run by fellow internet marketers. I won’t say who but IMer’s are notorious for moving onto the next big thing and abandon there former businesses if they won’t run passively. cheers Nigel