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How I Collected a Debt from an Unscrupulous Merchant
- ysleepy 6y agoLuck played a role in this instance as well. Having a representative admit to violating their own policy/terms in writing is sort of a slam dunk. The principle still applies though, good advice afaict.
- digianarchist 6y agoYou could always do a test purchase but they’d probably claim that it’s a bug if they didn’t pay you.
- dj_mc_merlin 6y ago> To put it bluntly, we are not paying you for your conversions How did the CEO write this and not immediately ^H^H^H it? Could he really not think of a better phrasing than "your conversions"?
- hajimemash 6y agoAs a non-vi user, I feel very excluded :( ^H means backspace guys. And probably the same type of CEO that wants to make money by not paying out affiliates
- notRobot 6y agoOff-topic, but why map a function to a multi-key combination when it already has a key dedicated to it?
- calvinmorrison 6y agoEarly keyboards maybe? Hjkl vs jkl;
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y agoI don't think that's the answer to the backspace=^h question, but HJKL is precisely an artifact of the keyboard that vi was first used on: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:KB_Terminal_ADM3A.svg / https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi#Creation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi#Creation - in addition to HJKL being labeled as the arrow keys on that keyboard, also note the far superior placement of escape and control where modern keyboards typically place tab and caps lock; this also made vi a lot more sensible. (And of course that last bit is a whole topic unto itself; to this day, caps lock is the dumbest key on the whole keyboard to me - mostly useless, takes up prime real estate, and 100% worth remapping on every machine I control. But that's a rant for another day:])
- toomanyrichies 6y agoBecause the h-key is in the middle row of the keyboard, meaning relatively shorter keyboard distance needed to execute that common command, thereby saving typing time.
- apearson 6y agoI would guess it's a side effect of having all ascii control chars mapped to key combos [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#Control_code_chart https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASCII#Control_code_chart
- detaro 6y agocaret notation just maps all ASCII control characters to ^ + letter, many of which do not always have keys. "Backspace" is 0x08 = 8th letter is H = ^H it's also not just used as an input, but also what a terminal that can't do or doesn't understand a backspace as "delete character, step to the left" prints instead.
- LukeShu 6y agoNot just letters! "^X" indicates "X, but with the control-bit flipped", where the control-bit is the left-most of ASCII's 7 bits. 1001000 ASCII 'H' 1000000 "ctrl bit" 0001000 ASCII backspace But like I said, it's not just letters, if you use `cat -v` to show all non-printable characters in this notation, you'll also see things like "^@" for the 0x00 null byte and "^[" for the ESC. All of the terminal color-code control sequences start with ESC, so if you pipe colorized output to `cat -v`, you'll see a lot of "^[".
- account42 6y agoHuh I guess that explains why they chose [ as the second byte in the initiator for color control sequences: ESC [ = ^[ [
- spijdar 6y ago^H is the ASCII control character for "backspace". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_character https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Control_character
- andreareina 6y agoI don't remember what I was connecting to, but I've had telnet sessions that couldn't process backspace etc, so I had to use the ESC-<key> mappings.
- segfaultbuserr 6y ago^H is the ASCII control character for backspace. It has nothing to do with vi, and everything to do with a terminal. It used to be common knowledge that when you press Backspace, sometimes ^H appears on your screen (if the program in question couldn't handle control characters natively). Naturally, in forum posts it started to have the meaning of "delete" for humorous purpose. Its modern equivalent is HTML tag <del></del>, which also means "delete" due to the common knowledge of its meaning. One doesn't have to be a front-end developer to understand <del>, and one didn't have to be a vi user to understand ^H.
- MertsA 6y agoThat genuinely sounds like he misunderstood the issue to be with prior untracked referrals rather than not paying out referrals properly attributed to him but "ineligible".
- wrycoder 6y agoMy read was that he doesn’t speak English very well and that he meant to say, “that we are not paying you...”
- dotmanish 6y agoThat’s how I read it as well. He was trying to summarize the issue at hand in that sentence.
- Scoundreller 6y agoI wonder if the merchant is sneaking any gluten into their “bread”. Edit: extra carbs I mean. Getting my diets confused here.
- 14 6y agoThis made me think of [1] this discussion here about subway and their fake whole wheat bread. It looks like Subway was forced to change their recipe but honestly I don't have faith in any many companies. Instead of offering good food it always ends up "return to share holders" mode and the product turns to crap. {1| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24646755 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24646755
- wirrbel 6y agoI had a subway chicken teriyaki last year (probably didn’t have a Subway Sandwich for 10 years before that). It seems their chicken is a chicken-soy-mix. At least taste and texture are that way
- heelix 6y agoIt was not too long ago that Ireland ruled that there was so much sugar in the Subway bread it was 'cake'. Sugar made up 10% of the weight of the flour. https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/919189045/for-subway-a-ruling-not-so-sweet-irish-court-says-its-bread-isnt-bread https://www.npr.org/2020/10/01/919189045/for-subway-a-ruling...
- sneak 6y agoGluten is protein (i.e. not carbs) and is a common (and permitted) ingredient in keto bread, to make it more bread-like.
- zogulus 6y agoit's ok, they're all fad diets, just ignore all of them
- onetimemanytime 6y agoBeing on front page of Hacker News is priceless for his reputation too :)
- sneak 6y agoAdded (small) side-effect from this post, as a keto person who loves Patrick’s advice: now I know never to give the Kiss My Keto assholes a dime, via your site or anyone else’s.
- peteretep 6y agoI suspect they’ve gotten a lot of custom out of this post, as there’ll be a non-zero number of people who think “ooh, keto bread delivery!”
- sengstrom 6y agoThe numbers are small but I can see the satisfaction in picking an approach and sticking to it. Thanks for the write-up.
- mtlynch 6y agoThanks for reading!
- jldugger 6y agoTough numbers to make work. A hundred referrals and 88 bucks owed is... not a life changing number. Far more interesting is the revenue inflection point, going from an ongoing relationship worth zero to one worth 700 bucks a year. But... apparently still not worth keeping: > I’ve since removed all mention of Kiss My Keto, as I no longer have any interest in helping them earn money, regardless of what they pay me. To me, it seems like the real story here might be that someone is selling bread for a 20 percent markup. Or maybe they aren't, but have been able to make ends meet by stiffing referrals. The margins on groceries are typically small, which is borne out by Amazon's 1 percent comission rate for the Grocery category. If someone comes along offering to 20x your income, skepticism is in order. You can formalize that skepticism with a multi-armed bandit algorithm. Basically, put affiliate commissions into the feedback loop, picking which affiliate links to use by expected value. But it may take a while with low click through volumes.
- nicbou 6y agoI learned an important thing over time: recurring payment services always pay much higher commissions. One time purchases pay very little, even for big ticket items. A 3€ per month liability insurance might have a 40€ commission, while a 400€ product might have a 10€ commission.
- NullPrefix 6y ago>someone is selling bread for a 20 percent markup They currently advertise a discounted 4 bread pack for only $39.99 . I feel the markup is not exactly 20%.
- coupdejarnac 6y agoI appreciate you actually naming the scumbags. It's tiresome how people are overly diplomatic these days.
- pjc50 6y agoCareful, you'll be accused of "cancel culture"!
- OneGuy123 6y agoCancel culture is when you get canceled about having a different opinion, it has nothing to do with shady business practices.
- pessimizer 6y agoWhat if you're a business with a different opinion about what constitutes shady business practices? edit: e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25322456 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25322456
- tertius 6y agoThe law should remove much of your opinion. What remains is as your say.
- starfallg 6y agoThe phrase "cancel culture" is such meaningless drivel. There are many valid reasons why we don't want to give a platform to certain people because of what they did in the past.
- dmos62 6y ago"This company is ripping me off, but I'll protect its identity because I feel like I owe it something" is plain misguided and a huge disfavor to other participants in the market.
- rexreed 6y ago
- smsm42 6y agoLooks like KMK just tried to cheat hoping that nobody would make much of a fuss over a hundred bucks or so. And they are probably right in enough cases to make it worth it. If occasionally somebody does make a fuss, they just pay up the hundred bucks and still aren't worse than before.
- rendall 6y agoExcept now they have enough negative publicity about documented shady practice that it will likely destroy their affiliate program. Honesty really is the best policy
- leovander 6y ago> If they failed to pay, my plan was to file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission and reach out to other affiliates suggesting they do the same. Where do people get their info from to just go with a "time to contact the FTC"? If feels like the equivalent of people threatening they will contact the BBB. Depending on the amount (that was $88 per the screenshot?), that is something you take to small claims court, you don't even need a lawyer for that.
- function_seven 6y ago> Where do people get their info from to just go with a "time to contact the FTC"? If feels like the equivalent of people threatening they will contact the BBB. I'm well aware of how toothless and irrelevant BBB is these days. ("Yelp for old people"). Almost nobody visits BBB before making a decision, only after a bad experience. Given that, a business with a bad grade there probably doesn't feel much of a sting. But I'm totally unfamiliar with FTC's power or purview. Is involving them on something like this a waste of time because of the dollar amount? I don't expect they would recover the money, or mediate a dispute. But I think the author is coming at it from the angle that the other party would rather not rack up complaints at all. Especially if they could get other affiliates to follow suit. I work in telecom, and complaints to the Public Utilities Commission are treated seriously within my company (and in the wider industry AFAIK). We really do not want customers to file any. When a customer mentions the PUC at all, we take them seriously enough to get some more eyes on their problem. My guess is that the author's checklist includes small claims as the next step after the FTC complaint. Or maybe they just stop at the FTC complaint and consider a lawsuit—even if small claims—to not be worth it for the amount involved.
- kevin_nisbet 6y ago> I work in telecom, and complaints to the Public Utilities Commission are treated seriously within my company (and in the wider industry AFAIK). We really do not want customers to file any. When a customer mentions the PUC at all, we take them seriously enough to get some more eyes on their problem. The consumer protection reporters for the new channel hanging around the headquarters also tend to grab a lot of attention in my experience. Happened once or twice that I remember where it was drop everything and solve the problem before the report goes out.
- ChicagoDave 6y agoSadly this doesn’t work when the millionaire startup owner pulls funding and never pays the $90k they owe you. Dumb article.
- gogopuppygogo 6y agoHaving recently tried to integrate the Walmart affiliate API from Impact.com I'm not surprised. These affiliate programs are a mess. Impact seems to be trying to make it cleaner but their own system is a mess. Too bad as well, affiliate programs could be a much better way to monetize than advertising revenue.
- raz32dust 6y agoHow is there no better way to track conversions in a standard way by a third party? This whole win relies on the fact that the affiliate manager let out the real policy. She could have just said that there were no conversions, and the author would basically have no recourse?
- FriendlyNormie 6y agoQuick, someone make an ethereum shitcoin to handle this.
- swyx 6y agothis is the real question here. how is the state of affiliate marketing so bad that affiliates have to trust without any means of verification the very people inclined to scam them?
- mtlynch 6y agoAuthor here. Yeah, that was my initial thought too, but thinking about it more, I understand why that doesn't exist. Merchants are the ones paying the affiliate platforms, so the affiliate platforms don't have incentive to create features designed to increase power of the affiliates at the expense of the merchant. Affiliates in this space don't seem to be very discriminating. The only communities I've found for keto affiliate marketers are the groups run by the merchants themselves, so it's not like they're searching for information about which merchants are honest or not. I think the general trend is to try a merchant, monitor how much they pay you, then move on if the dollar amount is too low.
- raz32dust 6y agoYeah, makes sense. It would be hard to gain initial traction and the business model can be tricky. But the merchants also of course get value from the affiliates, so once it catches on with affiliates, they could demand merchants to use this service for checkouts for trust and verification, if it is lightweight enough. Could just be javascript like google analytics or piwik.
- FriendlyNormie 6y ago“Unscrupulous Merchant”? Cool it with the antisemitic remarks.
- kova12 6y agoIt is a hell lots of work for 88 bucks. Amount of work spent writing emails, analyzing data, coming up with strategy - it comes down to pretty low hourly wage...
- kzrdude 6y agoYou need to add future earnings into your calculation
- fareesh 6y agoIs there no intermediary third party service which will allow advertisers and websites to register their arrangement and track conversions? Sounds like an obvious product idea. What am I missing?
- markdown 6y agoHow many vendors want to give a third party all their sales data?
- calcsam 6y agoThis piece has so many red flags. I'm surprised and somewhat disappointed it landed at #1 on HN. (1) Why was all of this work worth $88 in the first place? As a talented writer who is at least presumably familiar with software engineering, he surely could have earned that money faster by other means. (2) Why does he continue to work with merchants he himself describes as unscrupulous, in _affiliate marketing_? My hunch is that he wrote this article specifically to appeal to the HN crowd (see patio11 quotes) in an attempt to get additional commissions from driving more sales to a vendor _he himself_ describes as unscrupulous. Do better, HN.
- runjake 6y agoRe #1: He talks about why a bit in the article. TL;DR: it was for the principle of it and an experiment. He probably also wanted to burn the vendor/warn others. Re #2: He didn’t. He states he ceased working with them after he recovered the $88.
- Zanneth 6y agoThe idea is to demonstrate a professional method for communicating with companies that are incompetent or otherwise untrustworthy. The amount of money involved and the business practices of the company with whom he is communicating is not strictly relevant.
- Haga 6y agoIt's a Form of hacking a company's processes from outside. Basically you punch through to the enterprise layer of communication and get treated better accordingly.
- polartx 6y agoI’ve worked for 50 person companies, and 250k person companies. I’ve found that, (barring outliers), most CEOs, especially of startups, are very interested in the perspective of ‘Joe customer’, if shared in earnest. When you think about it, they’ve placed many layers of abstraction between themselves and their customers for the sake of the larger perspective. But CEOs are also people, and customers (of someone) themselves. And are therefore interested in the individual satisfaction of their customers/partners, to a point.
- stickfigure 6y agoGeez. This article was hard to follow but... it sounds like the merchant is really screwing up. My SaaS business gets most of our users via an affiliate program, and many years ago I worked in porn where nearly all of our users from an affiliate program. The #1 rule of affiliate programs is to treat affiliates like royalty. Or more accurately - business partners. Be clear about what you offer, be generous, and always resolve reasonable misunderstandings in their favor. A single good affiliate can make your business. A bad reputation will destroy it. There are third party affiliate software systems that can help with trust, but they are all terrible. Nothing substitutes for just being trustworthy. This post is probably going to be top news in the "keto affiliate community" (which, even without checking, I already know to be a thing) and it will be a problem.
- jpcooper 6y agoWhat led you away from porn?
- stickfigure 6y agoNothing in particular? I wanted to start my own company and I didn't have any compelling ideas for making porn better.
- jpcooper 6y agoFair enough.
- 0xfaded 6y agoIs there a good way to contact an online business directly and say "It seems you pay a 20% affiliate fee. I would like a 20% discount?" Amazon kinda does this with smile and donations, even though I don't use amazon anymore. I go out of my way, with link strippers, cookie removers, adblockers, to the point of often manually copy and pasting links into a private window if necessary, to avoid affiliate links. When I do this I usually feel like I'm supporting the online store, but there are some cases (e.g. I'm looking for an oversized mattress) where I know the whole industry is corrupt and I just want to pay as little rent as possible.
- JumpCrisscross 6y ago> I had no evidence to prove any of my readers purchased something Well there goes your leverage. Is this common in the content game?
- ljf 6y agoYes once a user leaves your site, it is pretty hard to know what happens on the affiliate site - you just have to trust the system they use. You can look at trends and your previous experience, but it is hard to have any proof.
- glenstein 6y agoAs they mentioned further down in the article, they later got access to data on how affiliate references were performing and used that to extrapolate over the 120 cases that were missing data.
- markdown 6y ago> they later got access to data on how affiliate references That data also comes from the vendor, so it's only as correct as the vendor wants it to be. Affiliates are always at the mercy of their vendors.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- markdown 6y ago> Is this common in the content game? I've never known an affiliate system to have independently verified stats. Whether you're an affiliate for a small business or Amazon, they control the stats and you just have to accept what they say they owe you.
- ignoranceprior 6y agoHe could've had someone test this directly, by clicking on the affiliate link and purchasing a product, ideally while recording their screen so there's hard evidence. Then if the company still claimed there were no conversions, he would know for a fact that they were lying.
- zebnyc 6y agoI would like to second the recommendation for the referenced article by Patrick. Big kudos to patio11. 3 years back I had an issue go in my favor (for almost $2k) regarding a dispute with an auto body shop when I started asking them questions in a 'professional' manner (for documentation purposes) and questioning regarding their processes that they were following. I used the article by Patrick as a template and and the auto body shop just folded on the case.
- hydrogenbonds 6y agoGiven how much time you've wasted with this, my feeling is that overall you still lost. They owe you money for the time spent as well. Good on you for publishing this, but you should have mentioned their company name in the title, so that hopefully it show up in search engine results and this alerts others to not collaborate with them.
- locallost 6y agoPassive income gets mentioned a lot here. He's collected over $100 for previous conversions and about $60 after that, and he'll keep collecting as long as the affiliate program runs. It's not a lot of money in general, but you don't start a keto blog with dreams of billions either.
- timzaman 6y agoThe big picture here is he's on the frontpage of HN and getting a ton of very valuable attention. This guy isn't dumb.
- 867-5309 6y ago$100 to billions is an unrealistic step, and an unfounded generalisation of the author's circumstances. in this day and age something as benign as an "influencer" mentioning the word "keto" could butterfly-ripple the author into an early retirement
- locallost 6y agoI actually don't know what you mean. The post I responded to said that the money recovered was not enough compared to the time spent. My point is, the money is not a lot, but considering it's a low income blog anyway (there is another blog post about that) it's not too bad, especially in terms of future reward, for which he basically does not need to do anything.
- birdsbirdsbirds 6y agoShouldn't he earn more? $100 is just $1 per 1000 views. >The site has grown steadily over time, to the point where it now has over 100,000 pageviews per month.
- damethos 6y agoI understand the fact that the author took the matter in his own hands and claimed what he was owed but this article is just another proof that instead of doing our jobs and spending our time more productively, we always need to play the "lawyer" and the "detective" because some people/company always abuse their position of power. The author did manage to get his money, but at the same time pointed them a flaw (the affiliation page) in their little scheme, which means that he didn't help protect anyone else that wants to start an affiliation with them. And yes, I understand that this is "how the world works" but still, I always get bothered by this kind of behavior. Maybe an alternative maybe, would have been to stood up by just ending the partnership and finding another company that treats its affiliations with more respect AND post the article in order for others to read the bad experience he had.
- TomSwirly 6y agoThere are laws against this sort of thing. In another country, like the one I now live in, this would be a job for law enforcement. You'd just hand over your files to some branch of the government, and in a surprisingly short amount of time, you'd get some money, but also, the site would stop cheating people. Except that this rarely happens here, because companies know that law enforcement cares about systematic scams. They might try to cheat you once, to see if you're a sucker, but if you put up any fuss, they'll give you the money.
- noodlesUK 6y agoWhat country is this, if you don’t mind my asking?
- jb1991 6y agoIt appears he lives in the Netherlands: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23862316 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23862316 Based on the fact that I have also lived there, and looking at his comment history, I don’t think you can take this comment as being entirely accurate.
- damethos 6y ago
- JakaJancar 6y agoI've probably had 10 such cases in the last 5 years: speeding tickets from countries I have not even driven to, medical services double-billed to both my insurance and credit card, ... all $100-300 range. I'm confident I could probably recover most, but at this amount, I just don't want to deal with it. It's one of those cases where I wish I had a personal assistant. It makes me think there's room for a "consumer debt collector" service with a revenue share model.
- faebi 6y agoThey do exist but only for certain niches. For example in the case of the european air passenger rights. My partner missed a connection flight by a few minutes and had to wait overnight. On the next day she had to take another two stop flight instead of a direct flight. They gave her a hotel, a taxi and a little voucher for food but this wasn’t enough according to her rights. There are various only services who go to court for you and will get as much money as they can. You go to their website, enter your flight, they calculate the probability that it was the airlines fault , they show you what you maybe can expect, you give them the permission and then they do everything else. The company takes something like 25% comission and that‘s it. It takes a few minutes. In the end she payed 100-200€ for the return flight and got something like 350€ back via the company. Made me think if one could find the most unreliable flights, with the worst delay in case of a delay and fly them profitably by going to court all the time.
- mtlynch 6y ago>It makes me think there's room for a "consumer debt collector" service with a revenue share model. There was a company called Service that kind of did this. They launched around 2015. You would tell them about a customer service dispute you were having, and they would call the business on your behalf and recover the money you were owed. I used them several times, and they were able to recover money for me without me having to do much except give them the details. It looked like they had a few million in VC money to blow through because it was free, and there were no minimums on the dispute amount, so it definitely couldn't last. In Feb 2017, they added a 30% commission on recovered money,[0] and then later that year, they pivoted to focus exclusively on disputes with airlines,[1] which it looks like they're still doing.[2] [0] https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=8cdf4d62d0219f237ed96d7fb&id=671af1130d https://us11.campaign-archive.com/?u=8cdf4d62d0219f237ed96d7... [1] https://mailchi.mp/dcc5d15901c4/meet-service-20 https://mailchi.mp/dcc5d15901c4/meet-service-20 [2] https://www.getservice.com/ https://www.getservice.com/
- yholio 6y agoBeing very persistent and calm can go a long way when dealing with organizations in person: most customers, when confronted with a negative answer from a company representative will become irritated, frustrated and will want to terminate the exchange threatening to escalate to some higher authority, a boss (that is rarely available), the courts etc. It's a negative emotional state that most people want to stop. What you need to do in those circumstance is realize that you still have immense bargaining power with the specific individual, that can, according to company polices present you with a negative answer that is profitable to the company, but in all other respects is severely limited and must behave in a courteous and professional way. You need to reflect that back to them, and repeat your claims ad nausea, bringing more arguments and repeating your point of view with the utmost calm, as if nothing they say is relevant to your problem. Verbally, you state your claims and non-verbally you deliver the message that "I can do this all day and will not leave until you drag me out with security, making a scene". You do not move away from the counter and/or follow the employee calmly, non-threatening continuing to repeat your claims. The frustration will build up even in the most seasoned customers representatives. All of a sudden, you are no longer the company's problem - a lost or dissatisfied customer; you are THEIR personal problem, a persistent client that demands their rights and stops them from engaging with other customers. Should they make a scene and become rude or verbally or physically abusive, it's their job on the line, for failing to properly handle a demanding client; but if they continue being calm and professional with you, they are failing to do their job and serve other customers. Many representatives will cave under this pressure, if what you are demanding is in their purview, or, a the very least, be very happy to rid themselves from you by producing an actual manager with the power to solve your claim (that would very rarely be disturbed otherwise). I have successfully used this method to negotiate out of unscrupulous baggage fees at the airport, obtain discounts at advertised prices instead of the "fine print prices" etc. It's a time-money tradeoff, as was this one here. The method is less efective over the phone where the representative has the power to terminate a call. In this case here one company official made a serious mistake by stating in writing something contrary to official company policies. You will usually not be that lucky in email exchanges with an unscrupulous company.
- m3at 6y ago> Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn’t, but I always find it to be the least stressful way of addressing disputes. This make it very valuable to me. Resolving disputes can quickly become stressful, especially when as an engineer you rarely have to do so with customers.
- noodlesUK 6y agoThe blog post he mentions Identity Theft, Credit Reports and You is a really good read that has surfaced on HN a couple times. If you haven’t read it, you should. The notion of simply being an organised professional being the most intimidating thing to bureaucracies is very true in my experience. https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r...
- ornornor 6y agoWhen I moved to Europe, I was VERY surprised to say the least that this doesn’t apply at all here. The attitude is more like “you should feel lucky we let you give us your money and purchase something from us. Now fuck off.” I tried the professional attitude, I tried threatening legal action (I have legal insurance that would pay an obscene amount of lawyer fees if it came to that), I have tried the angry consumer, I have tried to complain to the regulator... None of that worked. Most of the time, they basically say something like “kiss my ass” I don’t know how to deal with EU companies. I was always getting what I wanted in North America by using the organized professional method. I’m at a complete loss in Europe. Any advice?
- corty 6y agoSue them for real, or at least have a lawyer write a letter.
- ornornor 6y agoThis becomes very time consuming, very fast. Even if the insurance pays the lawyers fees, I still have to setup an apointment, explain the situation again, give the documents, etc. It's always "small" amounts like 50-500$, i.e. amounts that it sucks throwing out the window but that aren't big enough to justify sinking even more time in chasing. I also don't believe this can be the only way. Most people don't have legal insurance and wouldn't pay a lawyer the equivalent of 1000$ for a dispute like that. I'm talking every day stuff: a cellphone bill with an error on it (in the company's favour, always), or an Ikea piece of furniture that was delivered broken (but the package looked fine), or a voucher you were promised if you signed up for a particular health insurance plan and when it's time to get the voucher you're not eligible anymore... That kind of stuff.
- greenkey 6y agoI 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.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- remus 6y ago> ...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.
- mtlynch 6y agoThanks 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.
- tleb_ 6y agoI wonder if this post is to +1 his number of articles on the first page, to sell his HN video course: https://gumroad.com/l/htfphn/hacker https://gumroad.com/l/htfphn/hacker
- hombre_fatal 6y agoSeems like you're trying to be cynical, but it doesn't really fit. The charge of putting a lot of work into an interesting article that HNers would upvote isn't very damning, and doing all of that just to increment 16 -> 17 in some marketing material isn't very convincing. His own advice in the videos is "write good, interesting content" not some sort of gimmick.
- mtlynch 6y agoAuthor here. Happy to answer any questions or take any feedback about this post. I wrote it a few months ago and submitted it at the time[0], but it didn't seem like it was a match for HN. I was quite surprised when I woke up to find a tweet from a friend letting me know it was on the front page. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24144103 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24144103
- fourstar 6y agoIt’s incredibly scattered. Like you just dumped whatever was on your mind and clicked publish and walked away.
- mtlynch 6y agoThanks for the feedback. I did spend several hours writing and editing it over a couple weeks, but I understand it might not feel cohesive. The challenge was that there were a lot of details to cover to explain the background. The email exchanges were a bit convoluted because they involved a lot of backreferences to previous events or other screenshots. I wanted to tell the story in an interesting way while presenting the raw evidence instead of just summarizing everything and asking the reader to assume I'm being fair, but I can see how all the screenshots and blockquotes might have made it feel cluttered.
- fourstar 6y agoCheers. Wasn’t trying to be a prick about it on purpose. I’m brutally direct.
- bitcharmer 6y agoLooks like you've read a different article then. This write up is very well structured and reads very easily.
- jaclaz 6y agoIf I may, I am not convinced that the "professional way" solved anything. Of course just my opinion, but I read: >In the meantime, how do you wish to resolve the matter? What outcome are you wishing for? as an amicable prompt to find a way to solve a trifling matter in a short time. I mean, the "professional way" has nothing to do with managing to escalate to the CEO (how exactly did you manage to get his e-mail?). Besides, a sentence like "I will seek other means to recover the money owed." is ambiguous enough to be easily read as a threat, as there may be "other means" that are not legal. So - still as I read it - you hassle the CEO of a company, and Mr. Herscu is tasked to understand what the issue is about, and as soon as he finds out that the matter can be solved with paying 88 US$ he pays, problem solved.
- skinkestek 6y agoInspiring! Reminds me I have a bank and an insurance company to talk or rather write to. They sold me insurance on my mortgage, then came up with new rules when my wife sadly needed it. I was in a tight spot then so it ended up with my family having a boring time (cheaper food, Dad working more, less money to spend on toys, tickets etc - and we didn't have to much in the first place). Now I do have time and I do have money and I am tempted to give it a go. It should be something around $5000 (two months worth og salaries for my wife).
- ChrisMarshallNY 6y agoI like the article. It presents the way that I believe we should all behave with each other in a professional environment. Respect and Courtesy are important at all times (IMNSHO). Some folks seem to feel that being respectful is a sign of weakness, but cops are extremely respectful, as they explain to you why they will be writing a ticket for an eye-watering amount (at least, good cops are). Many moons ago, when the domain market was still a “thing,” I had a broker offer to sell me a domain I wanted, and the price was extremely reasonable, so I took them up on it. It turned out that they actually were “leasing” it to me, and they wouldn’t transfer it to me. I asked them, and they responded fairly aggressively, pretty much telling me to FO, and that I was “harassing” them (a legal term, really), by asking them to release the domain. My response was fairly similar to the approach in the article, and I was able to get the domain. They were not very gracious about it, but I did get it, and we never needed to deal with each other again, after that.
- momokoko 6y ago> Respect and Courtesy are important at all times I could not disagree more. Ethical and considerate _actions_ are important at all times. Many very dishonest people help themselves sleep at night by pretending that being polite excuses their actions. It does not. Actions have real life, often irreversible, effects on those around you. Being polite has few, if any, tangible effects.
- rsp1984 6y agoThis. One million times. Politeness is not a signal and generally a terrible proxy to figuring out someone's integrity. While most impolite people also aren't highly ethical in their actions, the reverse (politeness + unethical behavior) is extremely common.
- tomrod 6y agoIt would be wise to separate out politeness, by which I interpret every comment here means patiently assertive, and obsequious, where one is a doormat and butler to all. In that view, is your view of politeness as a bad signal more aligned with obsequiousness or with civil assertiveness?
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- tedchs 6y agotldr, the author sent a couple emails to recoup $88 from a mismanaged affiliate program. Not exactly "hacker news" front-page material.
- redelbee 6y agoMy summary of this article in terms of good and evil: - Kiss My Keto unsuccessfully tries to set up an affiliate program that doesn’t eat too much margin and is still equitable to the affiliates (I believe they are doing their best to be a force for good until proven otherwise) - Mr. Lynch gets involved and finds out the program he thought he was joining is actually not as it seems, so he reaches out to Kiss My Keto to resolve things equitably (again, I believe people are doing their best to be a force for good until proven otherwise) - Kiss My Keto initially balks but then realizes they weren’t being fair and does everything they can to resolve the problem (still a force for good) - Mr. Lynch then publicly blogs about the issue from a one-sided perspective and paints an unflattering image of Kiss My Keto. He also drafts hard on someone who actually writes useful content instead of creating something useful on his own (now he’s a force for evil) - Mr. Lynch also uses the blog as an opportunity to sell a course about how to get to the front page of HN while appealing to his authority on the matter since he has written articles that made it to the front page 17 times (more evil territory) If this is what it takes to get to the front page of HN maybe I should spend way less time here. This guy wasted everyone’s time with bad intentions. He could have legitimately wanted to help Kiss My Keto, which would have strengthened their relationship and potentially led to gains for both parties. Instead he wasted their time for a completely insignificant payoff. Seriously, if your site is getting 100k visits a month and you’re scraping the bottom of the barrel for $88 you are doing something wrong or evil. Then he tells everyone else the story and makes himself the hero and Kiss My Keto the villain. That’s what they got for their seemingly good intentions and $88. So evil on Mr. Lynch’s part. He could have thought of his own framework instead of drafting off Patrick McKenzie‘s ideas and twisting them to fit his selfish goals. Instead he practiced a bit of intellectual thievery and didn’t even further the discussion by adding anything useful. Evil again. He could have made this story valuable to readers by giving us tools to live a better life, like Patrick McKenzie did with his article. Instead he extorts us for money to learn his “proven” process for gaming his way onto the front page despite having nothing useful to say and wasting everyone’s time. Major evil. To be clear, I want more good in the world and less evil. If everyone acted like this guy the world would be terrible. Don’t be like this guy. Am I missing something? Why did this make it to the front page and why do people seem to actually like this article and find it useful? Are we all that terrible?
- 6y ago
- YuccaGloriosa 6y agoI was thinking what a straight up bloke the author was. Then I got to the end of his blog, to read....Hey "Get to the top of HN, here's how"... ...meh
- effingwewt 6y agoThe article is just more affiliate spam, he even links to his 'how to get to front page of HN'. The article is all over the olace and buried near the end is the book he got the 'solution' from. A correct title would be 'how book' X' helped me recover funds' But that wouldn't earn him mlre affiliate spam. Get bent dude.
- mtlynch 6y agoAuthor here. >The article is just more affiliate spam There are no affiliate links in this article. I link to a writing course I teach, but that's not an affiliate link, as I'm selling my own product. >buried near the end is the book he got the 'solution' from. >A correct title would be 'how book' X' helped me recover funds' The link is to a blog post[0] that I discuss heavily in the beginning of the article.[1] [0] https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r... [1] https://mtlynch.io/collect-debt/#handling-bad-behavior-with-the-organized-professional-method https://mtlynch.io/collect-debt/#handling-bad-behavior-with-...
- jpswade 6y agoThis has worked for me in the past, especially for settling debts. I adopted a mantra of "remain professional", avoiding engaging with their emotional tantrum and escalating the situation, just sticking to the facts and explaining the situation to them and what needs to happen to reach a resolution. It's hard, because people get emotional, and you have to force yourself to detach from them attacking the thing you have built and want to defend and instead become very objective, robotic in nature, but it works. It's not for the light hearted but sometimes this is what it takes to get paid.
- guyu96 6y agoKudos to the author for getting the money back, but it seems affiliates have very little leverage. Since there's no independent verification of sales data, affiliates have to take the vendor's word for it when it comes to conversion rates.
- lixtra 6y agoIf it wasn’t for flexing your communication muscles I doubt the distraction and time spent was worth 88USD. Most reasonable would be to ditch after the first answer from the CEO. They will likely disappoint in the future.
- ouid 6y agoThe more the company stonewalls you, the more likely your bad faith claims are to be accepted by a court. Bad faith contract violations come with punitive damages that can make it worth your time to fight, and I imagine that the $88 he made on this dispute did not actually take him all that much time. Writing the blog post might have, but that seems more like a labor of love.
- ystad 6y agoVery well done. Personally, I believe that resolving issues in a calm organized and firm way helps you as well. I recall one of my bosses telling me if you want to fire off an angry response, close your computer and take a walk outside. This works, I would come back and write a calm but firm email. Angry responses typically do not help. I typically hate responses on twitter
- rexreed 6y agoThe OP is uncovering affiliate fraud and he agreed to settle for a small amount. Is this a victory? Is this even a debt?
- noir_lord 6y agoI got into a dispute with an electricity company (they later got fined for doing to me what they did to about a million customers...) and I used a similar approach, I kept been polite, firm and finishing everything with "if you can't resolve this matter, can you please refer me to someone who can" and ended up talking to one of their directors. Amazingly at that point the entire thing was resolved in less than a day and not only did they finally get the billing amount correct but they then waived it entirely. I never had an issue with paying them what I owed the problem was their figure and mine didn't match and they kept screwing up the collection.
- kebman 6y agoI'd say this depends on the situation you're negotiating. If your only means of communication are e-mails, your best bet is to keep the line of communication open, and present data that builds a case that they cannot ignore without risking a (heavy) loss. If, however, you participate in face-to-face negotiations, you open up a whole slew of other possibilities of influence only limited by your personality and personal morals. As an example, a CEO friend of mine told me that he'd always make sure to get really drunk the day before an important negotiation, so he'd be grumpy and mean when he finally sat down at the table. Let's just say that his methods were in stark contrast to those promoted by Dale Carnegie.
- hnarn 6y ago> a CEO friend of mine told me that he'd always make sure to get really drunk the day before an important negotiation Extrapolating from my own capacity to think clearly while I'm hungover I would suspect this is a profoundly bad idea.
- kebman 6y agoI guess that depends on just how drunk you get the day before. All I need to get grumpy, is to skip coffee in the morning lol.
- raviolo 6y agoRespect and courtesy are nice but I think the reason this style is so effective is different. It makes the counterparty believe that you are collecting the paper trail to file a lawsuit. And behaving like you are preparing to file a lawsuit is much more effective than just claiming you will be filing a lawsuits. I imagine that when presented with a choice of $88 payment or having to deal with a lawsuit, 100% of decision-makers will chose the former. And it’s not about the lawsuit outcome. Even if some complete garbage is filed which has no chance of success, the burden it creates on the business is clearly much higher than $88.
- jldugger 6y ago> It makes the counterparty believe that you are collecting the paper trail to file a lawsuit. Thats because you are.
- chaostheory 6y agoThis reminds me of Amazon Smile. I wonder if it affects payouts to referrers?
- twodave 6y agoI enjoyed the read. Side note: is it just me or is the Keto industry in general just like 99.5% criminals? I’ve had my credit card stolen multiple times this year, and the thief has used my card to send ME keto pills I didn’t want. This makes the transaction more difficult to dispute and doesn’t benefit a common thief in any way. These companies are just a facade for criminal activity in my opinion, though I’ve been unable to concretely connect the dots.
- rexreed 6y agoActually you've uncovered part of the ruse. The thief / criminal is actually working in cahoots with the unscrupulous keto pill company. He gets a stolen card, charges it for product, ships you the product, and the keto pill company makes money without actually selling to a real customer, and gives a kickback to the credit card thief. Meanwhile you've gotten the product, making it harder to dispute the charge since they can show that you received the purchased product.
- MeinBlutIstBlau 6y agoThis whole article read like an undisputable libel piece to name and shame a company. Also, if a company tries to give me that run around once, why would I ever bother repping their products ever again? Also...it was $80. I do realize it can buy a decent amount of stuff but the amount of work and time this guy spent writing emails about this, he would've been better off black listing them.
- lolc 6y agoWhat is indisputable libel here? Are you saying the author is lying about the facts?
- m3kw9 6y agoBasically talk like a lawyer and an accountant, and it may get their attention
- nondeveloper 6y agoThe “organized professional” tone reminds me of patio11’s post on dealing with banks and credit reporting agencies when disputing: https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-reports/ https://www.kalzumeus.com/2017/09/09/identity-theft-credit-r... He also invoked the “professional” archetype. > “Angry people demand; professionals ‘require.’”
- RaoulP 6y agoIndeed, the author credits that same post in the third paragraph of the article.
- nondeveloper 6y agoI merely scanned the first ‘graph and got to that term before looking up and bookmarking the post I mentioned! Next time I’ll martial more focus and finish what’s in front of me first.
- utopcell 6y agoThe Organized Professional Method is even capitalized, to make it appear as if it's a thing. Part of the process, no doubt, except the target group for this is the article's readers.
- londons_explore 6y agoIf I were the CEO of any company and a customer emailed me very angry with an even vaguely plausible complaint, and then let me know that $88 would resolve the issue... I'd just pay it! Don't make enemies over $88! If it was $88k, then I'd treat it differently... Or if it was 1000 customers who have copy pasted the same email hoping to collect $88...
- thewebcount 6y agoI've had this happen and did something very similar. I purchased a Kardia EKG device for my spouse's smart watch (before smart watches had them built in). The web page clearly stated that you could use the product without having an account. (My spouse and I are pretty vehement about not using any device that requires an account for no reason. Getting data from a device I own to my own watch should not require an account.) They pointed out that their web page clearly states you will need an account. I was shocked because I always make sure to very carefully research this. So I went to the wayback machine on archive.org and looked at their page on the day I purchased, and sure enough, the language was not in there. They had added it a few weeks later. I sent them screenshots and receipts, and they still pushed back. Finally I issued them an ultimatum. Refund us the money or I'll do a chargeback and present my evidence to the credit card company. They immediately backed down and refunded us. It is utterly insane that consumers need to take screenshots of every product page for products they buy in this day and age to not be screwed over.
- NOGDP 6y agoA few years ago I got an unsolicited sales call from godaddy, offering me all sorts of bullshit that I didn't need (I did have some domains with godaddy then). I promptly told them no and thought that was that. A few days later I notice an $800 charge to my credit card I had on file with them. I call them and ask about the charge, they say I agreed to the purchase in the sales call. When I refuted this they said they had a recording of the call, and verified that I agreed. I asked them to play the call back and they refused. I called them a few times again asking for a refund or to hear the call that supposedly proved I agreed to the purchase. Anyway, a few weeks of bullshit later, I sent and email to HQ@godaddy.com, laying out what happened and telling them that in 24 hours I would be filing a complaint with consumer protection Ontario[1]. I got a full refund and an apology within a few hours. Needless to say I transferred all of my domains out of godaddy. [1] https://www.ontario.ca/page/consumer-protection-ontario https://www.ontario.ca/page/consumer-protection-ontario
- harrisonjackson 6y agoI don't know why the author didn't reach out to the actual affiliate tracking company. As an engineer, as soon as I got push back from the retailer that is the first thing I would have done. That or start polling my readers to see if anyone had purchased through them. You already disclose you are an affiliate so asking your loyal audience if they made purchase (which if they clicked through they are knowingly supporting you) should have gotten some response. I worked at rewardstyle (a fashion affiliate technology company) for nearly three years when it first launched and built out their instagram affiliate tool LikeToKnow.it as a side project with one other developer and a designer. We faced A LOT of mistrust and doubt from affiliates about earnings - sometimes valid and sometimes not. There are so so so many ways that different retailers would invalidate earnings, break the tracking, the buyer would delete their cookies, buyer would get redirected from a us store to au or eu or other intl and have it not track, we'd miscalculate a payout somehow, ship some bugs, etc. But we knew that we were in an industry that was looked at as pretty scummy so we did our best to always make things right and error on the side of generosity. There were times where a retailer would break the commission tracking on their checkout page and we would know there were 1000 sales but wouldn't be able to attribute them directly to a specific affiliate. We had to just do our best to extrapolate their earnings and add a "sorry something broke" bonus.
- ohashi 6y agoAlec Fucking Mwali again? Guessing it's the same affiliate manager I documented here: https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2016/04/22/dirty-slimy-shady-secrets-of-the-web-hosting-review-underworld-episode-1/ https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2016/04/22/dirty-slimy-shady-s... Trying to get me to publish fake reviews about companies he represents. He also likes using fake 'Re: BS subject that you never sent' tactic and claims it was a keyboard error. Not surprising he's continuing to work with shady companies.
- davewritescode 6y agoPersonally I’ve found that when someone does you completely wrong by doing something as egregiously bad (i.e. fraud) you can certainly find success being a huge asshole about it. Most people do not like being on the receiving end of justified berating and will do almost anything to make it stop. Sometimes starting off being an asshole and letting yourself be talked down creates a window for a quick agreement. It’s not a nice way to deal with things and some people aren’t always comfortable being the “bad guy” but it is effective with certain personalities. The most important part of this article is that the author was right and had proof. The way in which he conducted himself was likely inconsequential but writing an article about being a dick and getting what you want won’t generate clicks.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago> Patrick McKenzie wrote a blog post called “Identity Theft, Credit Reports, and You." This one mentioned in the article is one of the best blog posts ever written, IMHO. I re-discover and re-read it every ~2 years.
- simonebrunozzi 6y ago> I intentionally steered the conversation away from stats, as I had no way to prove anything about Kiss My Keto’s internal sales numbers, Well, the author could have used one affiliate link to visit Kiss My Keto and make a purchase. That way, he would have had proof that at least ONE converted.
- hnarn 6y agoIt's pretty amazing to me that this is considered a "method". This is the way I have communicated with anyone that I don't have a personal relationship to in my entire life. I'm surprised it would be seen as some kind of "life hack".