While the OP did run into some interesting problems that many of us in Internet Marketing face, I was very thrown off by the direction this post took. There was

While the OP did run into some interesting problems that many of us in Internet Marketing face, I was very thrown off by the direction this post took. There was a pretty substantial lack of understanding of cookie tracking and first-click/last-click attribution. The affiliates didn't do anything wrong here, which was ironic, because I've met affiliate marketers at conferences in Vegas, and there's PLENTY of shady stuff that some of them do. That said, none of that is taking place here. Ranking for "name of company I'm an affiliate for" discount code is practically step 1 on the affiliate SEO checklist. This post was almost comically misleading, to be candid.