MANAGING THE SALES I HAVE RECEIVED FROM MY AFFILIATES - HOW AND WHY
21 August 2015
Admin
If you have set up a Merchant sales account with clixGalore there may come a time when you need to decline an order for some reason. There are several reasons that this could occur. Luckily, it is not a big drama with clixGalore. This tutorial will take you through the practicalities of declining an order and reasons why you might have to do this
Declining orders can become necessary for several reasons. The most common is that a customer made a purchase on your website and then their credit card was declined (but your Affiliate program still recorded a sale). Sometimes you will get people using invalid credit card information and on a very few occasions you might even get somebody trying to place an order with a stolen credit card.
Here are a few options you might like to think about, regarding the declining of orders:
When you set up your new Merchant sales program with clixGalore, you have the option to manually accept or decline transactions. When you are starting out, it is a good idea to set this to manual until you get used to your program¡¯s performance. It allows you to keep absolute control over everything. You can make this setting by logging in and going to "Program Maintenance" then to "Edit Merchant Program / Banners" in the popup sub-menu. Then just click on the name of the program you wish to make this setting for. On the next page you will find a check-box called "Auto Approve Sales." If you wish to manually approve every sale before the Affiliate is paid, then you should make sure that this check-box is NOT checked.
Now, when you make a sale, you will be able to check your own records before you approve the payment to the Affiliate in order to make sure that everything is legitimate. When you are happy that the sale is good, you can log into your account to approve it.
Just log in and go to "Transactions" in the menu and then "Verify Sales and View Leads Received" in the popup sub-menu. On the next page you will be able to view all of the transaction sent to your website from clixGalore Affiliates. It is here that you can approve or decline them.
Reasons to Decline
The basic rule to guide you in the decision about whether or not to approve a sale is that if you have received the money from a paying customer who was sent to your site by an Affiliate, then you should approve the sale.
Some legitimate reasons to decline a sale were mentioned above - ie. an invalid credit card was used in the order, a credit card was declined or the transaction was made with a stolen credit car or in another fraudulent manner.
Reasons NOT to Decline
There are several reasons it would be deemed unacceptable for a Merchant to decline an order. Not knowing the source of the click where the customer came from would not be an acceptable reason to decline an order (click source is voluntary information that isn't necessarily passed to our system). Deciding that you don't like the way that an Affiliate is advertising your program is also not an acceptable reason to decline an order (in that situation, you would need to contact the Affiliate to express your concerns BEFORE any orders are generated as well as including "Disallowed Advertising Methods for Affiliates" in your terms of service). In fact, there are very few legitimate reasons to reject a transaction, if the Merchant has received payment for the goods or services and an Affiliate sent that customer. In the interests of fairness, and acknowledging the fact that Affiliates spend a lot of time and money driving customers to Merchant's sites it is important not to be flippant about rejecting orders. Many Affiliates are full time professionals who pay for staff and marketing and will be justifiably upset if Merchant's do not pay them for legitimately generated orders. Beware that it is very easy to gain a bad reputation amongst Affiliates which will only damage your reputation in the long run.
If at any point you are unsure as to whether you should approve or decline a sale, then don't hesitate to drop an email to the customer care team at clixGalore and they should be able to advise you.
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