Lies, Deception and a Merchants Response to Unethical Affiliate Behavior
Posted on December 1, 2007
Filed Under Corporate Greed
By Paul Rushing
Green Mountain Coffee Roasters has a rogue affiliate. The affiliate was making offers that were not authorized by the affiliate agreement and when it became a customer service issue it took third party intervention to make the consumer whole.
The situation that unraveled was that the consumer visited the affiliate site and had a problem completing the order online. She called the customer service number to complete the transaction. When she applied for the rebate through the affiliate they refused to pay it. If their terms were clear, this would have been understandable, however they made no inference that the transaction must be completed entirely online to receive the rebate.
For those that do not know what affiliate marketing is
Affiliate marketing is a web-based marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor, subscriber, customer, and/or sale brought about by the affiliate’s marketing efforts. (www.wikipedia.com)
The rogue affiliate in question was offering rebates for the purchase of Kurig Coffee Makers. The affiliate was paid commission if a web visitor completed a purchase online and then the webmaster rebated a portion of the commission to the consumer. The webmaster in their original website copy did not inform consumers that the transaction must be completed entirely online to qualify for the rebate.
The affiliate in question, Donna-Lee Moore-Stout, proceeded to expose the consumers full name via RipOffReport.com and accuse the consumer of fraud by trying to take advantage of their unclear rebate offer. The troll participant in the thread at ROR, “BlackJava,” goes so far as to defend Ms. Stout and accuse the consumer of attempting to rip Ms. Stout off, perpetuating a fraud. The only fraudulent activity we have seen has been at the hands of Ms. Stout.
The real deal is Ms. Stout was not authorized to offer rebates. It is a violation of the affiliate agreement she had with GMCR. When GMCR first became aware of the rebate, due to a customer service issue, they did not make Ms. Stout remove the rebate offer but change the verbiage. Now the offer has been completely removed.
In emails that Ms. Stout has sent me she vehemently claims that the offer was authorized by Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. After taking the time to call GMCR’s affiliate manager it is evident she was lying in her claims. The sad thing is that all of this could of been avoided if Ms. Stout would have taken the time to read her agreement with Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. There would have never been an issue.
The consumer was the real loser in this whole escapade. While Green Mountain Coffee Roasters has given the consumer compensation for Ms. Stouts unethical marketing habits, they have still failed to do the right thing by not terminating the affiliation between GMCR and Ms. Stout. The rebate offer in itself may not justify terminating the relationship. Ms. Stout’s behavior and the way the situation was handled would. If she were an employee abusing a customer the way she has in this situation she would of been fired from most any job, but GMCR is showing apathy in how they handled this situation and irresponsible corporate greed in not terminating this affiliate.
This type of reaction by big companies like Green Mountain Coffee Roasters really just goes to show that profit comes before consumer relationships. While the goal of any business is to make a profit, GMCR has really failed miserably in their response by allowing a rogue affiliate to continue to market their products and drives home:
Profit is King – The Consumer be Damned
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4 Responses to “Lies, Deception and a Merchants Response to Unethical Affiliate Behavior”
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[...] affiliate basically was offering a rebate if a consumer made a purchase through Green Mountain Coffee Rosters through their site. However in her original design it did not say that the order had to be [...]
[...] Green Mountain Coffee Roasters has allowed a rogue affiliate to tarnish their good name and instead of removing the affiliate from their online marketing program they are apologizing to the affiliate for not being more clear in their terms. [...]
This is in a way a double edged sword… First of all Green Mountain should have been more clear on the rules to the affiliate, second of all the affiliate should have cleared any rebate promise offer through Green Mountain to begin with before making such a promise.
I see both parties at fault here and the right thing to do at this point is for the affiliate to make good on her promise to the consumers as well as Green Mountain to change the wording of the rules and regulations immediately so that this does not happen again in the future.
Mud slinging back and forth on sites like rip off report solves nothing, it should not ever have to get to the point of a consumer having to use such sites to solve an issue, issues should be immediately attended to on the company level.
Just my 2 cents worth.
I like this. Good job.