Merchant Affiliate Network 4-1/2 months & $4000 later, I have nothing to show for my investment. Promises but no delivery. Kennesaw Georgia
Merchant Affiliate Network and BestPricesEmall made me an affiliate website owner. No commitment (only $$$$) or effort was required on my part. I don't even need a computer. They manage everything. Fortunately for me, I am a computer guru and am very nosey and require feedback when somehing is not working. After about 6 weeks the BACK OFFICE was changed and I couldn't get anything to work on the site set up by them. Only when I called did they inform me they were with another BACK OFFICE. Something about "the previous BACK OFFICE was not paying commissions correctly". I immediately called my credit card provider and cancelled the charge for the custom website 2 year maintenance contract. MAN called me and told me they had gotten a notice from my credit card company. They talked me into staying and I told her to reinstate it. I waited for the NEW BACK OFFICE to 'excite" me. Nothing, not even answer to e-mails. I believe now I had been cancelled when I removed payment of the Maintenance contract. Today, after a real unfriendly dressing down because I had cancelled my maintenance contract, I also cancelled the search engine optimization costs with my credit card company. Stay away from any company that requires you to spend money to sell for them. Don't know how this will end, but the person talked with said the would see me in court. I feel I was scammed.
Dorothy bridgers
Richmond, Virginia
U.S.A.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Merchant Affiliate Network
Kennesaw,Georgia,
U.S.A.
Rebuttal to Dorothy Bridgers Complaint Report# 291387
#2UPDATE Employee
Wed, November 26, 2008
The client purchased a website and advertising on 8/1/07. Her new business package went out on 8/16/07. On 8/24/07, we received her Business Profile and Signed Invoice that we asked her to mail back. This gives us what we need to set up her site and back office. See Exhibit A (Business Profile). On 8/30/07, we received a Chargeback notice that disputed the charge for her website in the amount of $499.00. See Exhibits B1 & B2 (2 pages of Chargeback info). The client also spoke with our Coaching Department on 8/30/07 saying that she did not want to dispute the charges now, when we were pulling the recording where she approved the charges. On 9/7/07 we responded to the Card Company with a letter, notes from our database, her signed invoice, and her fulfillment letter. See Exhibits C1a-b (2 page letter), C2 (database notes 8/1/07-8/30/07), C3 (signed invoice) & C4 (fulfillment letter). She went on vacation and said she would call in when she returned. She called on 9/11/08 and spoke with her Coach, discussing the setup and management of her business. On 9/13/07 we gave her free business cards to help jump start the business. We re-iterated her responsibility to call in once a week, keeping her on our radar as the business grows. We also told her we would try to keep her updated via email and she could communicate via email for updates if unable to chat via phone. We received another notice regarding this dispute on 9/26/07, requesting more information and declining our request for the reversal of the chargeback. See Exhibit D (Reversal Denial). On 10/2/08 we signed her up with a new back office, as we were moving away from a network tracking system that lost our transactions. We sent a letter with our notes on the account to the Card Company on 10/4/07. See Exhibit E1 (our rebuttal letter) & E2 (notes from database). On 10/4/07 we spoke with her and told her we constantly update her site and that she needs to call in once a week to check in. She agreed that she had not been calling in as we request our clients do. We emailed her reports from the back office she currently had. On 10/9/07, we received a Reversal Acceptance for the Chargeback. See Exhibit F. On 10/9/07, she called us and said she had received a cancellation from the back office network. We explained that we were transferring to a new back office, that we signed her up on 10/2/07, and that it would take about 1 to 1 weeks to set her up. She said she would be happy when her site was up and running again. Her site was current and just needed to update the site with new stores. The client and our Coach exchanged emails with changes to the website per the client's requests from October 30th through December 3rd. See Exhibit G (her email to coach requesting site changes). During this time, we received another dispute letter dated 11/27/07, so we discovered that the client was talking with us about her business at the same time she was disputing the charge of $499.00. We responded to the dispute on 12/6/07 with the appropriate backup. See Exhibits H1 (dispute notice), H2 (rebuttal letter), H3, H4, H5, H6, H7 & H8 (6 emails back and forth). We won a reversal on 1/8/08 of the $499.00. See Exhibit I (Reversal Acceptance). At this point, however, we requested only that the client send back her materials in order to process her refund. We were very tired of going back and forth, and the client seemed oblivious to her incongruous communications. Even after the acceptance by the credit card company of the 2nd reversal that gave us back $499.00 again, the client disputed the charge for the advertising in the amount of $3885.00. We received this notice on 1/31/08. See Exhibit J (Chargeback Notice). By this time, we did not want to continue contesting the charges over and over again, but give her a full refund upon the return of her business manual. She refused to return the materials, stating that she needed something in writing to that effect. We faxed her letter at her request on 2/11/08. See Exhibit K (letter to client). We notified the card company on 2/15/08 that we would not be contesting the charge. See Exhibit L1 (chargeback notice with note that we are not contesting), L2 (letter to card company following notice), L3 (card company's reversal denial per our request), L4 & L5 (page 1 & 2 of database notes 9/11/07-3/3/08). The client called in after receiving our letter requesting the return of materials so we could refund her, and she was not happy with the wording. This client just could not be satisfied, even with our promise of a full refund. We worked very hard to satisfy this client and meet her needs. She was working with the Coach at the same time she was going behind the scenes to dispute charges with the General Manager. In summary, this client has proven once again that no one can succeed with a one-step forward / two steps back marketing plan.
If you would like to request a pdf documents of the referenced Exhibits A-L5 (we are unable to post them here), please email us contact@merchantaffiliatenetwork.com.
Merchant Affiliate Network