I was checking out this offer and out of curiousity decided to click on the 'random' referral link for "Velocity Platinum Card" and to my surprise was given the referral link to a completely different card which would mean I would not have got my 100,000 bonus points. This is a serious issue and needs to addressed. It took me 5 random clicks before I actually got a referral link for the correct card.
Fake/Misleading AmEx Referral Links by Members
[Deactivated] on 18/05/2017 - 22:54
Comments
I just tried it again and got 3 dead links, 2 correct cards and 1 "The American Express® Platinum Edge Credit Card"
I've never used this random referral link thing before, but I would've thought that "random" meant just that.
If you were after the deal, why not click on "Go to deal"?
Random means random for that specific card you clicked "random" for. "Go to deal" won't give me a ref link as it's against OzBargain's rules.
I now understand the function now. Cheers for that!
Yes, I found this the other day. I opened a TWAM, and was told that the links are unaudited.
It's pretty much a case of buyer beware. Make sure if you click a link that it's the card you're expecting.
Maybe admin could put a warning on the referral link for AMEX so people are less likely to get caught out?
We are aware of the issue but unfortunately it's not something easily solved. The two big issues seem to be people putting the incorrect format and people putting the wrong card in there. There isn't anything in the URLs to detect which card is being used. We will look for solutions.
I'm not a programmer but could you use a bot/loop thing to run through all the links and then check on the page for a specific phrase eg "The American Express Velocity Platinum Card". So if it's the wrong card it won't show up and if it's a dead link it also won't show up. Probably a bit too much manual input on your end to do it for each card though :/
To audit this particular case — yes. However we are also working on some more generic function to make sure referral data are entered correctly for hundreds of vendors we are supporting at the moment.
Thank you for addressing this. Would it be viable to send out a sitewide message stating this is not acceptable, then having random checks every now and then of random links and if the link is misleading, the owner can get a warning and then a perm ban for that referral link the 2nd time?
hey, so far as I understand the referral wiki page has been taken down… is this correct, or is there a new one? is there any way of now sharing my link on Ozbargain? Thanks
I just tried it and it went straight to the Velocity Platinum Card. Did it twice. Seems to work except once when it looked like a dead link.