[StartHere] Problem with Affiliate @ MBC

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• 

  Steve on 29/09/2008 - 18:50

  Hi,

  This news item will explain all:

  https://secure.moneybackco.com/news.php?threadid=99

  Cheers, Steve.

  • 

    POWERevolution on 30/09/2008 - 01:07

    Who's that "selfish MBC members"…shoot them! :(

    • 

      pauly on 30/09/2008 - 01:10

      Maybe a rep from buckscoop? :O

• 

  scotty on 30/09/2008 - 10:03

  Well. Knowing some at the Buckscoop team (great bunch of people), I am sure it was not them. In fact I think Steve would already have their account details, but for obvious privacy reason MBC won't be able to show them in public.

  After working with Steve @ MBC for the last year and half, I know it's not the first time that it happened. Those pay-per-lead campaigns ($50 once off when you sign up blah-blah) seem to be more like scammer-magnets to me, doing more harm than good (maybe it's just me who haven't claimed any of those).

  I'll rather drop those pay-per-lead moneybacks, and then tell clixGalore that we have fixed the issue once for all, and get them to reinstate MoneyBackCo's account. To me having those moneybacks from regular purchases is much more important.

  Edit — just want to be clear that it's not Buckscoop.

• 

  Steve on 03/10/2008 - 18:39

  We have finally had a response from clix, the fraudulent activity has included purchases made by cheque to addresses that are non-existent for large sums in order to receive the moneyback due. These have occurred five times to date, but fortunately has been caught by the merchants and therefore no financial loss has been suffered, but they have been so upset that they have contacted clix and at least one merchant has indicated to clix that they should terminate us from their network :-(

  We have investigated some of the transactions in question and have seen that the clicks originated from outside of Australia. We are therefore going to amend our T&C's to state that all accounts must be operated from within Australia and any found to be violating this will be terminated immediately. We will also prevent click throughs to merchants site from IP addresses outside of Australia and prevent signups from IP addresses outside Australia.

  I do understand that some people may travel and therefore it is possible they may login and click through from outside Australia some times, however due to the fact that we cannot identify when this is the case, we simply have to implement a blanket ban.

  Our future with clix looks dim to be honest, although they are still to make a final decision, they have the view that we are likely to continue to send fraudulent transactions in the future. We have informed the of the actions that we intend to take to prevent membership and operation of accounts from outside Australia this weekend but I fear that for them this action may be too late.

  Any other suggestions from you as to what else we can do to prevent this sort of activity in the future will be much appreciated and we hope you support our moves to protect our merchants and at the same time protect future offers for our members.

  Cheers, Steve.

  • 

    pauly on 03/10/2008 - 19:46

    Instead of banning IP addresses outside Australia from accessing MBC, why not just restrict this to the signup process? That way, current members can still gain access to MBC when they are overseas.

    Or if you really want to tighten security, verify all members when they signup. I.e., request for a physical address as part of your TOC, and send an activation code manually in the mail for them to fully activate their account and use your services. Although this may require more resources at your end, it will prevent future headaches on your part.

• 

  Steve on 05/10/2008 - 04:34

  Pauly, thanks for the suggestion, however the admin required is not something that our $10 membership could absorb and increasing the annual membership was not something we wanted to do really.

  We have now completed the modifications to the MBC website.

  We may additionally require that payouts are only made to Australian bank accounts, in this way it ensures that members are Australian residents, or at least they have been at some stage. At this time we'd like to keep the flexibility of offering both PayPal and Bank payments, however, depending on the success or otherwise of the changes we've now implemented we may need to take this action in the future.

  Hopefully the vast majority of members won't notice any changes and it will deter those who try to abuse MBC.

  Cheers, Steve.

  • 

    pauly on 05/10/2008 - 04:58

    Is there a functionality in PayPal where you can only accept Australian verified PayPal accounts? I.e. is there a way to distinguish them?

    Additionally if you have the resources, you can always implement some sort of automated phone system (have a look at asterisks) where they need to pass through 2 stages of verification. 1) their caller ID must match an Australian land line number and 2) They have to enter some code generated on their member account. Although it's not completely fool proof, it make the lives of scammers much harder. :)

    • 

      Steve on 05/10/2008 - 20:21

      Good point, we can certainly tell whether a PayPal user is verified or not when we payout, so we can make it a condition of payment via PayPal that users have a verified PayPal account. Not sure how we can see if the account has been verified in Australia, although I doubt that scammers go to the trouble of verifying accounts regardless of the country they register in?

      Let me look into things further. Thanks for the idea!

      Cheers, Steve.

      • 

        POWERevolution on 05/10/2008 - 21:59

        Forget about Paypal, let just stick with payout to Australian Bank account only.

        • 

          brisnicki on 06/10/2008 - 04:32

          @POWERevolution: oh, I hope clix will appreciate the changes you have made steve, and let MBC back in.

          I love getting moneyback when shopping at their affiliates, but I don't spend enough to warrant my own account :~(

          I second the 'forget paypal' idea. You just open yourself up to scams using them. My husband's business occasionally gets fake orders from stolen Paypal accounts.

• 

  Steve on 07/10/2008 - 21:21

  +1

  We're back online with clix!

  Fortunately clixGalore has lifted our suspension in light of the investigations and work we've done to prevent fraudulent activity going forward. Happily no merchant will have suffered any financial loss through moneyback and the scammers didn't receive any cash either.

  I think we were a little naive in not expecting scammers to target us, we're now older and wiser as a result of the last couple of weeks.

  Things will continue to change going forward and we'll be implementing further security enhancements for your protection and will probably require members to register their bank account details in order to get payouts, as we discovered that one of the scammers had a verified PayPal account, not registered in Australia, but verified non the less, so this gives no guarantee. We will continue to filter traffic in the near term so you will not be able to make purchases through MBC from overseas, we may relax restrictions to include some other countries, outside Australia, but this depends on how things go from now on.

  We will have to start enforcing our terms and condition too, until now we have been able to give our members the benefit of the doubt when it comes to multiple transactions on various offers, but in the light of the last couple of weeks we won't allow these breaches to continue going forward, we do hope you understand, but as we've seen it only takes a very small number of members to vastly affect all of MBC and we simply can't risk that again.

  Thanks for your patience and support, and enjoy the great clix offers again!

  Cheers, Steve.

  • 

    bevisaurus on 07/10/2008 - 23:00

    Congrats! Great to hear the good news!

  • 

    cacbm on 07/10/2008 - 23:43

    Good on ya Steve! Good to hear it has a good result!

  • 

    scotty on 08/10/2008 - 05:51

    Well done Steve! Yes, the Internet is far from its academic days back in the 80's and early 90's, and I guess once you started running a business site, you'll realise how many "baddies" are out there…

    /me back to do more shopping :)

• 

  winewizard on 22/10/2008 - 01:14

  Hi all
  Can anybody tell me why the link between MBC and CHAOS.COM seems to be broken and am being redirected to another site telling me that the promotion has finished. Many thanks ..

  • 

    Steve on 23/10/2008 - 07:05

    Sorry about that, we were running with an out of date link. It's back up now and up to 9% moneyback.

    Cheers, Steve.

• 

  [Deactivated] on 28/10/2008 - 15:16

  steve your website news is not updated - it says taht you are still under suspension - do you want to update

  Cheers

  Pete

• 

  winewizard on 30/10/2008 - 04:13

  Hi Steve,is there any chance you can fix the links as follows:::FEEDBACK@MBC
  MERCHANTS@MBC
  TRANSACTIONS@MBC
  SUPPORT@MBC
  It would be nice to be able to contact someone any one at MBC alternatively just drop me a line with a telephone number,then i can let my fingers do the walking ,instead of my one finger typing doing the talking.!!
  The reason for my frustration is i purchased from a MBC affiliate,earlier this month but could not use the link from MBC.

  • 

    Steve on 04/11/2008 - 08:57

    Hi,

    The links do work, don't they? We only provide email support I'm afraid. Drop us an email and we'll take it from there.

    Cheers, Steve.

• 

  POWERevolution on 01/12/2008 - 17:06

  Here's another problem when click on the link @ ShoppingSquare.com.au

  Unfortunately we cannot redirect you to the website requested. It is most likely that the Merchant is geographically targeting and filtering the customers / traffic received at their website. The source of this click has been filtered out. The program may also be inactive or have a low balance.

  • 

    scotty on 01/12/2008 - 18:47

    According to my source, they have low balance at clixGalore at the moment…

    • 

      Steve on 06/12/2008 - 21:03

      +1

      Yep that is the case. I am reluctant to remove them from MBC as we don't get any notification if the balance is restored and transactions can then continue…

      Cheers, Steve.

      • 

        POWERevolution on 18/12/2008 - 21:51

        In that case can you please remove SQ from MBC as it's showing 2% moneyback & it may confuse our members. You can put them back once they resolved their issue.

        Deals from ShoppingSquare.com.au
        MoneyBackCo 2.00% moneyback via MoneyBackCo

        • 

          Steve on 21/12/2008 - 01:12

          @POWERevolution: Removed…

          Steve.

• 

  winewizard on 13/12/2008 - 14:06

  Hi,just tried to click thru MBC to catchoftheday.com.au and it appears their affiation has fallen off the edge of the world.I also noticed it has dissappeared off my favourites list at MBC. Is there something that should have been mentioned in the NEWS section at MBC…
  Will look forward to advise.

• 

  Steve on 14/12/2008 - 21:47

  Hi,

  COTD has pulled all its affiliate programs, on two networks, hopefully they'll be back in the New Year?

  Cheers, Steve.

• 

  winewizard on 14/12/2008 - 22:15

  Thanks Steve for the update ,it is unfortunate that COTD has decided to pull the plug ,maybe they are feeling the financial pressure of the current world situation…mind you ,I think if they spent as much time negotiating better shipping and postal rates as they do on their product offerings ,it might help them thru these bad times.

• 

  Steve on 18/12/2008 - 20:14

  COTD is back! 4% moneyback CatchOfTheDay.com.au

  Cheers, Steve.

  • 

    POWERevolution on 18/12/2008 - 21:53

    Thanks but I won't shop with them.

• 

  winewizard on 18/12/2008 - 22:26

  Thanks again Steve for the update,what a shame these movers and shakers of e-commerce who spend so much time sprooking their sites can't learn….
  They want our custom and our business and yet they can't manage it when we give it to them.
  I particularly like the email from COTD yesterday to advise that they had just despatched an order to me.They even gave me a link so I could track it.
  ONly problem was …I received the goods almost 18 hours earlier.

• 

  tpp on 20/01/2009 - 13:26

  Just wondering is COTD removed from MBC site again? I can't seem to find it anywhere and it has disappear from my favourite list as well….

  • 

    Steve on 24/01/2009 - 06:14

    Yeah, sorry they've temporarily suspended their offer.

    We'll be introducing a better news feed soon where all this type of information will appear.

    Until then I will update COTD's status on here.

    Hope this helps…

    Cheers, Steve.