Ecommerce Sites, Credit Cards, and Affinity, Cross-Selling Scams

[mandy]

Upon receiving a monthly statement, my wife reviewed the card statement and noticed a charge for $9.00 from a company called WLI.ReservationRewards.com. I immediately recognized the charge as an after-marketing or cross-sell result from some purchase made by my wife. A quick search revealed what I expected. The on-line site my wife visited was eBags.com (which happens to be listed on the previous link.) Intriqued, did a little CSI work and uncovered the logic and process involved. The following is a bit technical, but if nothing else, skip it to the recommendations at the end.

WLI contacts on-line companies with affinity and cross-sell agreements. Basically, no one in their right mind would sign up for this crap (My previous company sold similar enhancements. They had a 98% profit margin.) So in order to get sales, WLI has to make agreements with companies who sell stuff you actually want. They will cut a deal with the company—after you complete your transaction, link to our site for a cross-sell opportunity and we will split any sales with you 50-50. To the legimate company, this is a hell of a deal. Free money even. All you have to do is add some code pages to your web site and in return you get 50% of the till. A lot of profit for no effort...

full article: http://12angrymen.wordpress.com/2007/11/...s-on-line/

related discussion of similar rewards programs - the last 2 posts in this thread:
http://community.tuliptools.com/index.ph...l#msg16214

[amy]

I opted out of offering this type of crap to my customers when I used MarketWorks because I think these reward programs use deceptive tactics to get signups.    I don't want to alienate my customers by tricking them into signing up for a program with a monthly fee that no one in their right mind would sign up for if wasn't offered as part of a trusted merchant's checkout process.