CCBill inaccurate rebilling since November.

desslock · 02-28-2005, 12:45 PM

Last week I began asking around privately if folks were seeing anomolies in the Naked Sword stats. I hadn't been paying very close attention to them, and on a recent inspection I noticed that I had no rebills ever, post-iBill.

Dzinerbear had the same anomolies in his stats. We marshalled our evidence and brought it up to the NS staff, and sure enough there were tracking problems.

Holly was very responsive, and I want to thank her and the Naked Sword team for attending to it.

I have learned that this kind of stuff happens all the time. I had a voluble tracking issue with FalconBucks last Fall. It isn't really because the people running these programs are trying to be deceptive, or because they are inept.

The lesson I took home is that you need to simply need to keep an eye on your reports, and see if things make sense. Sometimes it is necessary to make a test purchase.

Here's one thing I have noticed, and I'm only pointing this out to be constructive. CCbill's program -- on the affiliate side -- is really complicated. They are not by any means the only ones. These reporting programs *really* have the look and feel like they were designed by entrenched computer programmers, Working in them is like canoeing through a complicated Visual Basic flowchart.

When I just want to see what my sales are on ccBill, I am presented with a screen that includes this impenetrable language:

___

CONVERSTIONS The Conversions report details the total number of signups for a specified time period, and the overall number of conversions that occurred for these signups.

TRANSACTIONS The Transactions report breaks down the transactions for your account. It reports the clicks per URL and the sales resulting from banner clicks.

___ Who speaks like this anyways?

I am reminded of when
Diane Keaton in Woody Allen's Love and Death exclaims: "I am not afraid of death...... I'm freightened...."

Yes of course. Interesting distinction. I don't mean to single out any one company. Epoch's stats reporting for affiliates looks like a complete afterthought. My point is that these kinds of tracking errors occur as a factor of the usability of the software.

Look the task of doing your personal income taxes. A complicated tax system works in an ideal world, but a simplified system would probably mean getting to the same place quicker, easier and with fewer snags.

Steve

**Huskyhunks** · 02-28-2005, 06:04 PM

Another eye opening thread for me. Thanks for posting your own personal experiences. Unfortunately, they all seem to be bad experiences. It almost seems like the processors want to provide so much information, the ability to track accurately is compromised.

I would rather have the money in my pocket than try to decipher complicated language or even micro statistics. You can break information down the the nth degree but really, why is that desirable if the money never gets to you ?

I use Verotel and have taken alot of heat for that but I've gotten paid on time, every time. The stats are easy to read, certainly not exhaustive, and seem to be very accurate.

Oh yeah, one more thing, what is NATS ? :goseek: