I am hoping to help someone from the mistake I made. Karl from the Marketing Department of moneysupermarket.com contacted me for advertising in Nov. 2007. Karl stated they would like to have feature WII links on our computer games website. He also was interested in more shopping advertisements.
During our email correspondence Karl wrote that they had problems with PayPal and that could be used for the amount of money that was to be paid and asked if a bank transfer would be ok. I wrote and stated that that was the type of payment and I didn't feel comfortable with a bank transfer. He wrote back and stated. "We are a large company in the UK and well known over here. We don't use PayPal for tax reasons as it can be seen as tax evasion and we need to keep things above board." He also wanted to make sure that payment would be made and wanted me to reconsider. I then decide to bend my guidelines and accept the bank transfer.
Of course, bending my guidelines even once shouldn't have been done but it was before Christmas and I would have enjoyed having some extra cash. Once you bend the rules once, they will keep coming back for more rule bending. One of them was to put the advert link active so the company's account department could verify it and give my payment. The payment was for a year's worth of adverts. We agreed on the date 17th of Dec. 2008 that payment would be processed, this would be 3 days after I had the advertisements up. The agreement was also that if payment hadn't been in my bank by the following Monday
Needless to say, the payment was made and I didn't get any confirmation that it had been processed. I had emailed Karl, but didn't get an email back. I then emailed Karl on the Friday the 19th and wrote that I needed proof of the bank transfer and asked if it had been processed, and wrote that if it wasn't I would remove the links. Of course the payment wasn't processed and then a story was given of why it wasn't done and that it would be done that day the 19th and it should show up in my account on Monday. To me I was contacted and reassured that payment would be made because I wrote I would remove the links.
I wrote again on the Monday the 22nd that payment hadn't been received and the links were removed. This was of course after a week. So, some service had been given without payment. I emailed on the 24th, after Christmas and found out that Karl was on holiday and out of the office until the 7th of Jan.
I emailed again on the 8th, and stated that if I wasn't going to get paid for a year's worth of advert links that I wanted payment for the week. Having the adverts up on 3 sites the week before Christmas would give them a boost of holiday traffic of course. They got services and I got screwed! I was gullible and really was being nice and got stepped on by the "large company" Just because I have a small business doesn't mean it gives the larger business the right to take advantage of.
I contacted the account's dept by email twice and Karl 2 other times and didn't received an email back. I emailed Karl again this past Friday on the 16th and he finally emailed back.
Here is what he wrote:
"The payment was made on 24/12 but unfortunately this has since bounced. We do not usually have these problems with payment as I would not have suggested a bank transfer if I'd foreseen these problems as it
doesn't represent a benefit for either of us.
I doubt we can forge a good business relationship so I think it is best if we leave it at that,
Again my sincere apologies for any inconvenience caused and I wish you all the best for the future, "
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Yep, he just wanted to leave it like that. Of course he did. He accomplished free advertising. I emailed back and said no he can't leave it as such and I requested my payment for a week's worth of advertising again and said I would post a "complaint" and let all my SEO friends know, plus all the groups I am at that it would be a mistake to deal with his company. You know he emailed back and said he would work on something that would help me feel not cheated and would contact me on the Monday. Yep that was yesterday and no of course I didn't get the email.
During this month of awaiting payment I did some searching and found out that they didn't pay another person for advertising on her website.
http://www.nerdynomad.com/12/06/honesty-is-not-the-best-policy-when-it-comes-to-link-sales
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