[ecomcity]

As we have all seen the merchants at BeFree appear to have done miserably since the Holiday shopping period. The Trust they acquired several years ago when TigerDirect gutted and duck taped their reporting interface with 3 continous weeks of both IT departments finally yielded accurate reporting for that one merchant. There were bumps in this process, but the AM (Andy)resubmitted sales data till the books balanced. Now I'm afraid to even look at any merchant at BeFree,as I feel they can't even report click totals properly through all the layers of Data mining applications and multiple tracking cookies.

I took 3 merchants during the last week (Computer Geeks -TigerDirect -Collectables Today) and clicked on a variety of BF generated links place upon my site. My system is 100% free of parasites. I click 30 times each day to these merchants landing pages. Then watched the wild variances in reported clicks from BF.

Resulting BeFree reports:

ComputerGeeks- EcomCity -worlds most complete shopping community
From 01/21/2005 To 01/27/2005
Affiliate Site Transaction Day Transaction Date Impressions Click Throughs Click to Impression %
EcomCity -worlds most complete shopping community
Thursday 01/20/2005 4,172 563 13.49%
Friday 01/21/2005 5,140 495 9.63%
Saturday 01/22/2005 2,592 148 5.71%
Sunday 01/23/2005 3,672 25 .68%
Monday 01/24/2005 4,292 16 .37%
Tuesday 01/25/2005 4,542 33 .73%
Wednesday 01/26/2005 3,998 21 .53%
Thursday 01/27/2005 4,549 19 .42%
Subtotal 28,785 757 2.63%

___________________________

TigerDirect -EcomCity -worlds most complete shopping community
From 01/21/2005 To 01/27/2005
Affiliate Site Transaction Day Transaction Date Impressions Click Throughs Click to Impression %
EcomCity -worlds most complete shopping community
Thursday 01/20/2005 1,323 258 19.50%
Friday 01/21/2005 1,087 325 29.90%
Saturday 01/22/2005 531 87 16.38%
Sunday 01/23/2005 833 8 .96%
Monday 01/24/2005 1,083 8 .74%
Tuesday 01/25/2005 1,540 17 1.10%
Wednesday 01/26/2005 1,002 6 .60%
Thursday 01/27/2005 1,129 9 .80%
Subtotal 7,205 460 6.38%


____________

Collectables Today:
EcomCity -worlds most complete shopping community
From 01/21/2005 To 01/27/2005
Affiliate Site Transaction Day Transaction Date Impressions Click Throughs Click to Impression %
Thursday 01/20/2005 535 66 12.34%
Friday 01/21/2005 688 48 6.98%
Saturday 01/22/2005 592 16 2.70%
Sunday 01/23/2005 532 2 .38%
Monday 01/24/2005 825 3 .36%
Tuesday 01/25/2005 710 2 .28%
Wednesday 01/26/2005 549 3 .55%
Thursday 01/27/2005 567 2 .35%
Subtotal 4,463 76 1.70%


Not show was the click totals for 01/20 which Befree reported over 500% more clicks then their network generated, which alerted me to the problem and testing clicks. The next 2 days BF inflated click totals too. The startling part is not one of these 3 merchants accurately showed my 30 clicks per day which means many clicks never set lasting cookies that talk back to BeFree. Something destroys them from the time the shopper clicks right up to the point of sale.

What can cause this if not for the Spyware apps installed by the network and the merchants seeking data that has nothing to do with sales reporting? Is someone at BeFree targeting my affiliate ID#, knowing every click comes from a focused savvy shopper from showcase display links, and crediting the click/cookie to someone else? My hosting server stats show no downturn in daily traffic from natural SERP listings.

[ecomcity]

Bump!

[ecomcity]

Well the impressions and click totals are still way off at BeFree. I know Collectables Today has moved to the CJ platform from the BF platform. Automatically this means no sales will show up at BF during the transition as BF tracking cannot co-exist with other networks tracking cookies on certain shopping cart programs. I'm kicked out of TD without cause of any kind due to voicing my criticism of their BF faulty tracking and HITBox spyware use.

Now I see ComputerGeeks is joining the BF merchants who don't answer e-mails or attend to their program's creatives. Their click totals are bent out of shape for even the most obvious reasons.....no banners displaying and I suspect the text links aren't setting cookies either. Seems some Geek Nerd changed the banner image URLs without checking they'd display the original image link code URL. (Bet they didn't notice drop in clicks and impressions as they sure have no clue on running a computer tech website) They sure know how to scrap e-amil addresses but fail on things like how to make a product database with instock items...LOL. (Worthless for even a Froogle upload by the merchant)

Next is their refusal to verify their clone of the TigerDirect static landing page of revolving updated product specials even sets a tracking cookie....
http://service.bfast.com/bfast/click...fpage=geekmail is all over my site and 2 test purchases were delivered to my client with no reporting of sales to my account from this link.

None of these banner image links display ...but the landing pages show up when clicked.

http://www.computergeeks.com/affilia...BANmay01_1.gif

http://www.computergeeks.com/affilia...BANMay01_1.gif

http://www.computergeeks.com/affilia...BANmay01_1.gif

http://www.computergeeks.com/affilia...BTNmay01_2.gif

http://www.compgeeks.com/affiliates/...btnmay01_3.gif

plus all other banners displayed for the last year..... Watch them come forth in the typical lazy AM manner and belatedly announce they change the image path and could ALL affiliate redue their link coding rather then just re-establishing the missing URL directory and upload the missing banners. That would take all of 2 minutes!!!! BeFree must be the bonus network for ValueClick advertisiers seeking free traffic, a platform for running their BHO's and Super Affiliate "incent" programs.