[Rhea]

Go to Google. Do a search for "cafepress coupon."

I have a screen shot but nowhere to upload it to so I can display it.

[Billy Kay]

yep!

but remember, according to cp, e b a t e s is a good quality super affiliate.

no affiliates or shopkeepers were harmed in the making of the decision

[Gary-AvantLink]

i have noticed that they bid on a lot of merchant names/trademarks. even on merchants who don't work with them..

[Rhea]

I went to ebates' web site and CafePress is not listed as one of their "affiliates." So it looks like they're poaching the name.

[Vinny O'Hare]

Maybe they just started the bidding early for when they switch networks

[Jorge - SHOPiMAR]

Originally Posted by Gary-AvantLink

i have noticed that they bid on a lot of merchant names/trademarks. even on merchants who don't work with them..

You can say that again.

These were not there a few days ago.








ebates.com, please remove / stop all bidding on any SE and on any present and future JRami merchant partner domains or trademark names such as closeout.com, batteryfuel.com, gigagolf.com and others or variations thereof as we have not given you permission todo so and you are not an affiliate within any of our merchant programs.

Please remove these within the next 72hrs.

[Donuts]

they're broad match bidding on terms everywhere like that.

in batteryfuel's case, a few of their keywords are "batteryfuel coupons", "batteryfuel coupon", "batteryfuel discount", etc.

and lands on a page that has no mention of batteryfuel at all, in fact, it's a sign up page for ebates. how does the G quality scoring algo view all this? depends on what is being fed to G's adwords crawler...

and here's the kicker... this tm bidding isn't just for merchants who aren't in ebates (like batteryfuel), go search for "ebatts coupons".

merchants, whether members of ebates or not, have no value to ebates other than getting the moe money machine installed on the consumer's computer. once there, they don't promote you or bring anyone new, the monetize the install of their bho. it's about occupying as many desktops as possible, along the way, doing whatever it takes to be able to intercept, interfere with, monitor and parasitically sponge off of unknowing consumer surfing and spending habits.

CJ says ebates is a case study - a success story - of how to do it well.
http://www.cj.com/publishers/casestudy_ebates.html

CJ and eBates probably sit around and laugh about all the stupid merchants they've got fooled.

[Chuck Hamrick]

What can we do to combat this?? Can the trade mark have them banned??