Has anyone had this happen? I had a customer place an order, and I received the self-referral commission. She then canceled because she needed to change something with it and immediately re-ordered. Now the sales show up as “third party” and I lost $40 in self referrals. Something about this seems very wrong and unfair. I’ve reached out to customer service to see if they can re-attribute the referral to me, but, honestly, I’m not sure if I should get my hopes up.
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I just realized that this is the wrong forum to post this in. Moving to ambassador discussion.
This isn’t new to the ambassador program- it used to do it all the time with the old referral program as well. It seems to happen less often now with the new program and better cookie tracking, but it still isn’t perfect.
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Ahhh gotcha. I don’t remember it happening before, but honestly, I probably didn’t pay attention. Do you know if Zazzle ever changed it back to a “self referral” for people or is it just the way it is?
I had this happen personally years ago when an order for leggings was sent in the wrong size than was ordered. Upon return and reordering, the self referral was lost to a “third party”/Zazzle referral. A shame, yes, but it is what is, a timing issue without any discretion.
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Okay, bummer. $40.23 gone because customer changed something.
Did you ever try to reach out to Zazzle about it?
No, I did not bother. It seemed a lost cause before I even tried. It was a gift of leggings for a niece and she handled the return. I wish you luck. Your situation is not a timing issue. It seems to be an outright redirect of some sort.
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I see. Thank you : ) Scrolling back, I have had referrals stick before when someone canceled something and re-ordered, so I’m wondering if this one is a fluke. It’s like something happened in the 25 minutes where she cancelled and re-ordered. Maybe she clicked on her order email and Zazzle took that as their own referral? Hmmm. Well hopefully they’ll get back to me. I guess if it’s lost, it’s lost. I suppose I should stop focusing on it and move on. It just really seems unfair in that time span.
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It feels unfair because it is unfair.
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I feel like a kid crying “not fair” but man, those self referrals are hard to get.
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It’s not childish to seek proper credit and payment for your work.
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So I received an answer about referrals and how there are many reasons, such as the customer logging in through a different device or clicking someone else’s link in between her first order and reorder, etc and that it would be unethical to change the referral back to me or something. So I guess that’s that. Days later, I would have understood another link click. 25 minutes later, not so much.
I’m not sure if they will look into it further, but I suppose if she originally ordered on her phone and then used her computer to re-order, then the system didn’t track it. I have to assume that’s probably what happened in this case. I have had referrals stick after a cancelation/reorder before. It just must be a one off.
It still doesn’t make sense if a cookie or whatever is linked to someone’s account, as opposed to be dependent on what device is used or any other excuse so as not to pay out a well deserved self-referral. Has that changed?
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Hmmm. I’m not sure. I always thought it was device related.
I’m pretty sure what they sent me in response was a canned answer about how referrals work, so I still have a tiny bit of hope that they’ll reverse it if someone looks into it. A teeny tiny glimmer of hope lol!
I don’t buy that explanation for one second. According to Zazzle, a referral link is supposed to stay in place for 14 days. Keep going after the money that you rightfully earned. No “oh, well’s.”
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But if she ordered from her phone and then re-ordered from her computer, she wouldn’t have the cookie on her computer, right? I have no clue. That’s the only thing that makes sense to me, though.
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but dont you wonder who that 15% referral went to? do you really think there was a chance that somehow miraculously .. in those moments, a third party seller swooped in and made the second sale? lol imho cookies should be sale prominent, not device prominent .. Id still love to know who gets that 15%referral $$ wink wink
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Ha! Well I mean if my self referral was like $40, then the total was somewhere around $80, so that would have been a lot of work and guessing for someone to go after the 15% of $12. Idk. I’m pretty sure Z got the referral. They advertise everywhere, though. Google, youtube, tv ads, etc. Plus they do retargeting emails and ads and all of that. Trust me when I say, having your own website and keeping up with all of this and the crazy high ad spend (plus customer service, lost packages, updating tracking numbers, customer changes to orders, addresses, I could go on), well, I know it sucks that they lowered the royalty rates, but after doing it on my own, I no longer am too upset with them for dropping royalties. I think a 50% drop was too much, though. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not glorifying the change. I’m just saying I kind of get it because they want to stay relevant and it is sooooo expensive to advertise. I do wonder if they wouldn’t have upped their game in marketing, would they have slowly faded away and then none of us would be able to sell here? There’s my long winded thoughts for a Friday lol! : )
I guess I went way off topic there. Definitely not happy about the self referral loss, but so it goes.
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As a side note, it would be helpful if they would just put “z-marketing” instead of “thirt party” in there if they took the referral for their own marketing. Etsy let’s you know when they take their google ads percentage if someone clicks on a Google ad they paid for (which you’re forced into over there). I think it would be nice to see a bit more transparency with this.
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