3 Mobile Affiliate Programme Sucks Like A TurboCharged Dyson Hoover
It's been a while since I posted anything on this crazy blog, and this is mainly because I haven't had anything to moan about. However, thanks to 3 Mobile and their damn affiliate programme I am now wasting 20 minutes of my life to bitch about these BLOODY THIEVING BITCHES (ummm, am I allowed to say that? Ah well, too late.)
I've been working with 3 Mobile for the last 18 months or so, and if you are contemplating signing up on their affiliate programme here's why you shouldn't bother:
1) They have the worst customer approval rate in the industry. Ever.
In the mobile affiliate industry the average decline rate for customers is around 40-50% for (i.e 40-50% of all sales sent through to a merchant will be declined due to a customer not passing a credit check or whatever). From my own experience, 3 Mobile's decline rate is as high as 75-80%! How can this be possible??
If the likes of Carphone Warehouse, Phones4U and E2Save can approve half of all applications sent to them, why on earth can 3 Mobile only approve a quarter? What's so special about 3 Mobile? (Um, nothing - their network coverage is crap, and they tell their India-based customer service staff to introduce themselves with fake English names in an attempt to convince customers that the call centre they are ringing to moan about crap network coverage is located in England).
The only reason why 3 Mobile's decline rate is so high is because they are stealing from affiliates and not paying out for valid sales. Yes really.
2) They take upto 4 months to even validate any sales.
3 Mobile started using some kind of 'deduping' process which was introduced so that affiliates were correctly allocated a sale, ensuring that no other sales channel attributed to that particular transaction. Now this is all fine and well, and whilst the idea is sound (even though hardly anyone else has this system in place), why on earth does it take upto 4 MONTHS for 3 Mobile to dedupe transactions? With the tracking technology in place these days, it really doesn't take that long for a merchant to identify if the last cookie that was dropped was an affiliates or not.
And even when you've waited 4 months for them to bloody dedupe your sales, surprise surprise, a percentage of these sales will be classed as failed duplicates and you won't be credited for the sale. Even the ones that do manage to pass the deduplication process, 75-80% of these will then be declined anyway.
Was this deduping process introduced so that 3 Mobile had another excuse not to pay out valid commissions to affiliates?
Seems to me that its the affiliates that are being DUPED, not the transactions.
3. They do not track valid sales.
It's not just me that has a problem with 3 Mobile's affiliate programme. Those of you who visit the stuffy Affiliates4U forum will recognise that there is an existing thread about 3 Mobile and how crap they their programme is.
Some affiliates have actually bought handsets themselves from 3 Mobile's website (through their own affiliate link) and have noticed that these transactions are not even tracked and validated! If that's not proof that 3 Mobile's affiliate programme is dodgy and corrupt I dont know what is.
Here are some random quotes from other disgruntled 3 Mobile affiliates:
Top Banana -
"When on the in-house programme I had a lot of pending sales which were over 3 months old, when i asked for them to be processed, they were and all were declined, funny that. I dont trust their in-house programme at all."Norras -
"I'm getting over 98% of sales rejected (via Buy.at) and most are for Pay-as-you-go, therefore presumably no credit check to pass. It looks to me like 3 Mobile are simply stealing our commission."Affiliate Marketing -
"when i had my mobile site i actually had a person contact me so i know they bought a phone but funnily enough 3 havent paid out .. and it was a PAYG phone too, so im well aware that they do cherry pick what to pay."Moshin -
"I had about £3000+ in commissions pending accumulated since August for sales I delivered to 3 Mobile. I wrote a few emails and support tickets every other week and waited patiently to get this resolved. Now I just logged in to my account and I'm shocked to see someone has finally bothered to cheer me up by sending only £58 my way out of the £3000+ in pending, the rest has vanished. I wonder what happened to the rest of the balance?"Brucey Bonus - "
decided to use a cashback website when making a purchase from 3. The purchase was for a PAYG USB modem back in September. The cost was £50 and the cashback/commission due would have been £11. The sale has today been rejected. The product has been used everyday since its delivery. From day 1, I've been applying top-ups every month - so far £65 worth. This month, my top-up expired whilst I was at my parents for Christmas, so I'm waiting until I get back home to top-up. The rejection happened two days after the third top-up expired - coincidence?"Tan11 -
"when i had my mobile site i actually had a person contact me so i know they bought a phone but funnily enough 3 havent paid out .. and it was a PAYG phone too"
The thread in question is still ongoing and can be view here. Someone from 3 Mobile did get round to posting a response in an attempt to clear things up, but nothing was ever resolved.
Interestingly enough, that particular person Adam Knight, has now left 3 Mobile and now works for BuyAt. If you're reading this Adam, I would be grateful if you could spill the beans about 3 Mobile's affiliate programme.



















