A couple years back I joined Commission Junction to test out my affiliate marketing chops. Mostly I was interested in trying to generate a little side income. For a while, I ran a site that I did reviews of music that I enjoyed and tried selling concert tickets through StubHub. I didn’t rake in the money, but I did alright with it. Life basically took over and I didn’t put anymore effort into it. Lately, I’ve decided that I have enough traffic to this site to attempt to generate some income. If you’ve noticed, I’m displaying some Google Ads here and there across the site (hopefully not that annoying to you). So, I went back to CJ to log into my account. For a while, I couldn’t remember my password, so I filled out the forgot password form. This is what I got:
Error: The email address does not belong to an active Commission Junction user
At this point, I figured that they just deleted my account since I hadn’t been an active user for a long time. So I went to their signup form to create a new account with the same email address. This is what I get:
The email address you have entered is associated with an existing account. Please use another email address or log in to your existing account.
Now a little frustration is setting in. CJ is telling me that when I try to retrieve my password that an account does not exist for my email address. But when setting up a new account, it does. How can that be? At this point, I start trying every password that I use online. Getting lucky, I think I found out which password I had been using a Commission Junction. However, I couldn’t get my account to log in. This is the screen they show me:
Our records indicate that your account has been deactivated. To try again, please go back to the login page.
I’m baffled at this point. First, why can’t CJ get some consistent messaging going on in their system. Second, why would I try to login again if you just told me that my account was deactivated? How would trying again fix that?
Now it was time to contact their customer support through their help link for logging in. I tried to get a solution from them 3 times, but to no avail. This is the canned response they send me no matter what I type in their help form:
Your request for assistance cannot be accepted because your email address is not registered with an existing account.
Gaaaaaah! Really CJ? I have an account. Your system keeps telling me it’s not active. Then how can your email system tell me that my account doesn’t exist? Apparently Commission Junction just doesn’t care about small affiliates or to even have a system that actually gives you some useful information.
I suppose I could call them to try and have this resolved, but at this point I’m just not interested. I’ll set up a publisher with another affiliate system like ShareASale.
UPDATE: I just wanted to update that I wasn’t banned from Commission Junction for violating their terms of use or terms of service. I believe my account was just deactivated for lack of use.