I'm As Mad As Hell, And I'm Not Going To Take This Anymore!

[Evil Chris]

Well here's my take.

Pre-checked is ok if it's not hidden from view, and I know there is a lot of that going on now.
Toby, if you're going to ban all programs that have pre-checked cross sales on their join forms, you're going to run out of people to promote in short order. Times are not just tough for affiliates, they are tough and competitive for program owners as well. I don't agree with any sort of shady business practices within the adult industry, but pre-checked cross sales in the buyer's face is ok in my opinion.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Evil Chris

Toby, if you're going to ban all programs that have pre-checked cross sales on their join forms, you're going to run out of people to promote in short order.

I'm not banning all sponsors with pre-checks, just those sponsors that have them placed below the submit button.

[Greenguy]

Toby - be honest Did you know that, when posting:
You have the option to not show your sig?
You can turn off smileys?
You can attach a file?
You can rate a thread?
You can choose to subscribe to a thread?

All these "Additional Options" are located below the "Submit Reply" button when you reply to a thread

[Useless]

I don't really have much to offer here except that I am in agreement with Toby. Having the pre-checks below the submit button and/or below the fold is deceptive. The entire purpose of asterisks and fine print is for the purpose of deception, just like their placement on the page AND the fact that they are PRE-CHECKED in the first place. There's plenty of room for the true costs to be right there with the pre-checks and there's plenty of space for additional offers at the top of the form instead of below the submit button.

Professional marketers study advertising statistics. They know that HUGE amounts of surfers do not scroll below the fold for further information (only 10% did earlier in this decade) or read fine print. Sure, we webmasters realize how dangerous it is to place trust in sponsor programs, but a horny surfer doesn't know what we know, nor is he or she in their correct state of mind, at least not if we did our job correctly. Is it the surfers fault for being lazy or ignorant? Perhaps, but that doesn't make it ethical for a program to take advantage of that ignorance.

Ok, I have to go to my telemarketing job now and see if I can sell some supplemental life insurance to senior citizens who aren't eligible for the benefits, but at least they can afford it.

[Toby]

Originally Posted by Greenie

Toby - be honest Did you know that, when posting:
You have the option to not show your sig?
You can turn off smileys?
You can attach a file?
You can rate a thread?
You can choose to subscribe to a thread?

All these "Additional Options" are located below the "Submit Reply" button when you reply to a thread

But there's no money being taken from my credit card if I fail to notice.

[faxxaff]

Originally Posted by Toby

I'm not banning all sponsors with pre-checks, just those sponsors that have them placed below the submit button.

I think that is appropriate. Programs that post pre-checked boxes under the join/purchase button are trying to hide this from the surfer or at least they hope they will not notice.

A few years back Ibill and a few AVS had this practice of doing the same thing. If I recall correctly they made the text with the pre-checks far smaller to make sure no one would have a chance of reading them.

It's certainly a very questionable way of making money imho. I would never promote a sponsor if I knew they were playing such tricky games.