Is this shady or is this normal?
 

One affiliate program that I've been promoting changed over from iBill to CCBill without letting webmasters know. Therefore, the iBill links worked, but I assume any sales from those links wouldn't count. Is this something that happens from time to time and is to be expected, or is this a shady practice and something that I should bitch about?

In another case, I just happened to find that 3 web sites from a different program that I was promoting with Verotel links had moved over to an entirely different affiliate program altogether. The old program didn't notify the webmasters, nor did the new one. That seems pretty shady to me.

I wrote to both of these programs, complained and received no response whatsoever. (I went ahead and took the thumbnails and banners from these sites down.)

iBill to CCBill should have been expected. The others, that's a bit shady.

it was funny the first time but now it's just getting old

A lot of small niche sites that are struggling with billing do this. It's happened to me quite a few times. Change the biller, don't tell the affiliates that all his links are now broken or sending traffic for free.

Of course it's scummy, but sometimes I get the impression these site owners are just clueless and hapless; it's not that their motive is to rip off affiliates, they just don't much care that it happens as a side effect of their billing struggles.

I even had one program that lost its billing put up a huge notice on the former join page trying to encourage potential subscribers to send payment through the mail. Obviously there was no provision for compensating affiliates for such signups.

Thanks for your input. I guess I'll give 'em the benefit of the doubt ... but I won't promote their sites again.