Brad

f.y.e. just e-mailed us terminating our affiliate account. again, no advance warning, and their ad has been up for weeks now.

http://forums.gottadeal.com/showthread.php?t=82464 scans are up, listing will be added soon

http://qvc.com/qic/qvcapp.aspx/view.2/app.detail/params.item.tsv!.cm_scid.PROM?cm_re=BARS-_-TSV-_-E03703&cm_sp=TSV-_-HP-_-DETAILS seems like a good price: http://gottadeal.pricegrabber.com/search_getprod.php/masterid=47829951/search=a826/sort_type=bottomline

a problem i see is that people are going to be out shopping on BF, not at home waiting for 2pm or 4pm to see the next batch of deals from wal-mart.

Right now for several stores you'll see little blue shopping cart icons on the far right side. Those items (at least as of the last time we checked) were available for ordering from the store's site at the BF price. blue shopping carts = order from the same store at BF price (or less) green dollar bills = order from another site at BF price (or less)

We are going to be doing something similar to that in the coming days. On the main BF site, you'll start to see little green dollar bill icons (http://blackfriday.gottadeal.com/images/cheaper.png) next to certain items. Those items will be available for ordering online (from a different, but GD-approved and trusted web site) for the BF price or less. As you said, keeping something like that updated is a lot of work, so I'm trying to catch up with all the other ads and deal with everything else before we start rolling out this feature.

oops, try this: http://forums.gottadeal.com/index.php?styleid=12

this was submitted anonymously through the site today:

Click here to exit the lite version and return to the main theme: http://forums.gottadeal.com/index.php?styleid=12

To go along with what some of you have said, I think part of it is that some retailers just like to have customers that are clueless. They want their customers to know virtually nothing about the products in the ads, to not read reviews ahead of time or compare different models, and to just take the store's word that the items in the ad are amazing deals. They don't want you to do your homework or to see if you can get a better price online somewhere else. They want to put the ad in front of you hours, instead of days, before you need to be in line.

It's also even more hypocritical that sites like Fatwallet and Slickdeals have had the ad posted for the same amount of time we have, and yet their affiliate status has not changed - all their affiliate links are working still. Looks like Target is playing favorites. Somehow what we did was wrong but other larger sites can get away with it because they bring more business to Target. E-mail [email protected] and ask her why we were terminated but the others weren't.

I never said the WM letter was a C&D. We did receive an actual C&D from OfficeMax today, and other sites have received them from Macy's and LNT.

Exactly. I'd repost them on the Wednesday of that week most likely, primarily just so people can print their shopping lists. By then the ad is basically out so they are not getting much free advertsing.

All these stores doing things now - we are 2 weeks away. It's not like this is mid-October. Your competitors' ads are printed and sitting in a warehouse somewhere by now. Sure would be nice if one of the huge, multi-million dollar deal sites like Fatwallet or Slickdeals would challenge one of these stores in court and maybe get an effective legal precedent set. Being a one-man operation I don't have the resources to do something like that this time of year. I had a bad feeling coming into this year that things were going to happen like this. And like Gurnee Al said, things are going to get worse. Don't be surprised if a bunch of stores send out legal letters well before their ads come out next year like WM did this year. The good news is GD is open year round and we don't need BF ads to find great deals - just look at our Online Hot Deals forum lately and see all the great Black Friday-worthy deals being posted.

They may have for all we know. They didn't demand the ad be taken down, so there is no real way of knowing who else they terminated. I wouldn't bother with a general customer service e-mail. The e-mail address I posted in the OP is from their main affiliate rep who I have been dealing with.

Let's not get carried away with giving them credit - the deadline was probably more because they sent the e-mail after business hours and couldn't know that it would be read before tomorrow anyway.

No, posting the ad was the only issue. The CNN story just let them know the ad was out. I would post the e-mail I received from them, but for legal reasons I'm not going to...

I don't expect Target to demand the ad be removed. They just terminated the affiliate relationship so that we cannot make any money from items purchased through the links on the site. Basically they were upset that their ad was leaked and so they took it out on us like a bully. I'm still debating whether I will just completely remove the ad as to give them no free advertising. Regardless, with any ad that I am forced to remove, I will back up the text list and the shopping list, and when the ad is re-posted, your shopping list items will be restored.

Wal-Mart - threatens legal action and affiliate account closure if ad is posted Target - terminates affiliate account with no warning after ad is posted OfficeMax - sends cease & desist order demanding ad be taken down Radio Shack - threatens to terminate affiliate account if ads are not removed F.Y.E - terminates affiliate account with no warning a couple weeks after ad is posted Linens-N-Things - sends cease & desist order demanding ad be taken down Big Lots - sends cease & desist order demanding ad be taken down Lowes - sends cease & desist to several other BF sites (not us, yet) Macy's - sends cease & desist to several other BF sites (not us, yet) hhgregg - sends ad to us directly, then demands it be taken down Definitely more of these incidents than in any previous year, and we've still got 2 weeks to go

FYI: Other sites have received C&Ds demanding that the LNT ad be taken down. We have not received one of these yet, but I'm giving you all a warning anyway...

Yep. They responded to my e-mail with a link to the CNN story and quoted some extremely vague clause from the affiliate terms which didn't specifically mention BF or anything about ads.

We received a C&D from OfficeMax's legal reps a short while ago who are demanding that the ad be taken down by tomorrow. Therefore I suggest you save the ad to your computer very soon. While the ad will be removed from the BF site, we will save the items that are currently on your shopping list, and once we can re-post the ad, the items will be restored to your shopping lists. This seems to be a disturbing trend this year...

While they have not threatened legal action (yet), Target today without warning cancelled GottaDeal's affiliate account. This, despite the fact that we have been an affiliate of Target since the site started almost 4 years ago and have posted their BF ad every year with no previous issues. This, also despite the fact that Target attempted to buy ad space from us directly this year on the Black Friday site. So they had no problems with what we did and wanted to use the traffic we receive to promote their business, but when we posted their ad, they got upset. Boo hoo. While this will have an adverse affect on the business-side of things, the ad will still remain posted until we are legally forced to do otherwise. And if you'd like to express your thoughts to Target about this action, you can contact Jillian Putnam, their Marketing Analyst for the Affiliate Program at [email protected]

We received a C&D from OfficeMax's legal reps a short while ago who are demanding that the ad be taken down by tomorrow. Therefore I suggest you save the ad to your computer very soon. While the ad will be removed from the BF site, we will save the items that are currently on your shopping list, and once we can re-post the ad, the items will be restored to your shopping lists. This seems to be a disturbing trend this year...

I sleep until 10am because I'm usually up until 2-3am. I'm basically on west coast time :) In past years, around 75% of the items were available online starting Thanksgiving Day. Some sold out quicker than others obviously.