Hotels Combined review: affiliate fraud 38

I was a Hotels Combined Affiliate since May and wanted to give an honest Hotels Combined Affiliate Program Review. I have been a travel agent for many years and did a tremendous amount of research on them and found that lots of people on forums were calling it the "Hotels Combined Scam". In fact, I didn't find many positive reviews at all other than generic ones that were similar to what I thought at first when joining - which was: "This is great! I made it to my first threshold and got paid with no problem. I think I'm going to like the pay per lead aspect of this program."

Needless to say I was super excited to be a part of the Hotels Combined Affiliates Team. Unfortunately, this was not the long term positive outcome I had hoped for.

Let me explain. I have a highly targeted niche hotel site and sent Hotels Combined extremely targeted leads. It was a new site and it took about 70 days for it to rise to #2 on Google. Finally I was just beginning to reap the benefits of the organic traffic I had targeted. My mistake was that I had "assumed" by signing on as an Affiliate with Hotels Combined that the revenue earned would be at the very least just a few cents when no bookings occurred and the more bookings your leads generated - the more pay per lead I would earn. It is a "Pay per Lead" program, right? What a bummer that this is not the way they work even though their marketing strategy allows for you to think it. My bad.

My misconception: When a certain amount of time goes by that your leads don’t generate a booking they set your earnings to $0 per lead. The unethical part of it is they do this just before you reach your threshold so you end up not getting paid for all the time spent generating those leads. My experience was that just before I reached my 2nd threshold for payment they stopped paying me for the leads due to "not enough bookings". Another frustration is the stats page shows you no booking conversion percentage to keep track of. So there is nothing prompting you if in fact your booking conversion is low. They gave no warning with the exception of an email stating that my pay per lead earnings are now being set to $0 due to the leads not booking hotel stays. "Wait a minute", I thought. Wasn't this supposed to be a "Pay per Lead" type of affiliate program? I mean, that was what drew me and so many others to the program, right? Man, did I feel duped.

Trust me, I understand that conversion is important because I've worked as a travel agent for the past 10 years. I would have even understood them allowing me to at least reach my threshold and then cutting it off due to no sales but $20 shy of reaching my threshold? After months of working to target every single hotel on my website to generate leads for the Hotels Combined Affiliate Program? Boy, I could kick myself. Read the fine print, my friends.

My Hotels Combined Affiliate Review is pretty simple. If you are looking for a long term Pay per Lead relationship with the Affiliate Program Hotels Combined has to offer, they are not the ones to go with unless you truly have thousands of targeted visitors because we all know travel sales is a numbers game. You have to actually have the numbers in order to get the bookings and at the end of the day Hotels Combined only wants to pay you for leads IF those leads turn into actual bookings. So, disappointingly, this is not the Pay per Lead program so many think it is and that they advertise for you to "think" you are signing up with.

My advice to the Hotels Combined Affiliate Program? I sincerely understand your need for conversion but Pay per Lead is Pay per Lead and Pay for Bookings is simply... Pay for Bookings. You know deep down that people like myself are drawn to your Affiliate Program thinking it's Pay per Lead, no matter the fine print. Otherwise, you would show booking conversion stats so your partners would know from the beginning that is truly what you are willing to pay them for. Suggestion: You should change your fine print to big print so that suckers like me would read: "The Hotels Combined Affiliate Program will only pay you for leads up until a certain point. If your leads do not turn into bookings then you will not be able to cash out. We do thank you for your efforts in bringing those leads to us, though.”

Lastly: “Kudos to a GREAT strategy on that fine print, though.” Although unethical, the affiliates that are scammed into it can actually advertise for the company for a few months. When they realize they will not get paid for every lead brought to the table the affiliates will naturally quit. What happens to all those leads, leads that may even come back to book within that 365 cookie? Well, you guessed it. A percentage of those leads will definitely come back because they now know Hotels Combined exists yet Hotels Combined won’t have to pay for the advertising because the affiliate that created that lead/booking is gone. I give them an A+ for their marketing efforts.

So there you have it: My review of the Hotels Combined Affiliate Program.

Same happend now to me, , , ,

"We are writing to let you know that there is an issue with the traffic referring from your account xxxx
Specifically, we noticed that the traffic and leads generated through your account do not seem to follow normal trends. ..."

Okay, better I remove all Links to HotelsCombined as soon as possible...

I think, you are right: better to stay away from Hotels Combined
Johannes

I've tried a number of hotel affiliate programs, including Hotelclub.com, booking.com and hotelscombined.com, and out of the three I find Hotelscombined definitely the most rewarding financially. Sure you don't get anywhere near as much as an actual pay per booking site like HotelClub, but I find I generate a much better booking/lead rate with Hotelscombined simply due to the the layout of their website, and the ability for people to be able to compare.
I am unsure of the actual threshold but I usually manage to hit the $1000+ mark each month with just one of my sites, generating the traffic mainly through on-page seo and integration of their forms into my websites and blog.
I have been with them now for a good 12 months or more and the earnings increase every month.
And the great thing is they payout the same day every month without fail. HotelClub I can be waiting months for the money I have earned until the customer has completed their stay at the hotel.
I've had no issues with HotelsCombined at all and find if you play their game right and generate real leads it can be quote prosperous.

yes they are here to rip people off i have spend so much money to get people to come to my site but they cancel my acct because out of 150 leads no one them converted
all the leads are legit i paid for advertising, people wont book because there prices are not cheapest one out there.
they just use people to market their products and once it comes to pay out, they simply close their accts
stay AWAY FROM THEM, and dont waste you time and money

It was happened today to me too, I got this email:
Unfortunately, during our last review we identified an issue with the traffic originating from your account. Specifically, we analysed over 220 leads tracked through your account so far and found that none of your leads converted into any bookings for our suppliers.
But it is an Affiliate Program Pay per Lead and not pay per booking.
This is a big affiliate Fraud !
My webpage ihotelsbargain.com

If this happens to me, I will start a class action lawsuit. I am good friends with the owners of www.topclassactions.com and many of their partners are always eager looking for a company putting people in this position. Now I have not had a negative experience with them. My third day I made over $33. My first two days were a success to. However i invested a lot into building a website and advertising for my website. We will see how it goes. If it is truly unfair, I will return here and point you to a online claim form for a class action.

Alan Craker
Seo of www.needhotelroom.com

Hello Alan Craker
to me this was happened two times on one page and 2 times on another website which I own. At least I try again with HC, because I could find another one which offer PPL Affiliate.
The explanation of HC is more as strange and the last advice from them to me I should cancel all my social networks, because these leads are not in a high value. Since then I did it my traffic go down extrem, still I have some lead and "earn more" but still under 100 USD, so I will see. For me its not to understand if they write Lead must target in bookings, so it mean my own target is to buy a mercedes S600, but if I can fulfill my target is another question!
If you make a online claim form with class suit I follow you.

Hi,

I started 2 websites about a month ago and one of them was already on page 2 for its main keyword etc.

Stated to generate some daily inome - one day it hit $14 for one site and with it being only 3 weeks old i thought i maybe struck GOLD here right? just build 50 more sites like this one targeting other travel locations with highly searched keywords with low to medium competition and Im home free for life right? I was already thinking about the money and extrapolating this thing 5-6 months from now knowing I could crank out at least one site per day . . . .

(stop the music)

Yesterday i try to login to my account and i cant even login - i check my email and sure enough i have the exact same letter as everyone here has received. My earnings were at about $85 last i checked when i could login.

Is there anything I can do here? or is it one of those things to just move on and chalk it up to experience?

Yes Me Too!
They refused to pay me when I was just under the minimum payout and told me that none of my leads had generated any sales!

However I can confirm this statement to be a blatant lie, as a family member made a purchase on my website from a different IP Address. I contacted them about this and they just deactivated my account so I could not log in!

So their excuse for not paying you is because you have had no sales (ON A PPC PROGRAM)
Truth= THEY DONT PAY YOU AT ALL!

All they are doing is using innocent people to send traffic to their website, its disgusting! I have reported them and gave bad reviews where ever possible and will continue to do so!

SCAM-Hotelscombined.com-SCAM

I have worked pretty hard to get a very good ratio/leads/booking for the last 3 month, however, it seems that now Hotels Combined have changed the way they scam people by just not counting leads/booking at all. I generate about 3/5 leads/bookings per day and for the last 10 days, I only received commissions for 2.

Stay away from hotels combined as an affiliate but also as a customer, how can you trust a site that get money on scamming people for they hard work

Last april, we went live with our online destination guide for one of the famous mediterranean islands. although we explained to hotelscombined that our project is beta version, after only 2 months and seeing that still we had driven [protected] new visitors, they asked us to make our conversion better (more bookings against leads) or they would susspend our account. we explained them many times that this has to do with their product as well (apart from the fact that our web site was only developed to its 25% when went live - today is 40%), which was not competitive at all, wrong - old pictures of hotels - wrong categories - wrong areas - broken links - luck of availability and of course not competitive rates (if you consider that the destination we promote is a tour operating mainly destination). hence, even if we spent money more than 1000 euro on fb etc within 3 months, to advertise our landing page with the them the result was only 224 usd - which today they refuse in written to pay, by saying that they did not make money as well. on the between us contract, its not stated that the earnings will be paid according to hc decision or there is a min um number of bookings, especially for a start up small web site and when their product there is missleading the guests and we tried a lot to get correct pictures / descriptions etc last the way they calculate the earning is not clear. you can make 12 usd with 3 leads or 2 usd with 40 leads! the company is at least dissapointing and we have started a campaign to protect the rights of the affiliates etc we have all the between us communication in written.in addition, we have to mention, that they strongly refuse the private brand, as they support that this way (showing their brand) is much better.in fact affiliates pay money to advertise their brand.in the past (2-3 years ago) they were pleasing for affiliates. now that because of the affiliates making money they refuse to pay the earnings, when we, were clear from the beginning and when just after 2 months we had started, they begun to thread us that they will close our account if we do not imporve our conversion. we will notify the media, company review sites and of course the bbb authorities in eu, usa and australia providing all the proofs we have in hand. we have to protect future companies and people's hopes and money.

Too all hotels combined affiliates... warning! any hotels combined affiliate review that you have read about them not ever paying is true! beware: hotelscombined is one of the biggest aussie scam artist cons of century 21... they are anti-humanity for sure! hotels combined steals logos and photos from others, they steal traffic from all hotelscombined affiliates (then block them and keep their pay but keep their links open & alive & ignore you 100%), they use anti-human robots on forums to comments that they are not bad, and so on! hotelscombined cannot be trusted... period! they have even been reported to the better business bureau & all ripoff sites.

Hi,
Just wanted to clarify a couple of points related to our affiliate program.

While we run a pay-per-lead affiliate program, earnings per lead are closely connected with the quality of your visitors and the conversions of visitors to bookings for our compared suppliers. When your traffic generates leads, but no bookings, we may choose to discontinue the partnership, as your account has not generated any revenue for HotelsCombined. This is clearly stated in our Affiliate Agreement Clause 11 and Affiliate FAQs.

Here's the link http://www.hotelscombined.com/Affiliate/AffiliateAgreement.aspx to a copy of the Affiliate Agreement for your reference.

Feel free to email directly to july@hotelscombined.com if you have any question or would like to discuss anything specific to your account. I'd be happy to review and assist further.

Thank you
July
July Kaung - Affiliate Support
HotelsCombined.com

Hi,
Just wanted to clarify a couple of points related to our affiliate program.
While we run a pay-per-lead affiliate program, earnings per lead are closely connected with the quality of your visitors and the conversions of visitors to bookings for our compared suppliers. When your traffic generates leads, but no bookings, we may choose to discontinue the partnership, as your account has not generated any revenue for HotelsCombined. This is clearly stated in our Affiliate Agreement Clause 11 and Affiliate FAQs.

Here's the link http://www.hotelscombined.com/Affiliate/AffiliateAgreement.aspx to a copy of the Affiliate Agreement for your reference.

Feel free to email directly to july@hotelscombined.com if you have any question or would like to discuss anything specific to your account. I'd be happy to review and assist further.

Thank you
July
July Kaung - Affiliate Support
HotelsCombined.com

Hotelcombined copycats successful television campaigns such as bookingcom and tripadvisor of the usa instead of creating their own ads. they mimic other high-end logos too, such as the famous disney's movie, monster's inc. worst of all, hotelscombined literally scams all hotelscombined affiliates by unsuspectingly closing their accounts, blocking emails, and then refuse to pay any of their affiliates. they do this to achieve free website traffic to themselves, so they are scam artists in disguise! this australian company wants to gain first name recognition among professionals in the american travel tech sector, but americans now say keep away, you are 100% fraud!

HotelsCombined is run by a Russian and a Polish owner. I have nothing to say much.

I've been working hard to generate leads for HC for 2 months. I know from feedback on my website that 3 have converted to bookings (not a lot but for a small blog its ok).
My earnings have passed the threshold for payment but today I received an email saying my account was suspended as I'd only had one conversion. Strange that this happens only a couple of weeks before the proposed payment date? Obviously I've removed all links from my blog www.lockeysonholiday.weebly.com and will stick with the booking.com affiliate program. I might not get rich from this but I will be paid for the bookings I generate and offer my readers a link to the places I write about if they want to book up.

Shame on Hotels Combined.

I moved from venere.com to HC because I was thinking that my revenue there was too much low (around 300-400$/month). Well, it was the most stupid mistake in all my life! In 6 months I have earned just 0.00$, and any time that I was over 100$ my accounts were terminated without any reason (?)!
Okay, let's rename this site as the "Mother of al the frauds", and change its description with a "Great ways to make rich other people with your job!"

Hello everyone!
To this day I reall thoud that all reviews about hotelscombined.com are owerreacting.
I spend a lot of money and my time for advertising my website!
Finaly a get some resolts from advertising, and I was really happy!
But know when I reached 290$ I recieved their mail that my account is permanetly terminated, becouse they find qualtiy issiuses with my traffic, and none of my leads generated booking.
So how have my traffic quality issiues, I get paid for adsense ads, so traffic is quality!
No booking made? well I have website online for only 3 months, (I think their coockie lasts 365 day), how can they see in the future if someone will book in that time!
And for last, they dont even reply to many of my mails!

So hotelscombined.com is deffinetly a big scam for affiliates!

Avoid them in a big circle!

If I spend so much money to advertise them, believe me I will spend twice as much to give them even much worst reputatation!

Same thing happened to me - they closed down my account just before a payout of nearly $400 was owed me. They said that, while my leads did convert to bookings, some were cancelled and they were "looking in to it". Well, 2 months have now passed and they are ignoring my emails. Looks like I fell victim to their scam as have so many!

Can anyone out there offer me some advice. My Daughter booked a hotel in Banff Canada through Hotels Combined anad on arriving at hotel was informed that her booking had been cancelled un known to her. She has not been refunded her money $3000 Aus Dollars. All they told her was the third party they used for booking has gone out of business, but surely Hotels Combined should accept some responsibility for this, where does she go rom here. None of our family or friends will use Hotels Combined after this.

I have reviewed all, and yes this happened to me also. My earnings were set to a high threshold because I had a collection of websites that I marketed heavily just for this main reason which was to make money but not using blackhat or non organic traffic. I even had business cards developed and visited many travel, boating, sporting shows to funnel traffic through my website to HC. At one month my sites and hotels combined had a whopping 65, 000 visitors and my commissions were $3000 for the first month and I know that will increase. But of course before the payment date, I was shut down.
Now I have a message for HC. Some of us here put a lot of effort and money into sending traffic your way and after working so hard and without consideration of us losing money to help you, you do not care about what we are doing and yes you shut us down when cookies remain active for returning visitors. I HAVE A QUESTION FOR YOU HC: Without the help you are getting from us affiliates and with you driving traffic yourself to your own site, do you measure your own conversion rate for all of the links you have to your default site? Are you not doing what we do also? So why the unethical approach? I would suggest that from every 250, 000 visitors to HC either through our links or your own, you ma make 1 or 2 sales. But is it our fault or the product?
I have a message for your PR team HC. do you not think that all of this bad publicity that you have been given is the reason for your sad sales? yes you offer same product as everyone, but if you hunt around you will find that reviews of others are far better than yours. I got this exert from your FAQ which states:
2.2
Will I get paid for visitors or bookings?
You get paid per leads, not visitors or bookings. A lead is a click off to one of the hotel booking supplier websites that we compare. Your commission per lead depends on a number of important factors, but primarily the quality of your traffic and the conversions of your users to bookings.

My rebuttal to this is without positing your expectations of a conversions, how are we to know? How are we to tailor our program so it suits you. I suggest that will never happen and am sure that regardless of what your legal bindings say, you will lose in the end. There are a lot of smart lawyers out there and your own FAQ clearly states: "You get paid per leads, not visitors or bookings".

The other part states: "Your commission per lead depends on a number of important factors, but primarily the quality of your traffic and the conversions of your users to bookings.". For me and most it is not a question of the quality of the traffic. Is quality now not of an organic nature anymore but HC has now coined quality as $$$. Anyway I decided to give it another go and have developed a system that is unquestionable the best for getting and retaining HC traffic. It is posted on my website and you can get it for free. http://www.sunleafvacations.com Yes I out it there instead of another site, because it is relevant and the system can be viewed working. Thanks all I will report more as I find, but sure I will be shut down regardless of their so called conversions.

It still amazes me that people are still using Hotels Combined affiliate program. For more than 3 years, they have been scamming affiliates and yet more people are signing up. The same thing that has been happening to you guys has happened to a lot of people including yours truly and therefore it is better to just totally ignore them as they are nothing but 100% scam. How come they always wait for you to make commission and then they notice that your traffic has issues and then ban your account, refusing to pay.

In fact, I am amazed that these scammers have not been taken to court yet. Oh yeah, the small print! Affiliates are advised to stay away from Hotels Combined. They have been scamming affiliates for ages and they are not likely to stop anytime soon. If you must, endeavor to read their small print so as to clearly understand what you are walking into. Otherwise, believe you me, their fire will definitely burn you.

This worst Alaflet companies in the world, because it is a scam and tricks that they do not pay the amounts collected by Alavljet and claim that these profits are illegal they company scam they are crooks and I will have dozens of reports about them and will do my best that I work larger report on internet on this subject and I will post them on television, newspapers and magazines from the worst Alavljet companies primarily in the world

The same happened to me. As soon as reached my affiliate threshold my account got blocked.
I've been trying to get hold of them but no reply from anybody. Please stay away. I will be warning people on all social media platforms!
Affilaite scam artist!

All of these programs are very stupid and have nothing to do but only loss

When you are in partnership with them at the site does not allow you with something, and everything to their hands is forbidden is forbidden prohibited the marketing name foreclosed and other contraband What is the benefit that the partnership did not I have the right to use the name

As if to say you take this box of honey, but do not eat them

How do you prevent accept partnership and marketing partnership Hey what your view ?

I do not expect you understand the meaning of partnership

You are scam companies

When the partner brings the amount of money they shut down the account knowing that the partner doing paid advertising

I got a recommendation to use HotelsCombined.com.
However, I now see they are fraudsters.
But, all of you are writing: they are fraudsters.
Did you find an affiliate company which can be trusted, which is fair.

Hi there, I wish i would have read all these comments before building up a website around these f****ers. I cannot log in after requesting a payment. They seem to have closed my account after over 1 year of driving leads. Thinking of suing them. Anyone else interested?

They may not be a fraud but the way they run their bussiness is very fishy. Given what you read on the comments I’m sure you know what to expect.

Same happend now to me, I cant log to my account and they close it

"we are writing to let you know that there is an issue with the traffic referring from your account xxxx
Specifically, we noticed that the traffic and leads generated through your account do not seem to follow normal trends..."

Better to stay away from hotels combined

My website was : www.ajitkri.com

I'm affiliate to hotelcombined and same problem.

Have travel website with 3000 / 4000 visitors /day.

I win money the first months and after i think i'll be pay the next month because have 89 usd in Next payment round and 30 usd in Paid earnings.

But now it's more 4 month and have nothing, my Next payement round it's still at 89 usd, pay earning at 134.84 usd and unpaid earning at 104.42 usd because commission % fall without explanation.

And i try to contact them 3 times but have no responses.

I'm very hungry with them, wait long time but now i understand they won't pay me then now i change affiliate program.

I think we can make complain to European office for fraud, someone do it allready?, i take information about and will perhap make website for allow complaints to be gathered together.

I would give information here.

Am disappointed in Hotelscombined, i have paid to promote this site in my website after about 100 dollars, account cancel and can login into the account. Well, if this is a scam, i will stop any affiliate program in my website and try another way, but affiliate program is a waste of time as ever, they always use people to promote there product because they are poor and unable to promote there product themselves paying the cost so they make you understand that you can make a miserable coin they offers to most people, that have some time to wast. All the affiliate programs are all [censored].

They are scam [censored]. I made $700 with them and my conversion rate was above 8%. And they just sent me the email that my account is terminated. They are fraud and scam.

Had $300 in commission. Then account suspended. Then they say my traffic sources and quality is fine. But commission Went from $300 to $68. I told them to stuff their $68. I won’t risk my hotel leads on this scam.