Single mother with loans loses $4000 in commissions after company cancels orders

Affiliate marketing programs on social media have gone viral in recent times allowing creators to generate income by selling products. While the commissions seem lucrative, there may be added layers that creators don’t always know about. Such was the case with Anne (@anneccourtney on TikTok), who was left in tears after all the affiliate sales were canceled by the clothing brand PacSun. Anne lost about $4000 in commissions and had to go through a lot to get a response from the brand.

Wiped out 99% of her sales with no explanation

In a series of videos, the creator explained the fiasco that happened with the clothing brand. In her first video, she broke down into tears explaining how she had been promoting PacSun’s products as an affiliate to make some money on the side. Anne said that through three live promotions, she sold $22,000 worth of product and for a week she had been thinking she was going to make around $3600-3700 in commission. However, in a few days, everything fell apart for Anne as hundreds of people who had ordered through her reached out to her saying that their orders had been canceled by PacSun.

In the video, Anne embedded a comment that said PacSun canceled the order due to a delivery address issue. However, the user noted that PacSun had delivered to the same address in the past, without any issues. Anne saw 99% of her affiliate sales getting wiped out which cost her the entire commission. In the video, Anne said that the nearly $4,000 she was expecting would have been “life-changing” for her as a single mother with student loans.

“I don’t know how TikTok Shop can do this, or how a company can do some type of scam sale like this,” Anne said in the video. She shared several follow-up videos, informing her viewers that the brand was not responding to her emails and complaints. She says she kept a watch on their social media where everything was as usual.

Several viewers of Anne’s videos kept commenting and tagging the brand to help escalate the issue. “Yes keep going and PACSUN lost out on a great creator. Make this right. Apologize at least. Explain yourself!” wrote user @sara.anderson88 in one of Anne’s videos.

However, her videos suggested that the brand had turned a blind eye to them. Finally, Anne took one of the viewer's advice who told her to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau. In another follow-up video, she shared that following the complaint, the brand did respond to her but it wasn’t something that she wanted to hear.

Anne shared a screenshot of the response which basically said that there was a pricing error on the TikTok Shop the day she sold the products. Thus, sellers had to cancel the already confirmed orders and they could not be reinstated. Anne said she was expecting such a response but did not understand why it took so long.

“Why be so, so dead silent like they have been? Avoiding hundreds and hundreds of comments asking them to say something. It’s just fishy,” she said in the follow-up video.

For more updates, vlogs, fashion tips, and entertaining content, follow Anne (@anneccourtney) on TikTok.