I just finished the painful process of moving into a new home. Before I’d even unpacked I started the process of changing my contact information, an arduous task in and of itself. It would have been less daunting had I not been faced with dozens of affiliate programs, all needing updates.

Fortunately I have all the affiliate programs documented in a spreadsheet, so I could just work my way down the list. About two thirds of the programs I work with use CCbill, making it easy to change all of them in one place. Or at least I thought it was going to be easy.

I login to my CCbill account and the first thing I see (lower right of screen) is a link to Account Change Forms. I was familiar with these forms from the days when I had several pay sites at CCbill. I had no reason to think their system worked any different for affiliates, so I downloaded their address change form, filled it out, and faxed it to CCbill.

Within the hour I got a canned Email from CCbill advising me I did not need to use their change form. It instructed me to select the “Tools” option and then select edit profile. All right, at this point I’m annoyed, because I have 26 different affiliate programs that apparently need to be edited. As usual, with CCbill, the only way to find out exactly what you are supposed to do is pick up the phone and ask.

First I explain to the CCbill support person that it’s confusing to offer a link to their Account Change Forms. He explains that some of the forms are applicable to affiliates and they do send out a canned Email when Affiliates mistakenly use the address change form. I try to explain to him that if they find a need for a canned Email, then perhaps it’s an indication something needs to be changed in their system. I get silence for a reaction.

So I move on to my question…do I need to edit all 26 profiles or just the primary account? He happily explains I only need to edit the primary account profile. I tried to revisit the other issue, but he had no intention of going there.

Their system’s customer interface is the biggest cluster fuck I’ve had the displeasure of dealing with. But hey…if you’re the only game in town, what difference does it make…right?

It’s not lost on me that CCbill’s large support staff is necessary to compensate for their awful system interface. They could probably get rid of half their support staff if they took the time to fix their system. Employees represent the largest source of overhead for any company. Guess who ends up paying that cost?