Marketworks has an agreement with a third-party service called WebLoyalty to market to its sellers' customers on their eBay and Storefront Checkout pages, and effective June 21, 2006, Marketworks changed it to an opt-out system for all of its US sellers. This means Marketworks sellers who don't want to their buyers to view co-branded WebLoyalty offers upon checkout completion must manually turn off the program in their settings.

Marketworks Chief Marketing Officer Paul Lundy said sellers love the program because it pays them when their buyers view the WebLoyalty offer. And if a buyer joins WebLoyalty through a Marketworks seller's ad, the buyer gets a $10 rebate - paid by WebLoyalty - on a subsequent purchase from that seller. Lundy said this drives repeat business for Marketworks sellers who participate in the program.

An email to AuctionBytes complaining of Marketworks' association with WebLoyalty points to this blog as an example of consumer complaints about the program (http://www.cs.toronto.edu/~jenn/reservationRewards.html).

WebLoyalty has an "unsatisfactory record" with the Better Business Bureau, which Lundy said Marketworks is aware of, but he said it is "just a disagreement of a small piece of how the company does business."

The Better Business Bureau states that its unsatisfactory rating is "due to a pattern of complaints concerning deceptive marketing/selling practices and unauthorized charges to consumers' credit cards. Although the company has resolved all complaints brought to its attention by the BBB by canceling consumers' program memberships and by providing refunds, the firm has failed to correct the underlying reasons for the complaints" (http://digbig.com/4kqya).

eBay PowerSeller Adam Hersh has offered WebLoyalty to his buyers through the Marketworks program for several years. He said he has received only one complaint in 2-3 years out of over 100,000 transactions. He said for high-volume, low-price sellers, the program is attractive - he earns 10 cents on each transaction when buyers go through the checkout process. The accompanying screenshot shows part of the page that Hersh's customers see after completing a transaction through his storefront at http://www.adamhershposters.com.

Why not leave it up to Marketworks sellers to decide if they want to opt-in to the program? Lundy said Marketworks made it part of the standard settings because the WebLoyalty program was so popular with sellers. WebLoyalty is a $100 million company and are very successful, Lundy said.

"If there are complaints, it's a fraction of the business they do," Lundy said, and at any time, WebLoyalty members can ask for their money back. He relayed his own experience of having inadvertently joined the program when signing up for a high-school reunion networking site. Eight months later, when he noticed monthly charges to his American Express bill, a call to WebLoyalty resulted in his getting all of his money refunded to him, he said.

One Marketworks seller who is upset that the program is no longer opt-in has been posting to several eBay discussion boards to express his dissatisfaction, such as this thread (http://forums.ebay.com/db2/thread.jspa?messageID=2002629720).