April 28, 2021|Paypal

Last week I wrote about the new Brex offer giving 100,000 Brex points for signing up form Paypal Merchant Services credit card processing.   In the post, I used the Brex logo as well as my Brex referral link.

The next day, I received a cease and desist email from Brex’s legal counsel  to take down the blog post   They said I was illegally using their intellectual property by using their logo as well as improperly using the referral link on both Miles Man as well as Miles to Memories.    He emailed me the referral link terms and conditions.  After some back and forth via email to get some explanation, I asked for a call with their legal counsel.   I agreed to remove the logo as well as the referral link, but the rest of the post would stay as it was purely editorial.

On our Zoom call, I explained that  the referral link was never posted on Miles to Memories.   I also explained that I was promoting their website, yet was still told I could not use their logo.  As far as the referral link, I was told I they want to be able to control where the link goes as well as the language surrounding it.   I explained a few things.

First, the terms and conditions of the referral link are nowhere to be found on the referral link page on Brex.   Second, within Brex, there is a share to Twitter function which anybody can retweet to the world for everyone to see, so I wasn’t sure why me posting the referral link was any different.   Their legal counsel was unaware of either of these and said he would look into and told me that was good feedback.    I’m still not sure why they wouldn’t want referral links to be published if they are giving them in the first place to drum up business.  

 

In the end, he said he would put me in touch with affiliate marketing if I wanted to do referrals.  I have not heard from anybody.

As Brex is relatively new, I think they are still working out their operations and policies. Hopefully, they can sort through this as it makes me a bit uncomfortable that they hold their customers’ cash balances.