Agree Joe. Thanks for clearing all this up for us.

And the fact they aren't really directly answering your questions about the price hikes makes it clear they want to minimize this. It just makes them look worse by not addressing it.

The blog team were probably instructed not to. Well it looks bad because we are not dumb and can see what's really going on.

They are going to lose a lot of affiliates, but apparently their affiliates aren't a big part of their income...must be the marketplace... otherwise why do this if you know this will probably lower our sales?