Too true. I have a single blog post explaining how to do something useful on Amazon (make a partial payment with a Visa gift card). It got picked up by the Consumerist and other retail-type blogs and actually generated a few hundred $$ a month.

Then Amazon shut down my account, kept the affiliate fees, and stonewalled me. They said I had violated a ToS provision that affiliate clicks couldn't be for resale purposes (wtf?).

Thankfully I was able to reach out to someone at the executive customer service team, and they actually responded with an "oops, our bad!" It was a very frustrating experience being stonewalled and not even knowing why.