imo, a lot of people who work on the stands on the events are either promotional girls or Account Managers. Neither of which have the power to change anything within the program.
Having a go at them at a conference is at best only going upset the promo girls, and at worst make the AMs leave and go somewhere else, only to be replaced by newer, less experienced AMs.
The ones that leave then go somewhere else utilising the same knowledge that they had at operator A(where they were trained), and implementing it into operator B, thus further proliferating the weakness and inneffectiveness that AMs have across multiple operators, which in turn means that as an affiliate you get affected by more and more programs doing things that are deemed unacceptable.
Personally I think that AMs should be regulated by some kind of standard exam. At the end of the day they are advising, rightly or wrongly, where you the affiliate put your money (via SEO or PPC etc to promote them, time and money spent on your site development and changing link and banners etc)), and are also responsible for tracking and making sure your money is paid to you. Its strange that a stockbroker has to have qualifications to make the same recommendations, but that an AM does not.
Also, a recognised qualification would possibly give affiliates more comfort in whom they are dealing with as the qualified AMs would know and recognise sharp practices and would in the main only choose to work for accredited operators.
Just my 2p.