Yes, there are all sorts of unusual scenarios one might imagine, and what you described could work the other way as well, where Affiliate A promises a discount that doesn't exist, so the buyer declines to purchase when they see they aren't getting any discount, or imagine that Affiliate A completely misrepresents the product, so the buyer does not purchase once they click through and see that it's not what they wanted at that point, but then sometime later Affiliate B markets the product to that same buyer accurately and appealingly and reintroduces the buyer to it in a context favorable enough to entice them to make a purchase.
At any rate, we can't have it both ways and had to decide which way the system would work, so we went with the most common, likely scenarios that would benefit most affiliates acting in good faith, which also happened to be the simplest solution from a software standpoint, and so that's the way it is.
