Hi fastfish720,
Sorry I don't know because I never use that type of re-direct because back when I learned
SEO meta refresh was a big no-no. Maybe it's changed now?
Most affiliates I know use htaccess and it has lots of advantages. One being you have one place to go to change links. For instance let's say an affiliate program closes and you need to substitute a different merchant - if you change the link in htaccess all your links no matter where they are on your site or even forum sigs change automatically.
There are a
couple threads in this post with lots of info about link cloaking and it goes into a few different methods.