Membership completed email sent in place of confirmation link – help!

Tried testing simple membership, BasicMembership (value = 2)
Join-us button edited to carry permalink to Registration page; OK
Registration with site personalisation added to email but Registration Completed email sent in place of a link to create a username and password.
The Simple Membership Signup process is not working at all. How can we regain control of this process?

Compare the usual process of registering personal details. An email is sent with a unique link to complete the registration process, one is then signed in. Here we cannot sign in after filling out the username and password. Variable names are being sent in the email instead of the variable values.

The system needs to be reset. Please help.

With thanks.