February 2006 Archives

Visitors to the ClickToTheMagic.com website this morning were greeted by the message, "This IP address cannot be used for browsing."

A forum poster reported that they had contacted Bonnie by email and she said this was an issue with her hosting company; she was working to get it resolved.

Once again, I've got nothing but praise for FusionCash.net. I got paid again this month on the 19th as promised, $84.60 PayPal. That's a total of $267.60 in three months!

This month I got $13.80 for a FREE 30 day trial to Real.com Games (it required a CC#, so I used a prepaid card that has only a few dollars left on it...the offer credited immediately) and $11.40 for their RealtyStore offer (I had to create a temporary credit card number for $40 to get this one to go through although I only paid $1, and it took about a week to credit).

If you didn't get in on their LampsPlus offer when they had it up before, it's back now: $18 for placing any order there. (I had ordered $2.49 lightbulbs that shipped free.)

Remember to request your cashout before 2/28 to get paid on or before 3/20!

Is UAL still planning to sell MyPoints? A January 24th email from them indicated that they were... but today's Chicago Tribune announced MyPoints' hiring of a new vice president of national sales. It continued to describe MyPoints as a subsidiary of UAL Loyalty Services, so obviously they have not yet sold the company.

Conflicting messages? Maybe not. Even a sinking ship needs someone at the helm... at least until a sale is arranged. The fact that the position was open in the first place indicates that key staff are already finding work elsewhere. If their employees don't have faith in the company's continued prosperity, why should we members?

This sale is dragging on way too long. Makes you wonder if perhaps they're having trouble finding a buyer.

The saga continues.

I was intrigued to hear about a new MyPoints service called the Insider's Club. Supposedly you pay some kind of membership fee ($1 for the first 30 days) and you'll get rebated for all your shipping charges when you shop through the site. I thought that might be interesting (assuming, that is, that MyPoints is still around in 30 days). The MyPoints Insiders Club site said that this service was being offered in partnership with a site called CMG, which had been around for 5 years. So I did some digging.

CMG stands for Clarus Marketing Group, and they are the owners of, among other sites, FreeShipping.com. InternetInsidersClub is another of their sites, which they offer as a private label (personalized for your own website) to companies that need to build a tighter relationship with their customers. That's MyPoints' angle. (That, and it appears that MyPoints gets a $10 kickback from CMG for every new club member they bring in.)

Clarus does have a positive BBB report, and does appear to be a legitimate company.

Should MyPoints members join this program? The glowing testimonials are certainly convincing. There's just one little problem: they're bogus. They are NOT the opinions of real MyPoints members -- in fact, they're just carbon copies of "testimonials" on Clarus's FreeShipping and (generic) InternetInsidersClub sites, TWO of which were EDITED to make them appear that they were written specifically about MyPoints' Insider's Club!

Check them out side by side and you'll see. Here are the links to FreeShipping.com and InternetInsidersClub.com. I don't have a direct link for the MyPoints' Insider's Club but if you click here and you're logged into MyPoints, you should be able to click through. Notice that all three are the same... except that the last two on MyPoints' Insider Club were modified to make it look like they're talking SPECIFICALLY about the MyPoints Insider's Club.

This is deceptive. They are fake quotes from people who are not even members of MyPoints. They may not even be real quotes at all, who knows. But the fact remains; this modifying of the last two testimonials was done purposefully and with the intention of misleading MyPoints' members into believing that fellow members had positive experiences with this program.

I should add that the generic InternetInsidersClub.com site has a lovely animated banner on the top right that indicates that their 30 day trial membership is FREE...not the $1.00 that MyPoints charges.

For shame, MyPoints. This kind of lame marketing technique only goes to reinforce our dwindling opinion of the integrity of your program.

Borders bookstores -- including Waldenbooks -- launched their own free rewards program today. Borders Rewards will offer customers a couple of benefits: spend $50+ in a month, get a one day 10% off coupon; weekly discounts by email and in-store; and this one's a little different, 5% of all qualifying purchases made throughout the year will go into a "personal Holiday Savings Account" which can be used on purchases from 11/15 to 1/15 each year (exactly how that works wasn't spelled out).

Join at any store by providing an email address, and register your card online for more benefits.

The news release is here.

With the exception of the Holiday Savings account, this sounds pretty similar to the program they had in place up until a year or so ago. Eh, free discounts, can't complain about that.

I received an email from a super-nice guy the other day who's as passionate about the advantages of online shopping as I am, and his frustration with missing out on "the best" rebates available motivated him to start his own website, Evreward.com. Evreward lists the available rebates by merchant, in percentages or points per dollar, for various online rewards programs. The site is still in beta testing and not all rewards programs are represented (obviously that would be a huge task) but you can at least see many of the bigger programs like BabyMint, ClubMom, Ebates, FatWallet, MyPoints, and uPromise. It also includes a few sites that I don't currently cover on CompareRewards (which has prompted me to look into them for potential future reviews).

There are three ways you can use the site. You can type in the name of the online store and it'll pull up the participating rewards programs. Or, you can choose to search stores by category...and within the category (for instance, baby clothing), you can view the stores alphabetically or choose to sort by the best rebate percentages each store has.

The third way to use the site is, I think, the coolest. Add the Evreward bookmarklet to your favorites (follow the instructions on the site for how to do this). Then when you're on a merchant's site and you want to find out who rewards for them, just click the Evreward bookmarklet, and it will take you directly to the merchant's page on Evreward.

When you're on a merchant's page on Evreward, one click takes you not just to the rewards program you want, but directly to the merchant's page on that rewards program's site.

Like it? Hate it? Suggestions? Email the site's owner and let him know what you think, or leave a comment here. I'm psyched, and I'm hopeful that Evreward will help save me, and the other online shoppers out there, a lot of time and effort.

Please remember that you can't tell which site offers the best deal just by looking at the NUMBER of points per dollar it pays; you need to know how much those points are worth at that program. I've calculated those point values for you here on CompareRewards; just look at the review for each program. Multiply the value by the points per dollar they pay for your desired merchant, and move the decimal over two places to convert it to percent.

More than willing to help anyone with this if you need further explanation or help with the calculations, just email me. See my Dollar Value of a Point section for more information.

Or, "If BonusTree Fell in the Woods, Would Anybody Give a Cr*p?"

I haven't been to BonusTree.com in, oh, about a year... since I busted them for lying about achieving Forbes Magazine's Best of the Web "award." What would be the point -- they've somehow hung around the 'net since '99, spamming and misleading members about their potential earnings, with contact email addresses that perpetually bounced. I'm not so sure that the owner didn't have the hosting bill paid up years in advance and then died.

So, who knows when the site was taken offline, or even if it's down permanently or just for a hosting change or upgrades or something. But the bigger question is, who cares. Good riddance.

If you're a member of BzzAgent.com and you haven't visited the site in a while, you may have missed their link to their latest blog, 90 Days of BzzAgent. The idea is that the company, having just received a big chunk of venture capital, is in a transition phase, and it might be interesting to have an outsider (actually John Butman, the guy who co-wrote the book "Grapevine: The New Art of Word-of-Mouth Marketing" with BzzAgent's founder Dave Balter) document how things change behind the scenes over the next 3 months.

Looks somewhat interesting, if you're a BzzAgent or have an interest in their program.

I had heard this before a few weeks ago but blew it off as just being rumors and hearsay...when I read this article today I figured I'd share it just in case something develops from it.

Basically what's happening is, there is a search engine war going on, with everyone wanting a piece of Google's action, as it's the biggest player. Amazon's A9 program offers its frequent searchers a discount on Amazon products. Yahoo is now considering some kind of similar incentive program to get people to use their search engine.

According to a survey Yahoo sent out to its email users, some of the rewards they're considering offering include 250 frequent-flier miles a month, five free music downloads a month, Netflix discounts, etc. -- nothing that will be much of a threat to the rewards program industry, but it would be somewhat of a motivator for folks to consider using Yahoo's search function over Google's.

Went to update my review of the UrbanFreebies rewards program this morning and found it's no longer a rewards site -- it's now yet another lame search engine portal.

I had high hopes for the site when I initially reviewed it in early 2003 -- you could earn points for, among other things, watching movie trailers, which was pretty unique. The site had a cool, funky look and feel and was clearly aimed at a young and hip crowd. Guess they never found their audience, or maybe they couldn't get their business model straight.

In any event, the new site has "Copyright 2006" on it so it appears this was a fairly recent demise. Even though this one never fully developed, you hate to see another rewards program fail.

"I'm a Pisces, my favorite color is blue, and I like long walks..."

I'm serious, "Getting the Word Out on Ebates," from yesterday's San Francisco Examiner, reads like a personal ad for Ebates founder and CEO Alessandro Isolani. Eh, there were a few factoids included, like his claim that Ebates made "high hundreds of millions" in gross sales last year (that's how much money people spent shopping through Ebates, NOT how much Ebates earned), and that he employs 40 people. Otherwise, it's just an article about Alessandro's background.

(btw, with such interests as fencing, and a past career as a patent attorney, I can't imagine WHY he'd need a personal ad...)

I just got around to reading a January 18th article written by Ebates founder and CEO, Alessandro Isolani in iMedia Connection called "The Art of Woo." No, it's not about action movie director John Woo (though I have a feeling that would have been a more interesting read), it's about maintaining customer loyalty.

Interesting stats shared in the article: Ebates has 7 million members but only "roughly 1 million" are active shoppers. They have 800 merchant partners. Their "close rate" in October (the percentage of people who start shopping at Ebates and actually follow through to make a purchase) was over 10%, compared to an industry average of 4%. (Retail in general, or rewards program industry? Unclear.) And 90% of members making 5 purchases through Ebates will eventually make a 6th. (No huge surprise there -- if you like a program you will continue to use it; I imagine all rewards programs could boast a similar statistic.)

Alessandro defended the use of cashback portals like Ebates by merchants, saying basically, "Yeah, people may have made a purchase directly through your site anyway, but we do still drive some new visitors to your site, plus, if you don't participate as an Ebates merchant, I bet your competitors will." Kinda lame logic; what if all their merchants pulled out? And the big guys like B&N and FTD surely don't need Ebates as a key to their success, especially since Ebates takes a cut of every sale made through their portal. People will shop through those big sites anyway.

And along that train of thought, I'm going to digress into a little commentary here. I predict that at some point in the perhaps not-so-distant future, many if not all of the "big guys", the huge retailers, will pull out of shopping portals like Ebates. They will find alternate online advertising methods to maintain top-of-mind awareness for their brands that will NOT require them to pay a cut of their sales to some rebate portal. And all the shopping portals (the rewards programs) are going to be left with are the young turks, the smaller and newer companies that really NEED the marketing and promotion that the portals can offer.

My prediction.

In Memolink's monthly newsletter today, the site promises upcoming changes to its Memogold program: "You asked and we listened. We're changing the Memogold program! All the details will be coming soon."

Memogold was originally unveiled as a method of placating increasingly vocal members who were irritated at slow-to-no payments from Memolink. It promised extra points for many activities on the site and, originally, priority handling of customer service and new redemptions. They backed off on that rather quickly. As Memogold status was only given gratis for 6 months and renewal requirements involved earning a significant number of points through the site, members found themselves dropped back to standard Memolink status fairly quickly.

When Memolink revamped its site last year, Memogold status was granted based on a cryptic "star system." When members pushed for what exactly was required in order to "fill up their stars" and achieve Memogold status, the bottom-line response was, "You have to do things that earn us money" -- a vague answer but at least a bluntly honest one.

Now, months later, it appears that SOMEONE within the Memolink organization has finally gotten a clue and realized that a cryptic system can't possibly be a motivational one. If people don't understand EXACTLY what is expected of them to achieve Memogold status, how are they going to strive for it?

But perhaps I give them too much credit. Perhaps the new system will be just as unclear as the old one but with more bells and whistles. Or maybe they're just changing the stars to happy faces. Hey, here's a suggestion: change the stars to little pictures of dollar bills going directly into David Asseoff's already overstuffed wallet!

Just passing along the information in case anyone is still wasting their time with those guys.

I emailed MyPoints on January 3rd when I found that, just a few days after advertising their new credit card offered through Chase Bank, suddenly the points offer for signing up, as well as all details about the card, had been pulled from the site. (Subsequently the offer was reinstated but, interestingly, now Providian is the issuer of their card.) I asked if this was related to MyPoints' impending sale, and while they were at it, could they comment on what we as members could expect as a result of that sale.

Three weeks later MyPoints finally responded to my email. (GREAT customer service there, guys!) I've been out of town and just received their response to my email. I found it interesting and thought I would share:

- - - - -

From: membercare@mypoints.com
Date: 2006/01/24 Tue PM 07:19:21 EST
To: (my alternate email address)
Subject: [INTERACTID:4487413]Re: MyPoints Credit Card

Dear Becky,

Thank you for contacting MyPoints Member Care.

You can now take advantage of the MyPoints Providian Visa card offer.

Please log onto your MyPoints account and use the link to this offer that can be found on your homepage. This offer is fully functional at this time.

We do not anticipate any changes that will affect our members after MyPoints is sold. We anticipate that the program rules and details will remain the same as always.

Thank you for your valued membership.

Have a nice day.

Best regards,

Jill I.
MyPoints Member Services

Please email all inquiries to memberservices@mypoints.com

- - - - -

First of all, this is the first time to my knowledge that MyPoints' member services department has acknowledged that the site is up for sale. Another member services employee responded to a reader's inquiry about it several weeks ago indicating that it had already changed hands. I didn't believe that at the time, and this latest response from member services also contradicts that.

Second off, I can't say that, personally, I find much comfort in MyPoints' assurance that they don't "anticipate" any changes in the program from the member's point of view. They have no way of knowing what any potential buyer might do with the program. It's a pretty stupid statement, really -- I mean, if I sold my house, I wouldn't "anticipate" the new owners changing the wallpaper, but of COURSE that would be a huge possibility, wouldn't it?

Anyway -- just throwing that out there in the "for what it's worth" category. By the way, United Airlines (MyPoints' parent company, if you haven't been following this closely) finally emerged from bankruptcy protection this afternoon.

Want to earn a free McDonalds' Double Quarter Pounder with Cheese Value Meal in 15 minutes or less? I did it! Read on!

TampaBayLightning "V-Ego" Rewards Program Review

Link to join: http://www.tampabaylightning.com/tbl/content.cfm?pageid=1536

Earn points by: Logging in daily (10 points), for each page visit on the site (1 point each), "and extra points for special areas of the site, such as participating in the Blog." Also, receive 100 points just for signing up.

Dollar value of a point: Varies and tricky to calculate because prizes are merchandise -- assume about $0.0343 per point for the McDonalds GC (assuming it's worth around $6) and about $0.0158 per point for pair of game tickets (assuming they'd send the cheapest, which are $19 each).

Available prizes include: McDonalds Double Quarter Pounder With Cheese Extra Value Meal, Champs Discount ($10 off a $50 purchase), Lightning Tickets and Memorabilia

Full list of prizes: http://www.tampabaylightning.com/tbl/vego.cfm?actn=shop&shop=1

Notes: Maximum of 300 points daily. No shipping is charged on prizes sent to the US and Canada. Very similar program to the now-defunct CBS Sportsline Rewards. Only 8 redemption options currently, this appears to be a new program so maybe we'll see more prizes added soon.

Tip: When you surf around on the site and land on a page that has a URL ending in a number, just go up to the link, add 1 to the number, and hit enter. Makes getting in your 300 daily points faster.