September 2008 Archives

Note: see the latest on Boomertowne's closure here.

Update, 4:45pm: After being forwarded a copy of an email sent by BoomerTowne.com founder Herschel Peddicord to chat moderator CherBear67, I decided to email him myself with some of the questions I have been hearing from upset BT members on forums and in BT's own chat (still live at this link). He replied within the hour. My email and his response are below:

Dear Mr. Peddicord,

I run CompareRewards.com, a website that provides reviews and news of points programs like BoomerTowne. I've been following the developments with your site and am getting a tremendous amount of traffic from your members, all of whom are disappointed and hoping for some answers.

Is the site down permanently? Is it possible that the site could be sold and return at some point? Are there any plans to honor the cashouts that have been made up to this point, even at half or some fraction of their value?

At what point did you decide to take BoomerTowne down? Is this a decision that has been in the works for a while now? Have you been trying to find potential investors or to develop an alternate business model that might be more profitable?

Isn't it difficult to abandon the site just months after PC Magazine named it the #1 Website for Boomers? You have a reputation for being a shrewd entrepreneur; there's no way to make the site financially feasible?

I know these are a lot of questions and at no doubt a time when you're already upset about having to make some tough decisions. Any insight you could give me that I could pass along to your faithful members would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you for your time, and I wish you the best.

Sincerely,
Becky Ford
CompareRewards.com

His response:

RE: Saddened by the news about BT -- a response if you could, please?
Sunday, September 21, 2008 4:37 PM
From: "buzz peddicord"
To: comparerewards@yahoo.com

Unfortunately illness, economic downturn, and mass cheating drove the company bankrupt. Several millions were lost by investors and even though we tried to sell and raise capitol, the lousy economy made that impossible. The investors including me lost millions of dollars trying to build a real community. When the economy went south companies quit advertising and income dropped to 10 percent of what it had reached. That combined with mass point cheating made it impossible to go on. No site that offers rewards will succeed as long as people devote so much time trying to beat the system. It tells you something about our society.

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My response to this: While most of the points-based rewards programs have gone the way of the dinosaur, there ARE points programs that have survived for years despite economic downturns and people trying to game the point systems. Gather.com has paid members for generating content for a few years now. Freeride has been up and down with different owners but is still at it (it's the first rewards program I joined, way back in 1997). MyPoints, the granddaddy of them all, is still very much alive and well. Even Memolink is still up after years of financial troubles. The difference between these programs and BoomerTowne? Sufficient staffing for moderating content and site usage to thwart cheaters. Limitations on memberships per household or per IP address, or proof of individual ID requirements. Point valuations that are sustainable over the long run, taking into account all overhead -- including referral incentives, with allowances built in for cyclical lulls in advertising revenue. Enough management staff in place to delegate projects when one person gets sick. (I'm sorry if that sounds cruel; I'm sympathetic to Mr. Peddicord's health issues but this was a *business* and he owed it to his members, partners, and investors to find alternate leadership in his absence.)

It sounds to me like BoomerTowne met a need in many people that was more than just free gift cards. Perhaps with some retooling of the points structure, or reintroducing the site without points altogether (after a cooling-off period), the site could become financially successful. It seems an absolute shame that the top rated website on the internet for Boomers would have to go bust.

Click Continue Reading to read CherBear67's email to BT owner Peddicord, as well as his reply.

Update, 9/21: BoomerTowne's founder confirms that the site is dead, a victim of cheaters, the economy, and his failing health. Read his email here.

Update, 9/20: The BoomerTowne.com website is now down. The Wisconsin Department of Financial Institutions shows Concierge Web LLC is still a valid corporation, so they haven't filed for bankruptcy (or if they have, WI hasn't updated their records to reflect it). The timing of this, just two days after their PR firm disavowed any knowledge of the company's owner's whereabouts, certainly sounds final. Feel free to submit your claims to the Better Business Bureau here - Concierge Web LLC is incorporated in Wisconsin but is listed with the BBB as www.Boomertowne.com, with this address: 100 North Corporate Dr Suite 170, Brookfield, WI 53045

Like many of you, I've been waiting patiently on gift cards redeemed from BoomerTowne.com from as far back as May 9th, gift cards that were promised in 6 to 8 weeks. Last month, I predicted that the end of BoomerTowne points was near, as the site's weekly newsletter had neglected to mention points at all. I haven't received any newsletters from the site in a while now. The silence is deafening.

What I'm hearing around the 'net is that some of the vocal complainers are having their accounts deleted. I'm owed $750 in outstanding gift cards from BoomerTowne and I realize I run the risk of losing it by posting further about BT, but since many of those points were earned on the backs of my referrals, who also are not getting paid, it was ill-earned gains anyway, and this is the least I can do on their behalf. So here goes:

I was really surprised when I stumbled across a September 5th article by a senior VP of BoomerTowne.com's PR firm, Laughlin Constable, on eMarketer.com. In "Social Networking for Baby Boomers," Paul Brienza discussed BoomerTowne and how it has succeeded in generating rich user content, as well as how health-care related advertising has "done very well." He also hints at upcoming changes in how the site will generate income (a switch from CPM, which is basically a flat fee they earn based on the number of page views, to specific advertiser-sponsored pages).

Of course, I was incredulous that BoomerTowne's PR firm was taking the time to discuss the site's success and its plans for the future at the same time that no one seems to be able to get a response from the company on when, if ever, members can expect their gift cards -- their rewards for generating that "rich content" of which Brienza bragged. In fact, BoomerTowne.com has an Unsatisfactory rating with the Better Business Bureau probably for that very reason. So, on Monday I sent Mr. Brienza an email and told him that I would be posting about this on Wednesday, and I asked for a response for the record. He didn't reply. I even held off until today to make this post, but I still (as of this writing) have not received a response.

Below is the text of the email I sent Mr. Brienza, whose full title is Senior VP of Interactive Marketing for Laughlin Constable. If anyone at Laughlin Constable reads this and would like the opportunity to respond, you can do so in a comment or feel free to email me.

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Dear Mr. Brienza,

I run a website (CompareRewards.com) that provides news and reviews of
rewards programs including one of your clients, BoomerTowne. No doubt
you're aware of the problems plaguing this website, in my opinion the
greatest of which is a complete lack of communication between site
administration and members, many of whom have been waiting for months for
their redeemed gift cards.

I read with great interest your September 5th interview with
eMarketer.com. There were several quotes in particular that I found
interesting and that I intend to post about on my website:

"We built an informational site, and found that people didn't necessarily
want to come back frequently to the site. They'd use it, learn
information from it and then move on. So we developed BoomerTowne to be
more of a social networking site that's rich in content."

Mr. Brienza, wasn't it the points system that motivated members to provide
the "rich content" you refer to here? The members are not being paid for
the content they contributed in good faith with the understanding that
they would be compensated for it. Isn't this a serious breach of ethics
at the very least, or perhaps even outright illegal?

Also, regarding CPMs, "We've done very well with the healthcare-supported
side...it works well when you have a drug company that can go to the
health section and put ads in context..." My question, as you can
imagine, is, if BoomerTowne has done so well with any aspect of its
monetization strategy, what is the reason, then, that no points
redemptions have been honored since May 8th? Were you overstating the
website's success to impress the eMarketer reading audience, or has the
website actually been far more of a disappointment, plagued by fraudulent
duplicate accounts, robotic clicks, and submission of inane content simply
to receive points?

And lastly, "[Advertisers will] be able to target these people, and maybe
not so much in the CPM or traditional banner standpoint, but more on a
sponsorship standpoint, where they sponsor various sections of a site, and
not just hit them with a 300 by 250." Can I take away from this statement
that BoomerTowne is retooling its advertiser strategy with the intent to
stay in business despite its debt to members? If that is the case, can
you give BoomerTowne members some insight into what they can expect in
terms of wait time for gift card fulfillment, changes to the points
system, and any future incentives planned for contributing the rich
content you intend to monetize?

Mr. Brienza, in case you haven't visited BoomerTowne's message board or
Googled your client's website name recently, you need to understand that
you have a full-blown PR nightmare on your hands. The sooner these issues
are addressed, the better your client's chances of salvaging at least a
shred of respect and good will from the population it intends to serve.

I will be posting my comments about your interview and the situation at
BoomerTowne on Wednesday. If you have any response for the record about
my concerns or if there is any other information you'd like disseminated
to BoomerTowne's membership, I would be glad to include that in my post.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,
Becky Ford
CompareRewards.com

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Update: Minutes after posting this, I received the following email from Paul Brienza:

Becky:

Thank you for your e-mail.

While Laughlin/Constable was hired by the owner to develop and maintain certain aspects of the site, Laughlin/Constable does not own the site; was never responsible for any aspect of the points program; and no longer is working with the owner or manager of the site.

The owner has not returned our calls and has not left us with forwarding information.

Regards,

Paul

I'm always happy to see a rewards program get national attention -- it helps inform consumers about the benefits of using rewards programs when shopping online -- but I'm doubly happy when the object of the publicity is one of my all-time favorite programs, Ebates.com.

Consumer Reports publishes an ad-free magazine about shopping called ShopSmart, and in this month's edition they named Ebates one of their seven "Sites that can save you thousands."

The review was fair except in saying that they were "immediately inundated with e-mail from the company" after signing up. I've been a member for many, many years and would never categorize the handful of emails they send as being "inundated."

But they were happy with the cashback rates, the selection of merchants, the option for donation to charity, and (my favorite -- see the post below) the daily double merchant.

If you're not an Ebates member, join and judge for yourself! If you'd do so with my link, they'll give you $10 if you make your first purchase by 9/30, and I'd sure appreciate your support of CompareRewards!

Upromise announced today that it has launched a new paperless coupon program for its members. Upromise eCoupons will be electronically linked to their members' registered grocery and drugstore membership cards. As the member makes a purchase of eligible items, the coupons' value will not be deducted at the register, but instead will be deposited into the member's Upromise account -- where it can be transferred into a 529 college savings plan or withdrawn by check upon request.

Upromise members may print a list of the coupons and their values for reference. The coupons will be worth a maximum of $25 a month.

Personally, I like the idea of clipless/paperless coupons and the idea that they can be transferred onto your grocery or drugstore membership cards. I don't, however, care for the fact that the savings is forced into your Upromise account. Keep in mind that you don't earn interest on money in your Upromise account -- only if you set up a 529 college savings plan and transfer your Upromise money into that account. If you don't have a child to save for, or if you'd just prefer to invest or spend your money on your own, Upromise doesn't make it easy for you to withdraw your earnings -- you have to dig into their terms of service to find out that you can indeed receive your Upromise earnings by check if you request it in writing.

If you are using Upromise to hoard nickels and dimes to put toward your child's education, this is another handy way for you to do it. I just wish that these same grocery and drugstores would implement a similar paperless coupon option for the rest of us, with the coupon values being deducted at checkout instead.

Not a member of Upromise and want to join? Please click here (aff) -- thanks!

Update, 9/3: Back online! 95% of my parish (county) is without power but we're among the lucky ones -- not only do we have power but also cable/internet and cellular service. One large tree branch grazed the house and damaged the storm gutter, lots of down limbs, but otherwise no damage at all. We were lucky. Food, gas, and other supplies are scarce, water is on a "boil order," and we remain under a curfew to deter criminals. It's like a combat zone. Please join me in keeping my fellow Louisiana residents in your thoughts and prayers.

THANK YOU to those of you who joined Wellness360 with my link this weekend in an effort to help me win an RV for my mom! No idea when they'll announce the winner but I'll let you know when I know! I hope you'll stick around Wellness360 for a while -- they're doing triple points today, and they pay you in real cash quarterly just for doing wellness-related activities like charting your vitals and logging your exercise and food intake.

As my long-time readers know, I'm a resident of south Louisiana. I live in the first suburb of Baton Rouge to the west. We're getting the outer bands of Hurricane Gustav right now and will lose power any minute, and public officials are preparing us for long-term outages. If my sites aren't updated for a while, that will be why.

I'm very grateful for your support. Please join me in sending prayers or good thoughts to my neighbors closer to the coast, who are no doubt going to suffer tremendous damage as a result of this storm. Thanks, and I'll be back soon!