May 13, 2008
 

Is “Scam” losing its meaning?

Recently the word scam seems to have become a common word on most PTC related communities. This isn’t a good thing as for a long while the PTC industry has been drying up on new advertisers. Many of the outside advertises are still sceptical of the PTC advertising method so they look to forums and blogs to find out more which is where they are put off by the scam spam.

According to the dictionary the word scam means “a confidence game or other fraudulent scheme, esp. for making a quick profit; swindle.” This would mean the fraudster would have to be using a site for the soul purpose of defrauding the member’s right from the start. Because this has defiantly been the case with many PTC sites in the past it has now caused a paranoia effect where some people jump on this word at the slightest sign.

It has now come to a stage that if a member’s payment goes a day over due that member will then go to a popular PTC community and insists that they were “scammed”. Quite often it’s a cheater who has been caught and just wants to get a last word in but sometimes it is someone simply jumping to conclusions without being objective.

Examples

The most logical example for this growing trend is members on the audit wait at bux.to. It’s a fact that bux.to is the largest and most popular PTC site and therefore has the longest audit waits. For a premium member the TOS states 30 business days after request till you are paid. For standard members it is 60 business days.

With over 6million members last reported it is evident that even these durations are too short for the site to payout on time and they are indeed not making these dead lines. However this does not mean it is a scam. The TOS also states that they cannot be held responsible for work stoppages which are commonly caused by mass support tickets.

This is a nasty cycle because the people who lose patience waiting file a support ticket but then so does another 100,000 that day each requiring an examination of their account. A PTC site is always under pressure to answer their support tickets so they cannot avoid even a low priority ticket while they could be doing a more important process such as payment audits. Audits themselves are a high priority and take a lot of time no matter what you know about PHP. If you have 1 million members asking for payment there are numerous cheat checks required for each.

People often say that they should just employ more staff but after a certain amount it does more harm than good. This is because PTC sites are generally run without a HQ so staff members rely on emails to communicate with each other. Although emailing can be effective it is not an instant communication process. When there are too many staff members their emails become disorganized or missed with all the other mail PTC sites produce.

So in the case of bux.to people are simply not investigating why their payments are late and not distinguishing the difference between a delay and a scam. This was also the case with the recent ending of the site Paid.vg which had been struggling to gain a profit due to poor sales. This caused the site to fold with only outstanding purchases refunded. The poor sales were due to lack of time spent on the site by the owner so eventually the site became a failure.

Again people were running to the communities in block capitals that Paid.vg was a big scam when it fact it was just a simply failure. This rushed attitude has done some noticeable damage to the industry in the past with the abandonment of PayPal which was caused by mass disputes with the same rushed conclusions. Now PayPal will freeze a PTC sites account even if 1 cheater files a dispute.

What about the real scams?

The truth is that it is easy to tell when a site is really going to scam people by observing such signs as unreachable administrators, hidden background data, unrealistic proof of earnings, no forum, poor site design, eagerness to slander other PTC sites, ads connected to known scam sites and unrealistic prices. Another thing to consider is whether a site has been around for long enough or how well networked they are with other businesses.

With all the information people have on the longest running PTC sites and how many partners they have gained it would be impossible for them to even get away with scamming people. Scam sites are usually around for a few weeks to gain a quick profit because there are fewer eyes on a small profit than a large one.

The only case of a long running scam in the PT industry is AWsurvey’s which has lasted long by paying and giving bonuses to those who are good at promoting the site and then not paying the people they refer. This is why some people are adamant that AWsurvey’s is legit because they are unaware as to what they are being used for. The effectiveness of this system has been vastly reduced but it still catches the odd new comer to the industry.

What should be done?

Easy, good things come to those who wait and a little more patience is all that it would take for some of the major PTC sites to operate better. Filing support tickets all the time isn’t going to speed up this process and neither is calling a delay a scam. When you log into a PTC site you want there to be as many ads to click as possible but so long as the word scam is being used in such a trigger happy fashion you will be lucky to find many on the newer sites. The word “scam” is not your friend and in your best interest to use it appropriately

If you strongly feel you are being scammed, put some thought into it first and do some proper investigating before you go public. Quite often people feed off each others rumours and this causes an unconstructive and misleading approach to the problem.

Don’t expect to get your money sooner if you file a dispute at the sites payment processor as all they will likely do is freeze the account stopping you and everyone else from receiving the money. Remember that not all PTC sites have super servers and occasionally they cause the site to go down for a brief period. There have been many cases where this has happened and just 1 hour later a member is on forums calling it a scam attempt only to find its back up another hour later.

Because scam sites are not usually around for very long it makes sense not to invest too much on a site that is new unless you know the owner’s history is reputable. Some say this would make it too hard for people to start new PTC sites but at the end of the day if you run your PTC site properly and promote it right you cannot go wrong.