Strange Timeline For A "Wrinkled" Offer Site

Here's what we found in our research of this offer:

• Wrinkled Offer
• No Rookies Here
• Origins Elsewhere
• “Meanwhile, Back In the Jungle...”
• Selecting The Cheapest Offers
• The Bottom Line

We encountered an interesting little wrinkle when we reviewed a free offer site for a $500 Target Gift Card. The site belonged to My Rewards Vault which is a company located in Miami, even though the domain is registered to a company in the U.S. Virgin Islands. It was a fairly standard site with a 2-2-4 selection program containing 100 ad/banners on the silver/gold/platinum pages.

What made the encounter so interesting, at least from a chronological standpoint, was that we were able to study this free offer over a period of time, rather than the quick snapshot of a site to which we are normally confined. The time delay happened because it appeared to our researchers that a particular one of the ad/banners had a glitch which lit up our internet security software every time we tried to enter it.

No Rookies Here

As our long-time readers are aware, our investigators have been doing this type of research for a while now and we’ve easily clicked on over 300 of these ad offer locations without ever running into even the slightest problem with any of them. So, when this unprecedented “stopper” occurred, we decided to perform our neighborly duty and notify My Rewards Vault. They asked us for a little time to investigate the allegation prior to our publishing this article, and we were happy to comply. We were happy, that is, until there came suggestions that the problem was merely a figment in the imagination of our computers, at which time we respectfully said, “Ready or not, we go to press next week.”

Origins Elsewhere

We must, in all fairness, mention that the “suggestions” did not arise with My Rewards Vault, but from their client which owned the offending ad/banner. We can’t hardly blame MRV who didn’t want to upset their cash-paying customer, so they dutifully passed along the denial…er, I mean, the “suggestion” back to us. No problem. We understand completely. We were just being neighborly. Who knows, we may be absolutely incorrect in our assumption, and our security software just could have picked a funny time to malfunction (it’s still malfunctioning like that as we write this). But, there’s no big deal. If we’re wrong, that ad/banner will get all kinds of clicks into it. It’ll likely set records.

“Meanwhile, Back In the Jungle...”

While we were waiting, we noticed that MRV changed some of their ad offers, a common practice for these types of FO sites. When we did a quick pre-publication check we noticed that the number of ad/offers was reduced from 100 to ninety-seven and a number of them were different. Among others, there was a seasonal ad (Halloween costumes) and another offer for yet another credit report (bringing the total for those to three).

We also noticed that there was an error in the presentation of the ColoSLIM weight loss ad in that it stated the free 15-day trial cost “$1.00 S&H.” Once we clicked to enter the ad, however, we found the cost to be $9.42. We think the external description should have stated the cost as $1.00 plus S&H. And, we hope no one took the Bookspan offer for 5 books in the Children’s Book of the Month Club, because it’s now changed to a 6-book offer. If you only got 5, make sure you bug them for another book.

We were sorry to see the eMusic ad removed, since that was one of the ones we had chosen the first time as one of the qualifiers to get the Target gift card. Since eMusic is a free download offer to start, that immediately made the gift card more expensive.

There were no longer any of the three previously available Refer-a-Friend offers. These offers allow participants to substitute another person to also work the required number of qualification offers. For each friend who completes the qualifying number of offers, the original participant receives credit as if they had completed an offer on their won. In other words, if the original participant could find eight different friends who each fully completed the qualifying equirements on their own, the first party would receive full qualifying credit for the Target card. We can only wonder why these three ads—one on each of the selection pages—were no longer in the mix. They must have just been placeholders until more client ads could be found.

Selecting The Cheapest Offers

So, we found we could complete the Silver page for no cost by selecting the Netflix and FreeCrediReport.com offers. Although we could have legitimately duplicated those choices on the Gold page with two different companies (Blockbuster and the Mighty Net credit report), realistically that wouldn’t happen. So, we chose two of the shopping club offers—DealMax and Home Savings Mall at $1 each.

And, for the Platinum page, we’ve got to take the lowest four offers which is the $1.97 for the Google Automated Income Kit, $5.97 each for the Disney DVD Club and the PurCleanse weight loss, plus the two $6.95 offers: Video Professor and SimpleBrite.

The Proverbial Bottom Line

That qualifies us for the Target Gift Card for a total of $29.81, which equates to a FOD Factor of 16.77 (reward item value divided by amount to qualify) used for comparison.

If you would like to check out the offer for the $500 Target Gift Card, you can click here.



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Here’s wishing you the Best of Bargains,

Head FOD

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