A member of CreationsRewards.net approached me yesterday and asked me to look into his account being deleted. He said that there were other complaints on the rewards forums about similar cases and he was concerned that this was an indication that Creations had become some sort of scam, deleting members to avoid having to pay them. I’ve known Creations’ owner Chris for years and really doubted that was the case, so I emailed him to ask what was up.
He responded quickly and as courteously as always, and he provided me with the following causes for a member’s account deletion:
“1. Opt-out. When a user follows the opt-out link on the bottom of any Email we send out, they are immediately removed. This process is automated since with our volume of users and other daily tasks, it would be impossible to add manual processing to this task. The link is on the very bottom in small font to prevent accidental clicking, but we do occasionally receive Emails from users several days after they had clicked to opt-out inquiring about their account.
2. Spam Complaints. Anytime a user clicks “This is Spam”, “Junk”, or any other spam button within their Email software, CR receives a notification of such action. To keep CR’s E-Mail reputation high, we remove all complaining members from our database. This is not only to keep our complaints low, but to comply with the expectation of the ISP to treat complaints as those who don’t want our Email. This is where most accounts which want to be reinstated fall into. Users typically select all their unwanted mail and click Spam/Junk versus deleting it. Marking CR mail as spam not only harms our reputation with ISPs, but also results in account cancelations for users who are incorrectly marking our mail as spam when they have double opt-in to our program.
3. Bouncing Email. Any hard bouncing Email address is immediately removed from our database. Hard bounces are defined as mailboxes which are over-quota or are invalid mailboxes. The exception is if CR’s Email is blocked to an ISP, this will not result in removal.”
These all seem like pretty valid reasons for account deletion to me. Chris went on to say that #2 seemed to be triggering the greatest number of complaints and that he’s working on a plan to minimize the deletions due to false spam claims, but obviously he does still have to comply with ISP expectations. In other words, if you say it’s spam, your internet provider will expect Creations to opt you out (delete your account).
If you find your account was deleted in error, the process is as follows:
1. Create a new account using the same login (email address).
2. Click the link in the confirmation email to confirm your account.
3. Contact support using the form here and forward them a copy of the most recent email you have from Creations (it will show your point balance).
You should find the points reinstated within a couple of days.
CreationsRewards is a good rewards program, imho, and not a scam at all. They’ve paid me many times and I recommend them highly. Earn for shopping, visiting websites, completing surveys, even playing trivia! If you’re not a member yet and would like to check ‘em out, click here to join with my link, please — thanks!
{ 4 comments… read them below or add one }
Is Chris saying you can’t have a CR account but opt-out of emails (i.e. use the account only for shopping through the CR website)? I can certainly see where someone might click on an “opt out” link, wanting to be removed from the email list but planning to cash out their earnings at a later date.
I asked him the same question, Marc. Here’s an excerpt of his follow-up email to me:
“I made one of the changes last night, to help reduce our active members being deleted. I will enhance our contact us page to include data on what to do if you had an account and suddenly cannot access it. This should help everyone who is affected by this problem, and if they’re removed from a spam complaint the point balance will be retained since I will have this data fed back to me as well. With Spam laws to comply with and to maintain good relations with ISPs for our Email, it’s a lot of work to balance the two out, since I do know members might click it by mistake, but then the ISP expects it to be removed like an unsubscribe. I will also think about your suggestion by disabling Email, but maintaining the account.”
to many uless email
They want pay me. Have been waiting for over a month and two weeks and still no money. So I don’t care if you know him or not. It should not take this long to get money to a paypal account. It states on the website 1-4 weeks not 2 months. Now Chris is stating 8 weeks no way it takes this long. All I want is my money.