FusionCash.net has a note up in their Account section of the site saying their referral bonus program was discontinued on 6/15. Prior to that, members received $1 for each referral plus $2 when they cashed out. Today, more bad news: FC says that PayPal closed their account and they’ll be paying PayPal users by check instead.
Click Continue Reading to read the company’s response to my questions about what happened and whether the site was planning to stick around.
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When I contacted the owners for comment, they said that, “It was communicated to us by PayPal that paying users to refer friends (no matter the context) is a violation of the PayPal AUP.” If true, this could have some pretty far-reaching effects — paid to read email programs, search engine referral programs, rewards programs like Ebates (they have a PayPal option and offer a referral bonus)… This could develop into a bigger story, so stay tuned.
Regarding the elimination of their referral program, FusionCash stated, “The incentive to defraud both FusionCash and advertisers is increased with the introduction of referrals. By removing that incentive, we increase lead quality for our advertisers which will help us continue to be profitable for years to come.” I don’t know how much that’ll really help — it seems to me that all offer portals by their very nature attract fraud — the portals aren’t targeted to any one demographic, except the segment of the population that wants to try out services to make money, with little or no interest in staying after the free/reduced price trial ends. If portals weren’t looking for these types of people, they wouldn’t be so competitive with their rates, and they’d have a content-driven site that attracted serious potential customers of their advertisers’ key demographics.
FC sounds committed to staying in the game. My experiences with them have all been very positive — great rates, quick payment, fast and polite responses to inquiries. Bonus or no bonus, I will continue to recommend the site.
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Could not review the Terms of Service. This is not good. JD