(Did they have any other choice?)
Well, after a couple of months of getting completely bashed on the message forums and getting on GPTBoycott.com’s Boycott List, DisneyAwards has closed its site to the public and posted the following information on their home page:
“This site is currently undergoing re-construction! Members will have Limited access. New Project Manager in charge of programming is moving the site and enabling the cash out system. This will be completed within 60 days from February 19, 2003. ALL Members who are eligible to cash out will be able to do so once the cashout procedure is fully operational. No cash outs will be paid until they can be properly accounted for. After that, this site will no longer be open to the public, it will be by invitation only. The site will be privately owned and the owners at this time wish not to have it opened to the public. All valid points will be honored once cashout begins. If you have further questions or concerns please direct them to: staff@disneyawards.com
Please note: No information will be sold or distributed. Once members cash out their points, all their information will be deleted from the database. Please do not contact us asking about cash outs or cash out procedures. We will clearly post here when the cash out system is fully enabled. Valid points are any points earned by participating/active sponsors and by following the guidelines that were previously available. Thanks, Disney Awards”
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I would be very wary of any “rewards” site going private. It seems to me that they are trying to hide from merchants that they are a rewards site to gain from these unsuspecting merchants that otherwise would reject them. To “invite” certain members to particpate, DA will probably tell them some garbage about not telling others what goes on so they can continue to scam. These would be their already loyal members that they know they could trust not to leak any information and continue to click paid banners each day, making DA a ton of money and not much going to honest, unsuspecting members.
They will probably have different parts to the site where they only show merchants that they are legit and other, hidden parts to members that show they are rewarding them.
The whole thing sounds fishy to me and I personally wouldn’t trust any site that would try to scam both merchants and members for personal gain. Can you say FRAUD??? This is illegal and if that is their intention and they get caught, they are facing criminal charges. (Remember the ebay ordeal last year???) Remember, most merchants can track your information!!!
Just my $.02