HELP they put me on hold?! wtf (freephotoipods)

While you have completed all the requirements to get a free iPod, we have reviewed your account and referral offer completions and have placed your account on hold. We have determined that your referrals appear to not be unique users. Because we make money from advertisers who only pay us for unique users, we cannot credit you for these referrals.

WHAT THE HECK is this?! I got all my refs from friends and from the gearlive conga, and now this message comes up. Every person was UNIQUE, there were not multiple sign ups.. what gives?!

one of my referral appears as 'account not approved', maybe the same thing happened to him. I'm trying to look into it.

well all of my people were uniqued and approved.. I've tried to contact gratis about it... no response though so licrosses fingers and praysli

how can you be positive that you didn't get two refs from the conga who were in fact the same person?

because wouldn't they have highlighted the fraudulent ones and said they were fraudulent?! lol

[quote1aa0c4de74]We have determined that your referrals appear to not be unique users[/quote1aa0c4de74]

well, it seems that highlighted or not, this is your problem. No? I mean, that's how I read it.

I guess lisighli hopefully its a mistake.

here's what I have (under 'You have completed all your requirements')

[quote62f364193d]You have not received credit for 1 or more of your referrals because they do not appear to be unique user(s).[/quote62f364193d]

And then, one of my refs has a black dot instead of the usual yellow/green, and it says "Referral not approved"

Maybe they disapprove of the whole "conga" strategy.

I guess they don't like congas, but it seems to me that they'll have to provide a better argued explanation if they want to start rejecting people who are not guilty of any fraudulent activity. I don't see how conga lines themselves infringe their terms and conditions. If they did, they would have at least threatened to have us shut down.

That being said, it's completely possible that some users on the conga lines might break Gratis' rules just as they would do if they were on their own. I can well imagine some people joining several times a single conga line, or even more likely, joining several conga lines with different names but always giving the same referral link.

In any case, I think it's too early to understand what happened here, but if I have to loose a referral because someone is trying to cheat both Gratis and other people on conga lines, I'll go find myself another referral and I'll be happy anyway because I'll hope it serves as an example to all other potential cheaters.

Even though that might not be what happened here, I think now is good time to repeat it [b2cad3ffce3]do not try to do Gratis deals several times, with different names, it won't work and you will get free nothing.[/b2cad3ffce3]

I can understand them not liking congas.

Their business model DEPENDS on those that sign up and complete an offer, get some referrals but never complete. But they haven't said anything about it in their TOS.

On that note, l0th, the one that went to black, where are they on the line? Have they gone through yet? Have you tried contacting them?

I've written to them and my question was

[quote1bd141dc38]"You have not received credit for 1 or more of your referrals because they do not appear to be unique user(s)." What does this mean exactly? what did that person do?[/quote1bd141dc38]

And I got an automated answer

[quote1bd141dc38]IN ORDER TO BE ELIGIBLE RECEIVE YOUR FREE PRODUCT YOU MUST COMPLETE THE FOLLOWING

Successfully complete at least one offer from our site and have your individual referrals successfully complete at least one offer each.

The necessary number of referrals for this offer is listed in the site Terms & Conditions here on the website.

These referrals must be unique individuals; you will not receive credit for users that are not unique.

You must meet the individual offer completion requirement and have the required number of referrals complete offers in order to receive your free product. You cannot substitute your offer completion(s) in place of having your referrals complete offers; Nor can a referral’s offer completion substitute for your offer completion requirement.

In order to receive referral credit for your account, your referrals must join via your unique referral link. You can send your referral link to your friends via email, instant messaging, or you can post your referral link online for them to use. They must join correctly using this link or your account will not receive credit for them. Of note The order you or your referrals complete offers in will have no effect on receiving credit for offer completion, only correctly completing an offer will affect this. Account verification also will have no effect on this process, but must be completed before you can be approved to place an order.[/quote1bd141dc38]

Of course I wrote back asking more specifically how they decided that one of my referrals was not a unique individual...

Umm they said i have to update my account with correct shipping info etc, but there is no place on there to enter it! help! I signed up on the first day, it didn't prompt me to enter my address or anything, now under my account information it just has my name no address or anything nothing for first and last name.

They also check your referrals referrals for fraud, and in case that happens, you get put on hold too...maybe someone thought he was slick and ended up fucking you in the process

[quotee6f31e8ea9]they said i have to update my account with correct shipping info etc,[/quotee6f31e8ea9]

could you paste their answer here so that we can all try to understand together?

Your account is missing some information - Your name and address. Once that is provided, you should be good to go.

I replied to them with the missing information, hopefully this will sort everything out. It is probably because I signed up for the site as soon as it launched, as when evil_prof_fink ordered, they hadn't finished putting the system up yet.

I am praying this will sort everything out.

UPDATE Just got account verified and taken off hold.. strage now I have to click verify again... LOL better then being on hold I assume!

Thanks for your support guys!

Good for you!

I think my referral must be in the same situation as you. Can you be more specific about how you contacted Gratis and how they contacted you back?

I think that when the sites first open they put more people on hold mabye even fake it. If you can get 10 refferials in 1 week you might not bitch about 1 more. I had to do 7 for the handbag was pissed knowing that they were unique but at the same time didn't really care.

So, is there really no one who knows how to contact Gratis directly (not using the automated answer system in the faqs/help) to sort out this kind of issue?