why was I put on hold?

I came here from the gearlive.com forums because somebody told me you guys might be able to help me.

I did my offer and all 5 of my referrals legitimately, and then when I asked for my account to be approved, i got this message

"Your Status
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.
You have not received credit for 1 or more of your referrals because they do not appear to be unique user(s). "

And then two of my referrals were blacked out.
Ordinarily I might think that maybe one of my friends accidentally made two accounts or something, but 4/5 of my referrals and both of the two that were blacked out are people that I know in real life, and I asked both of them to sign up over AIM. One of them lives in California and the other one is at school in Vancouver, so, I know for sure that they're a. not the same person and b. signing up from different computers.
but, more importantly, I was put on hold! Can I refer two more people and still get my ipod?

i heard that someone from gratis checks these forums, how can I get a hold of him/her?

this is really shady, and it gives me a lot of reason not to trust gratis.

probably because that one dude is in Canada and freeipods is only valid with people in the states.

just my guess.

okay, that might be the case, but I told him that he should have it shipped to his parents, and, why would the other guy in california be blacked out too?

it says that they were discounted because they don't appear to be unique users. that makes no sense.

gharrh.f.

if any of you know that guy that works for gratis, could you please forward this all to him? i'd really, really, REALLY appreciate it. like, I'll sign up under you on any of the other gratis sites appreciate it. like, $5 through paypal, as-many-gmail-invites-as-you-want appreciate it.

If he did the offer from Canada then his Vancouver IP address wouldn't have looked legitimate because the street address he used was a US address. your best bet might be to explain to them that your referral is american but only happens to be in Canada for school or whatever. Of course, your referral would have to write to them too. Is there any other relationship between the guy in Cali, the one in Canada, and yourself?


As for as Harry, the Gratis guy goes, you might be out of luck. He hasn't posted here in weeks.

hm. but why would they say it's because they aren't unique referrals? i understand the canada thing, but why are they putting -me- on hold for it? can't i just get another referral to replace him?

this isn't in the freeipods.com terms and conditions, but it's buried in only one of the faq things regarding being put on hold-- it says that if you "walked your referrals through" signing up, you can be put on hold. that's the stupidest thing i've ever heard. who hasn't walked their referrals through the site? you can't just randomly give a good friend your link and refuse to tell them what the various offers do and how you can go about signing up. they'll think that it's completely scam-o-rific.

but-- these two friends of mine were the only ones that decided that they didn't want to go through referring people themselves. my other three all referred people. someone said that gratis is now looking at third generation referrals. argh.