Free iPod scam?

[sambeckett]

Anyone know about this site?

http://www.freeiPods.com/

seems like a scam to me, they say if you sign up 5 people you get a free $300 iPod.

why would people waste so much time doing this?

*** "referer" removed on URL by moderator KC - no pyramid schemes allowed here!

[Steven Cedrone]

From the terms and conditions:

(a) Users must refer at least 5 friends to the site who must sign up, and correctly complete an offer from the site under the Terms listed above.

(b) Users must also complete at least one offer themselves.

(c) A user may not get credit for completing more than one offer. Their referrals must each do 1 offer, totaling 6 offers to be completed (1 by the customer, and 5 offers done by a minimum of 5 referrals).

(d) Referrals completing more than 1 offer will only count as 1.

(e) Users may refer more than 5 friends to try and maximize likelihood of getting credit and minimize the time it takes, but cannot receive credit for more than 1 iPod.

(f) Users may only receive one iPod for their account.

(g) Users must be residents of the United States.



Seems legit. Might be easier to just buy that Ipod though!

Oh, and moving to Off-Topic forum... :wink:

Steve

[OSUKid7]

This sounds like a great PPCT project. Like one person starts, then we all sign up under the current person. Seems like a great way to get free iPods for the best Pocket PC community on the net! Anyone with me?

BTW, what are the "offers" that you have to do?

[Kati Compton]

BTW, what are the "offers" that you have to do?
Probably something we don't want to do. ;)

[Steven Cedrone]

Like I said, it's probably easier to just buy one... :wink:

Steve

[Janak Parekh]

It's a pyramid-like scheme. OSUKid7, the PPCT "trick" would rapidly fail, as for each person you must find 5 new people -- going in circles wouldn't help. Therefore, a few people would get it and everyone else would be out to pasture, complete with a potential source of spam by having registered.

--janak

[Wasgo]

Yeah, total scam.

The first person hasn't completed the offer until all five below him have. So he waits. They get stuck in the same position. Since completition always requires the person below to also complete, it will never end.

So, the first person needs the five below to complete theirs to get it, the five below collectively need 25, the 25 need 125, the 125 need 625, etc. So, an infinite number of people would be needed just to get the first person an Ipod.

[Steven Cedrone]

So, an infinite number of people would be needed just to get the first person an Ipod.

How did you arrive at that? Not that it really matters, I wouldn't bother with this anyway...

Steve

[Darius Wey]

(g) Users must be residents of the United States.

:razz: Awwwwwwwwwwwww.....!!!

[Janak Parekh]

So, an infinite number of people would be needed just to get the first person an Ipod.
How did you arrive at that? Not that it really matters, I wouldn't bother with this anyway...
(putting my CS hat on)

He's looking at the sign-up problem from a depth-first perspective. But wasgo, that's not correct. It's a breadth-first problem: each person only needs five other people to register, not to actually invite five others themselves.

--janak

[billyevil]

Anyone know about this site?

http://www.freeiPods.com/

seems like a scam to me, they say if you sign up 5 people you get a free $300 iPod.

why would people waste so much time doing this?

I just find it funny that Sambeckett posted about this "scam" by making sure his link included the referer id (http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=xxxxxxx) which is how each person is credited with signups.

So, either that referer id is sambeckett's id and he's hoping people will click his link and sign up, thereby giving him the necessary signups he needs for his free ipod or it's someone else's referer id and sambeckett just helped them get whoever clicked on it and signed up.

Here's a reduced screenshot of the referer page you get to after going through their survey. It shows the referer link at the bottom.

http://img52.exs.cx/img52/1271/freeipodthing.gif

Pretty clever to post asking if something is a scam and asking why people would waste time on it to get people to click the link. If that's what he did.
:D Either way i think the referer id needs to be removed from the link.

*** referer ID removed by moderator KC