Special Offers Breakdown part 3 - Gambit!

OK! Here We GO!

As I mentioned in the preview post, today's special offer breakdown spotlights the Gambit wall. This and TapJoy have the worst reputation for fair play. Today I am going to show you a very good example of how shady and tricksy they can be. The post on Tasks will come later in the week.



Let's start with the basics, what does the Gambit wall look like?

Gambit has 5 tabs. All, Free, Tasks, Videos, and Offer Status. The videos tab only appears when there are videos available. After attempting the offer I will show you next, my videos tab disappeared so I wasn't able to screenshot how Gambits videos work, I'm sorry.

I'll show you what the Tasks tab looks like, but my breakdown on how to do those will be later in the week.

I went to the FREE tab, knowing just what offer I was after. Offer requirements are listed right below the offer title. There are two right by each other that are listed as FREE, and are for 38 swagbucks. They work the same way, as in, they don't work! What are the requirements? Submit your email. That is literally all the requirements say! Oh how many times I have been denied... so I already know that "submit your email" is NOT the only requirement. If that's not the case, then the offer must be free going the long way around, right?  Well... Let's Do This!

I could have started with the Facebook Features item, but to prove just how absurd it is that this offer is listed as FREE, I went with the laptop offer. I mean, who in their right mind would believe you could get a new laptop for free?  Let's prove them wrong!

Ooh so excited! I'ma get a free Apply MacBook Pro!!! *waves her hands in the air with mock joy!* After you submit your email, you are taken to a "survey" screen.

Just about every special offer has a type of bogus survey. It's really a phishing tool, so they can spam your email with a ton of garbage offers. You have to fill it out if you want to get your swagbucks though. In the case of this offer, it's just a front for the real scam!

Notice it asks you for your cell phone number. Not just any phone number, your cell. Why? Because it wants to get you to sign up for ridiculous services that charge from $9.99 a month and up to your cell bill.

Right away, the first "offer" requries my cell number. Yah, Right. This one is a monthly charge of $50 and up, depending on what you sign up for I guess. OH MY GOSH you must be joking!

To get through these extraneous offers, you have to scroll all the way to the bottom of the screen and hit SKIP. I had to do this a total of 15 times before reaching the real scam :P

Oh, only 2 offers?  I see two free trials right up top, but I already have Netflix, and I've already done a free trial with CreditReport.com, so I keep looking.

This looks like a good place to start. It's a free trial, so that qualifies technically as making this a free offer from Gambit.

I signed up for the free trial, ends in 7 days, with 25 free music downloads. Surfed around the site for just a few minutes to see what kind of music they have. Tons of good stuff! But very little of it available to download with the free 25 songs. Boo!  Left it alone and went hunting for a second free trial offer. I know at this point that, given I need 2 offers, and I see 4 free ones listed (Netflix, CreditReport.com, American Credit, and eMusic), that by the strictest definition of FREE, I should be able to get my laptop, right? However, I don't buy it for a second. Two free trials will not get me a laptop, I just have to keep going to find out the trick! The scam!

This offer fails completely and with no shame! It says free trial, however you will be charged two times, one for $4.47 and one for $13.85, with a monthly charge after the first 30 days of your "free trial".    NEXT!

Notice the little asterisk by the word FREE? At least they give you some hint that it's not actually free. This one fails because you have to pay for $6.95 shipping.

This offer has no cute asterisk to warn you, but it is the same exact deal as the one above. $6.95 shipping. FAIL!!

This offer is again, NOT free. There is a $0.99 processing fee. Ok, let me try again. and again. And again. I did SEVERAL more attempts, but got tired of screenshots! Suffice to say they all failed because they ALL included some form of charge.

I really didn't want to have to sign up with another credit monitoring company, so I started searching for something that was at least Cheap, that I could easily cancel and get refunded. I landed on this.

I went ahead and signed up for this, it really was only $0.99, my plan being to send it back as soon as the package arrived. That's not a violation, I wouldn't do this for SwagBucks, but it's for a laptop!! ROFL

At this point I knew that technically, you could get two offers FREE, so maybe there was a shot. Maybe if I just do this @*%& offer I would get my laptop. I wasn't holding my breath though, there's just no way it could be that "easy"!

Once you have done your 2 offers, you are to click the button that says "Claim Your Free Gift!"

Ok, This is it! I'ma get my MacBook!!!  *waves her hands in the air again in mock victory!*

Click.... DOH!  Doh Doh Doh DOH DOH! I knew it! GRPH I knew it...

Nine More Offers? NINE? .... ......

I went through the pages of offers, it was all the same ones as the earlier step. Still only FOUR that are actually fully free trials.

FAIL!

There are only four free trials, so with this 9, that makes ELEVEN you are required to do. Even if you got the four free trials, and the other 7 were only $0.99 each, that's still $7 you'd be out. That is not free, not in MY universe!

Well, Well, Well. *church lady voice*  Interesting!

There's the proof. The offer is not free, it needs to be taken off the free wall. As many times as I tried one of these 38 swagbuck "free" offers and got short snotty replies from Gambit that I had not fulfilled the requirements to get my "free" items and my swagbucks, I was more than ready to go to the inquiry screen and blast them. Politely if possible, but I was pretty fired up :P Good, I need to screenshot the inquiry process for the blog anyway *laugh*

This is Gambit's Offer Status screen. At the top it shows inquiries that have been closed, whether positive or negative. It's odd I see so few there, but now that I think about it, no it's not. I have opened inquiries that just went POOF, so there's no record of them up there. I can tell you though that of the 6 you see there, only one resulted in me getting credit. The rest were denied with the same form letter stating I did not fulfill the requirements despite ample proof to the contrary.

Below the Inbox it shows your "Offers in Progress". I have the one I just attempted, and one from August that I didn't inquiry. The reason I left that one alone is I had attempted it before, sent in an inquiry, got denied, and threatened with being banned from the wall. Somehow that inquiry is missing from the Inbox.. *church lady voice again * How Convenient!

See the question mark symbol to the far right in the screenshot above? That's what you click to start an inquiry. When you click that, it opens a screen with a lot of boxes to fill out. Name, email used for the offer, phone number used for the offer, address, a description of the problem with the offer, and a box for "proof" (not shown.)

I think it's funny they ask you for proof up front. First of all they decide to deny you despite your proof quite a large portion of the time, and then there's the fact that half they time, after they read your inquiry, they reply asking for the exact same types of proof I have submitted already in the initial "ticket".

The portions of the boxes you see filled out are not the entire text. Note the scroll bar :P I gave them an eye full, but I didn't yell (aside from the occasionally capitalized word) and I did not curse or insult. I stated my case, but with an edge of "Serious, I'm Seriously Peeved!" to it. Maybe I shouldn't have threatened with BBB reporting- it's the first time I have resorted to that though I know others do it quite often- but I was fresh from the utter Failure of the offer, and really cheesed off about Gambit at that moment. They have this horrible way of not paying what they owe, and this, is an outright falsehood. People fill out the "surveys" and give their information away with the idea that they will get what they are promised. Gambit doesn't deliver. So I was pretty wound up right then :P

Needless to say, Of Course I didn't get my swagbucks for submitting my email. I won't get swagbucks for the offer or inquiry because I'm not shelling out money for swagbucks, not on a dishonest deal that will involve me being signed up with 11 different monthly charges.

Submit your email. MY FOOT!

gam·bit  (gmbt)

n.

1. An opening in chess in which a minor piece, or pieces, usually a pawn, is offered in exchange for a favorable position.

2. A maneuver, stratagem, or ploy, especially one used at an initial stage.

3. A remark intended to open a conversation.

How funny. Gambit always seems to have the upper hand from the get go. 

Anyhooooo  *takes a deep breath and laughs at herself for getting so worked up* I immediately cancelled the eMusic membership, got my confirmation in email. Also tried to cancel the DoubleDay order before it even had a chance to ship, but I can't do that for at least 72 hours apparently. So I submitted a customer service request asking them not to ship the order and to cancel my account. That may not work, but if the package comes in the mail I will return it (they say at their cost. Better be!) If I am going to sign up with a book club, I want to know I will be getting the swagbucks promised for it!!

If anyone over at Swag Bucks ever reads this blog, I have a request on behalf of all swaggernauts who have been burned by Gambit time and again. Here is a good example of the ways Gambit uses deception and refuses payment due. They are getting paid from their advertisers and not paying us in return. They are listing false requirements for their offers, and your users are doling out their information based on a promise of payment that never comes. We are feeling Very deceived, and somewhat disgruntled. This is the kind of stuff that causes me to take long breaks from doing special offers. I'm tired of getting burned. Many, Many other swaggers are too.

Ok now that we are past all that negative feedback about Gambit, I need to say, they DO sometimes credit *chuckle*. I *do* still use them once in a while. I've gotten a little wiser about the offers they won't pay for. Unfortunately to get to that point, you have to be disappointed and frustrated and outright mad a few too many times.

Tomorrow I may skip over TapJoy and do TrialPay. TapJoy is another company that has a Very Bad reputation for not paying. Even worse, for not answering your inquiries at all. I have ample proof of that *sigh* in the form of open tickets from the beginning of October.

So I will probably do something more Positive, and blog about TapJoy on Wednesday.

I feel drained :P And I don't quite know how to wrap up the blog so, I will just chop it off right here and see you tomorrow! Remember, the blog posts are going to be in the afternoons from here on out, at least for a while. But they will still be daily!

Until then..

HAPPY SWAGSURFING!!!