"Free Zen" on website is a fraud!

moonwhispering · June 2013

Today in addition to all the wonderful things the launch did not give us the web site features prominently a link to gaining "free Zen." Now we all know the word "free" does not mean free, it means you will be gaining tons more spam in your email, but that's fine I can play along. Only Peanut Labs does not work properly. After completing several surveys to gain this so called "free" Zen I received NOTHING. I wasted my time and effort on these surveys and they are nothing but a fraud. You give them your personal information and email and then after a couple dozen surveys you get told you don't qualify or else the submit buttons at the end don't work. Nice right?

Yes yes I know who really cares right? Well I wanted to warn people ahead of time so they don't waste their time like I just did. We all know that nothing is free really, but when an offer promises a reward it needs to deliver. This company does not need something so fraudulent and dishonest associated with it. I mean after reading so far on the forums its obvious they have enough on their plates then getting caught up in having their players agree about their advertisers is not a good thing.

Bottom line??? Avoid Peanut Labs and these "free" Zen offers completely! What a shame.

sasheria · June 2013

There are some fine line even on survey before getting free Zen. Some may have to wait, some may have to response to the email sent to you (to validate email and info is correct) etc etc.

Some "cost" version you have to actually sign up for X days before getting it. Sadly, all offers are controlled by Peanut lab and NOT Cryptic.

baronvonboom · June 2013

Depends on what offers you go for, if its 'Win an Ipad' then your probably not going to get it but many of the other more official looking ones work as intended.
Ive probably had about 1000 zen since May through Peanut Labs & Sponsor Pay and had a few not pay as well, you just learn to avoid certain ones and dont get a grump on for something your getting for nothing anyways, theres always bound to be a catch..

ambisinisterr · June 2013

They work just fine and dandy for myself and others?

Please note that you must choose which game to transfer your Zen to by using your Zen Wallet and relog into the game. The Zen doesn't automatically appear for use in game.

If that doesn't work then send a message to customer support and cite which specific surveys failed to reward you and they will investigate and take the matter up with Peanut Labs. They should all give you the amount cited if the survey was actually completed and not disqualified due to you not fitting the survey's target audience.

vientor · June 2013

While not really "fraud" I would avoid them. You end up answering several "pre-qualifying" surveys, that give you nothing. If you don't meet the criteria that they are looking for (Ie, people that want to buy their products) you don't get to take a real survey that pays zen, and they waste your time with the pre-qualifying ones.

I'm sure that you can game the surveys and tell them exactly what you think they want to hear, rather than how you actually feel. I just can't be bothered.

killerella · June 2013

I never had a problem getting the promised zen for the offers I "qualified" for. However, they did a very poor job of implementing the pre-qualify surveys. You have to take nearly the same survey over and over again every single time you apply for a zen promotion. Its a HUGE time waster. They should have ONLY one big survey at the beginning, and after that survey it should spit out only all the offers that you qualify for. How hard would that be?

sasheria · June 2013

killerella wrote: »

I never had a problem getting the promised zen for the offers I "qualified" for. However, they did a very poor job of implementing the pre-qualify surveys. You have to take nearly the same survey over and over again every single time you apply for a zen promotion. Its a HUGE time waster. They should have ONLY one big survey at the beginning, and after that survey it should spit out only all the offers that you qualify for. How hard would that be?

(this is a GUESS of what I think it is happening)
The reason they have two version is to make you stay on their site longer for the AD revenue (make up for giving Free Zen. Someone has to pay for them)

alignments · June 2013

They need to have checks that you are not a bot or not paying attention and just clicking through everything randomly.
Also, they use the same pre-qualifiers on different surveys. The API (thingy that populates all the surveys) is a App run by Peanutlabs and often its in real or nearly real time because quotas and caps on surveys are met and replaced via automation to other 3rd partys. Its basicly a survey matching service. They take your nugget of info and try to match it against a pool of surveys they get paid to satisfy or find respondents for. There is no incentive for you to linger time wise, other than sometimes there will be a time trigger for the payout and if they dont get the payout, you dont get the Zen, so never rush, but they get paid per finished survey, not for time on page. Its not a perfect system, but it does work, ive made plenty on Zen this way. Only tips I could offer would be to not opt out of race/sex/income questions, remember this is a trade off in some respects. Also dont expect to be 16 years old and qualify for much of anything, it also helps to have kids, many seem to be geared towards parents.

This is from 5/30 but I posted it in another post so i already had it uploaded.

nemolade · June 2013

I was able to do several the week the game went into open beta and make about 800 zen, now when i do them they rarely if ever actually pay out.

i'd say about 10% or less pay out. I've even sent tickets on almost all of them and I've never received a reply.

johneco1 · June 2013

I wasn't going to mention this but when I saw this thread I couldn't help myself. Last night I visited the Peanut Labs for the first time. With the conversion of AD to zen being so high lately, I thought maybe I would earn some "free" zen. At the top of the page there was a survey that if I complete, would pay me zen. It stated that it would take 15 minutes. It did take about 20 minutes but here's the thing. After answering personal questions about my personal views and answering questions about my income and family, they promptly stated at the end that I no longer qualified to finish the survey! I'm like what? I answered all of your questions and spent the time to fill out all of the questions. Now you tell me that I don't qualify to finish? What a perfect scam! Since they don't have to pay you zen unless you "complete" the survey, they just tell you at the end that you don't qualify. I am done with Peanut labs and overall it forms my view of Perfect World as well. I mean, if they allow companies to pull this kind of stuff and waste peoples time only to screw them later, what does that say about the company that put Peanut Labs in charge?

nemolade · June 2013

johneco1 wrote: »

I wasn't going to mention this but when I saw this thread I couldn't help myself. Last night I visited the Peanut Labs for the first time. With the conversion of AD to zen being so high lately, I thought maybe I would earn some "free" zen. At the top of the page there was a survey that if I complete, would pay me zen. It stated that it would take 15 minutes. It did take about 20 minutes but here's the thing. After answering personal questions about my personal views and answering questions about my income and family, they promptly stated at the end that I no longer qualified to finish the survey! I'm like what? I answered all of your questions and spent the time to fill out all of the questions. Now you tell me that I don't qualify to finish? What a perfect scam! Since they don't have to pay you zen unless you "complete" the survey, they just tell you at the end that you don't qualify. I am done with Peanut labs and overall it forms my view of Perfect World as well. I mean, if they allow companies to pull this kind of stuff and waste peoples time only to screw them later, what does that say about the company that put Peanut Labs in charge?

I completely agree, our information needs to be erased if we are not paid for the AD, they are harvesting thousands of half completed surveys and still getting our information.

metabolicus · June 2013

Hey don't feel bad im waiting on my paid zen from last week still lol...

alignments · June 2013

The Market Researcher has informed us that you do not qualify to complete this survey.

What does this mean?

You didn't give a "wrong" answer. Market researchers are often looking for answers from very specific groups of people.
We NEVER keep or use your answers when you do not qualify for a survey.
Keep trying, we do our best to find surveys that are a good fit for you!

llfritzll · June 2013

not to mention from that screenshot, looks like he is getting 98 zen a survey.

at 20 minutes per thats about 3$ an hour.

i guess if you have absolutely nothing to do with your time.

nemolade · June 2013

alignments wrote: »

The Market Researcher has informed us that you do not qualify to complete this survey.

What does this mean?

You didn't give a "wrong" answer. Market researchers are often looking for answers from very specific groups of people.
We NEVER keep or use your answers when you do not qualify for a survey.
Keep trying, we do our best to find surveys that are a good fit for you!

thats absolutely not true, I am currently getting spam from several of the ads I have not been paid for

alignments · June 2013

nemolade wrote: »

thats absolutely not true, I am currently getting spam from several of the ads I have not been paid for

From what? Peanut Labs? If you tried to do offers, not surveys, and something didnt go right, ya i could totally see that. But thats not generated from any Peanut Labs pre-qualifiers. If you are getting things from other 3rd party survey places that were giving like 100-400 for a sign up, well thats not what im talking about. Also you may want to verify that you jumped through all the hoops and verified your email and all that jazz. On one of those i had to do a mini survey on their site to get the Zen credit to trigger. Ive also done everything right and had to submit a ticket to get credit and it took over a week, but i did get credit.

lewstelamon01 · June 2013

I'll also point out that many of the surveys only ask for demographical information (income bracket, profession, family size)--nothing personally identifiable such as addresses, names, etc. If a survey is asking for that, rethink taking that survey.

imsmithy · June 2013

Some of them are dodgy , they say that you only need to register your details to get the ZEN but they never pay out but most seem to be ok , I use it to buy my respecs lol .

kiralia · June 2013

I did a few with the open beta launch and they mostly paid out fine....got about 1k zen total. Since then though every time I go to see what there is it tells me here are no offers of any kind whatsoever.

tang56 · June 2013

I've gotten around 2000 zen from it. Mostly the 74 to 96 zen consumer surveys. Of course, I've also spent RL money, but free stuff is nice as well.

dlight102 · June 2013

My first transaction I did he stupid credit score offer (hey it's a buck and you just call and cancel the account). Charges the card and can give them all the proof in the world. Peanut labs answer back to me is below. mind you this was my first offer and now my last.

"Whenever you notify us about an issue with a survey or offer, we make every effort to mediate with the offer provider or research client. If this resolves the issue, we will certainly send the credits your way. Sometimes we are unable to verify your eligibility for the reward. In those cases we can often issue you a credit out of our own pocket. Unfortunately we can only do this a limited number of times. At this time you've reached a limit on the number of support credits we can issue you, or you're asking for a credit amount that exceeds the limit. This limit goes up the longer you stay with us, so please feel free to open a new ticket for this issue in a week or two."

no better way to say BS than that!!!

Good Luck Perfect World.. there are plenty of mmos out there with better micro-transaction systems. Good game, but I wont support the shady practices.

b0ddi · June 2013

I did one that was supposed to pay 123 never got it but i have gotten 3 twice so it seams to be survey by survey.

pwetrailturtle · June 2013

For some of these, especially offers that involve actually buying something, it can sometimes take a while for the company with the offer to verify everything -- it's possible that this might just need a little longer.

If not, send in a ticket to Customer Support. I don't think we can do anything about it directly, but if a number of people are having issues with a particular offer, we can probably go to PeanutLabs and let them know that offer's got issues.

nachofoot · June 2013

pwetrailturtle wrote: »

For some of these, especially offers that involve actually buying something, it can sometimes take a while for the company with the offer to verify everything -- it's possible that this might just need a little longer.

If not, send in a ticket to Customer Support. I don't think we can do anything about it directly, but if a number of people are having issues with a particular offer, we can probably go to PeanutLabs and let them know that offer's got issues.

Customer support STILL hasn't responded to the fact that a lot of the Peanut Lab "offers" actually contain viruses.

One, in particular, contains ZeroAccess. Its a rather nasty piece of malware. Your normal antivirus programs (AVG, Avast) aren't going to touch it.

tang56 · June 2013

pwetrailturtle wrote: »

For some of these, especially offers that involve actually buying something, it can sometimes take a while for the company with the offer to verify everything -- it's possible that this might just need a little longer.

If not, send in a ticket to Customer Support. I don't think we can do anything about it directly, but if a number of people are having issues with a particular offer, we can probably go to PeanutLabs and let them know that offer's got issues.

The Lovefilm one never paid out and I got the lulzy CS email from peanutlabs when I filed a report. On the other hand, I'm not paying anything for 30 days, so I'm abusing my Lovefilm sub for another 20 days or so.

In my experience, the only offers that pay out Zen reliably are the 74-98 zen customer surveys(not the ones with pictures) and the 3 zen videos.

Basically, only do these:

poisonyann1 · June 2013

I've been around quite a bit in the free-to-play world, and these free offers RARELY, if ever, actually work. <10% of the surveys have ever finished, and then the ones that do never pay out. The only things I've ever gotten paid from is "download and install this" or the video watching ones, either way its still low payout from videos and you run the risk of a virus from downloading (in 2 years I've only gotten 1 virus though.)
Also, for the love of ALL that is holy, don't fill out any forms that want your phone number, they can add charges for their subscription to your phone bill without telling you upfront that you were signing up. Learned that one the hard way :mad:

techiebiker · June 2013

In my never humble opinion they ask far too many personal questions. I will not give the demographics of my children. You do not need to know how poor I am. Especially if it is only for 125 Zen. I agree with poisonyann1 just don't do it the cons far out weight the gains.

moonwhispering · June 2013

Thnk you Ambisinisterr! You at least had a message that made sense in light of the aggravation I cost myself today and I thank you. You would not believe the idiotic response I received from a GM. Peanut Labs offered me free Zen if I basically forgot it happened. Not going there at all, guess it just doesn't feel right if they don't fix the whole thing. Surveys in general I know are not always reliable or guaranteed to give you something, but I'm not going there again. You should see the state of my spam box tonight. What a horrible idea to do this, but I understand the motives on Perfect World's side. Thanks for making me feel someone was listening which is the most important thing sometimes.

tormeanted · June 2013

OMFG??!##$$%%%^^@#HAMSTER
I have never.
Something on the internet says it's free, and it's not?
wtf?
That Ethopian prince better come through with my 6 billion dollar

ten4goodbuddy · June 2013

It seems PWE & Cryptic have someone in upper management with ties to organized crime.

zedfsg · June 2013

my biggest problem is just that out of every 15 or 20 things i click on and fill out and put information into only about 1 ever actually pays out. there's dozens of offers to "enter valid information to earn zen" that i've done god knows how many times and they never pay out so i skip them since they just keep popping up in my list of offers. also half the time when i click on surverys it informs me that it experienced an error, so realistically now it's 1 in 30 or 40 offers actually loads and then actually pays out.

"Free Zen" on website is a fraud!

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