CompareRewards

Friday, May 23, 2008


I run the website CompareRewards.com.

I put together this page for the sole purpose of providing possible sources of assistance for people who were taken advantage of by the NetWinner.com rewards program.

If you're looking for any other content, you will not find it here at this time. Visit CompareRewards or email me at comparerewards at yahoo dot com




NetWinner BBB / AG (Attorney General) Fraud Complaints

This page is to provide suggestions for those who lost money due to NetWinner's site changes that took effect on May 12, 2008.


NetWinner Information for Complaint Filings

Full name of the company: Netwinner, LLC
Mailing Address: 1427 South Blvd #200, Charlotte, NC 28203
Internet Address: NetWinner.com
Phone Number: (704) 347-8850
Fax Number: (866) 908-7052
Terms of Service through March 2007 (click on the date nearest to when you joined)
Terms of Service April through August 2007
(No TOS cache available after August; email me if you have a printscreen or a cut/paste)


Action Items

***1.*** Contact the North Carolina Attorney General's Office. DO THIS ONE FIRST. Call 1-877-566-7226. I think they'll take a verbal complaint but either way, they will require you to print out and complete the form located here: http://www.ncdoj.com/DocumentStreamerClient?directory=Forms/&file=stancom.pdf and send it to the address on the form. If you call, they may have a fax number. Section 3 will be a lot of N/As. You may want to include your cashout dates or your dates of membership. In Section 4, you'll want to check off the options for "I responded to a website or email solicitation" and "Via computer." Section 5: SIMPLIFY AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE. For instance -- use your own words -- They promised, "You play, we pay" but after cashing in the points I won from playing their online game, I waited 5 months for my prize. They repeatedly changed their terms of service as they became progressively late in payments. They continued to promise payment until yesterday, when they returned my points and said they wouldn't pay me. Section 6 is how you've handled it up to this point.

Last, if you have screenshots of your earnings, your redemption history, or anything else to back up your claim, include a copy. You may want to include a copy of the Terms of Service at the time you joined the program. If you'd like to provide them with a link to CompareRewards.com or to my email address -- comparerewards@yahoo.com -- I will be more than happy to provide the details I know.

I know nobody likes to have to go to the hassle of printing out and mailing in a form -- it's not the instant gratification we're used to in the digital age -- but this is the procedure if you want to get something done about this.

The AG's office is THE BEST AVENUE FOR DEALING WITH THIS. If NetWinner committed fraud, the AG's office is full of lawyers who prosecute companies who break the law. The BBB is not.


2. Contact the local (Charlotte, N.C.) media. Can they get you paid? No. But they can certainly bring these guys under scrutiny and possibly speed up the process of getting the AG involved. Here's the Wikipedia article on Charlotte, NC's media, with direct links to the TV stations: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Media_in_Charlotte%2C_North_Carolina



3. Report NetWinner to the BBB. Probably a useless step in terms of getting your money, but at least it'll go on NW's record and will help warn others away. It's located here: https://odr.bbb.org/odrweb/public/GetStarted.aspx


4. Contact the FTC. This would be to report false advertising, if you think that's the case. "You play, we pay," for example, as well as NW's press release stating that they have "paid out more than $1.6 million." Here's the FTC's website: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/bcpmp.shtm and here's where you can file a complaint: https://rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z_ORG_CODE=PU01


5. File a complaint with the Internet Crime Complaint Center. "For law enforcement and regulatory agencies at the federal, state, local and international level, IC3 provides a central referral mechanism for complaints involving Internet related crimes." The IC3 is a joint venture of the FBI, National White Collar Crime Center, and the Bureau of Justice Assistance. Here's the site: http://www.ic3.gov/ and here's where you can file a complaint: http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/ See #1 for the details you'll need to complete the form. Note that the business name is Netwinner LLC.


6. File a complaint with the National Consumers' League's Fraud Center. A non-profit consumer advocacy group, the National Consumers' League has been around for over 100 years. Here's their Fraud Center: http://www.Fraud.org/ and here's where you can file a complaint: https://secure.nclforms.org/nficweb/nfic.htm


7. Canada residents: File a report with RECOL (Reporting Economic Crime On-Line). This is "an integrated partnership between International, Federal and Provincial Law Enforcement agencies, as well as, with regulators and private commercial organizations that have a legitimate investigative interest in receiving a copy of complaints of economic crime." The site is administered by the National White Collar Crime Centre of Canada and is supported by, among other agencies, the RCMP. You'll need to create an account before submitting your complaint. The site is located here: https://www.recol.ca/


8. Contact the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation's Computer Crimes (Investigation) Unit. This unit's purpose is to assist local and state investigations into computer crimes. See the site here for phone and email contacts: http://www.ncsbi.gov/icac/icac_taskforce_computercrimes.jsp


9. Take NetWinner to Small Claims Court. How this works depends on your jurisdiction but it's an avenue available to both US and Canadian residents. Here's the Wikipedia article on it which includes links to some states' and provinces' website for more information: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Small_claims_court


10. Contact a North Carolina attorney specializing in class-action suits. Here's a link to one (initial consultation is free): http://www.shipmanlaw.com/PracticeAreas/Consumer-Class-Actions.asp


11. Contact NetWinner's advertisers to complain about their business practices. NetWinner's volunteer forum moderators, under the direction of a paid employee, advised members to click on advertisements "to support the site." This could constitute click fraud.

  • Lightningcast (Advertising.com)
    Advertising.com's TOS: "Publisher agrees that it shall NOT, unless it has received written authorization from Advertising.com: ...stack Creatives (e.g. place on top of one another so that more than 2 ads are next to each other)..., Induce persons to click on Creatives based on incentives... Upon a determination by Advertising.com, in its sole discretion, that Publisher has violated any of the foregoing conditions...Publisher agrees that Advertising.com may, in addition to other legal remedies, assess liquidated damages of up to $1,000.00 per occurrence of each such violation, and that such liquidated damages are reasonable."
    http://www.lightningcast.com/contact.php
  • Voxant (Thenewsroom.com)
    Voxant's TOS: "Impressions of content from Voxant's Newsroom must result from genuine user interest...You will not be paid for traffic generated by any of these methods." Requests to click for support = no genuine user interest = click fraud.
    http://www.thenewsroom.com/initiatives/contact_us
  • Booyah Networks (Spotxchange.com)
    Spotxchange's TOS: "Publisher will not authorize, permit, enable or engage in any of the following: (a) Publisher, its employees, contractors or agents...offering a user any inducement of any kind to generate Requests"
    http://www.spotxchange.com/spx_contact.html


12. Contact NetWinner's partners to express your disapproval at their continued support for NetWinner. Do not harass or badger these webmasters, but share with them your experiences and your concerns. Ask them to either pressure NetWinner to pay their members as they promised, or to disassociate themselves with the company due to its unethical behavior. A list of partner websites is available here. For many of the sites, if you remove the "moneywheel" or "banko" part of the domain name and add .com, that will take you to the parent website. Then look for a contact email.


13. Post your experiences with NetWinner on any and all websites that you can find. This will also impact search engine rankings and help get the word out to potential members or partners. Some possibilities:


14. Report NetWinner to the North Carolina Department of Crime Control and Public Safety, Alcohol Law Enforcement Division. The ALE is the agency responsible for handling violations of the state's gambling laws. "North Carolina law states that it is illegal for any person or organization who operates a game of chance or who plays or bets on any game of chance that involves winning money, property or anything of value shall be guilty of a Class 2 misdemeanor. GS 14-292." According to their website, you can call them at (919) 733-4060, or if you're in N.C., it's a toll-free call: 1-877-253-2436.


15. Inquire with the N.C. Department of Revenue about whether NetWinner LLC is paying its taxes. If the company has, as its press release states, "paid out more than $1.6 million in less than two years of operation," they would have had to have had income (or investment) in that amount. Did they pay taxes on that? If not, why? Or was this false advertisement? (See #4, Contact the FCC.) Department of Revenue contacts are here, or call their Criminal Investigations Division director at (919) 733-4799.


16. Help improve CompareRewards' search engine ranking for searches about NetWinner. If you have a blog, a website, even a MySpace page, add a link to your site that is titled NetWinner but links to http://www.CompareRewards.com -- you can do it in context, like, "Click here for information on NetWinner" (and highlight and link the word NetWinner to http://www.CompareRewards.com ). When multiple sites do this, it will bump up CompareRewards' results in searches for NetWinner, making it easier for potential new members (and concerned old ones) to find the site to access your comments and the latest NW news. Currently, CompareRewards is result #15 on Google. This linking trick may help bump my site to page 1 of the results. Potential new members can benefit from your experience, but only if they're able to access it easily.




If you were referred directly to this page by a friend, please visit CompareRewards.com for the latest news on NetWinner as well as news and reviews of other rewards programs and survey sites. Email the blogger here.

Posted by CompareRewards at 8:56 AM
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)