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Paid.vg failure

 

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Article by Phil 

One of the biggest disappointments in the PTC industry so far has been Paid.vg simply because the site had a perfect setup to begin with but then rapidly started to become unreliable. The owner of Paid.vg (Alex) was probably not the best person to be running a PTC and here is why.

When he decided to change the TOS so that payment requests could only be made on the 22^nd of each month he wasn’t even around to pay the members once that first 22^nd had come. This of course sparked a bit of a riot and produced a lot of hype that the site is a scam site. This was also the fault of the owner because he failed to release a statement until 3 days later.

When he finally got round to sorting the payments most of them were made a few weeks after the request form had been fixed which was then on the 26^th. The payment date was then changed to the 25^th of every month. This went on for another month where the first successful payment request day was made.

This would be the last month as on Friday the 25^th of April the owner announced on the site that it was closed and that only outstanding purchases will be refunded leaving our tester and many others without their earnings. It is likely that the owner was going to do business as usual but then decided to give up when noticing there wasn’t enough money for the amount of payout requests.

It’s important not to confuse this site with as scam because it is more of a failure and there is a difference. However the intentions of the owner here are not good as he should have faced up to his responsibility and closed the site after people’s accounts had been paid off and closed down regardless of the wait.

What makes us believe he is not taking responsibility for the failure of this site is that on the sites closing message he puts all the blame on the PTC business model and takes a pot shot at bux.to. Totally in no position to say anything about other sites longevity or even comment on the business model.

This site did not fail because of the PTC business model. This site failed because the admin failed at running it which is the reality of the situation. After speaking to the owner he seemed to think it was all to do with the fact that his ads didn’t make him any money and that it will happen to anyone else’s PTC site.

At Paid.vg the ads were not the best ads for high conversions and the site missed out on many hot product affiliate programs at ClickBank. Such products are commonly found on most major PTC sites along with regular paying advertisers thanks to their higher efforts into self promotion.

So the not only were payouts a problem here but referral purchases would go undelivered for weeks along with upgrade requests. All these are a PTC sites biggest source of income and because they were not delivered for so long it is no wonder sales decreased here causing a money shortage. On a PTC site you have to make sure you deal with these requests as quick as possible or at least tell the requester if there is a shortage of referrals. As for the ignored upgrade requests there is no excuse.

Simply because the owner had failed to be more vocal when the first 22^nd payment date was missed the sites reputation had really taken a beating which also caused a lack of upgrade requests which is one of the worst things that can happen to a PTC site. Now the owner has started a site called buxup.com which looks identical to the site bux.to for some odd reason.

It seemed the owner had high hopes for this site to begin with but judging by the message left on Paid.vg it looks like the owner has just as little enthusiasm for this site too. We think it’s fair to say the PTC industry just isn’t the industry for Alex. For a PTC site to be successful those behind it have to work as much as anyone would in an offline job but here it seems Alex was only around every other day and still expecting good results. Until the members who had amounts above the minimum payout are paid Alex is still in the wrong.

 

Paid.vg Update

Method: PTC

Go to website

 

Paid.vg started out as a very promising PTC site with a clean design. The popularity of the site was raising rapidly right from the start and in a very short space of time hit the same popularity level as AdverCash.net. There was nothing unusual about paid.vg at this time (then known as Paid.nu) until some rapid TOS changes came into play. The first change was set pay request days meaning you could only request payment on the 22^nd day of every month.

This seemed like a measure introduced to deal with the mass payout requests that were starting to build up. Prior to this change we had received a payment from the service which was around $30.00 arriving 4 days after request which seemed fine and made it a debatable unnecessary move for them to change the system.

Once the changes had been made it took about another month before the first 22^nd date would come and when it did they let all the members down. On the day of the 22^nd of February everyone expected to be able to request their payments but all that was found on the request page was just that very text reading you can only request payment on the 22^nd which remained them for the rest of the day.

Of course this started a bit of a riot in their forum which was largely due to the fact that the main admin of the site was not releasing any statement leaving the members angered and the forum moderators under pressure to get the admin to respond. There was a lot of talk that the main administrator was on holiday which didn’t quite cut it as a good excuse given the promise made on the 22^nd.

 

It wasn’t until the 26^th that the error was fixed giving people the ability to request their payments. As a precaution we dropped their rating from a respectable +7 down to -5 also stripping them of the UOB seal of approval which is deliberately a hard thing to earn for reasons of making it a real sign of quality. The -5 was wrongly perceived as a confirmed scam warning by the moderators when in fact it served as a strong advisory given that the admin had not released a statement.

Once the 26^th came and the payout requests were back on track we raised the rating but only to 0 and vowed to keep it there until we could see that they would not make such a mistake again for the next 2 months. Within this time of observation we saw that not only were people having problems with payouts but many were not receiving their referrals after purchase.

This could just be that there is a shortage of un-referred members which is pretty common and can happen quite easy on any PTC site. This would be acceptable but only if people were given this reason by the admin but yet again the admin of Paid.vg failed to release any statement. This silence has not worked out well for the admin and has only served to tarnish the reputation of the site as a poor service with a lazy owner. It simply seems to be the case that the admin is almost never there or simply lacks the enthusiasm to communicate with the members.

To the present day it seems there is no end to the troubles with the service here as now the majority of payout requests have been manually stopped by the owner causing yet another near riot on the forum. Prior to this event it was noticed that on the news section of the site the admin had admitted the service had failed to deliver on many of its dead lines but that the service is committed to improving this service in future.

This honesty seemed quite a relief and made the idea of the recent mass stoppage in payouts unthinkable. It would seem somewhere along the line Paid.vg could just be victim of shoddy service from AlertPay, we all know the current payment processors in the industry are vastly sub-standard services with member support and illogical restrictions. Unfortunately Paid.vg hasn’t officially stated what their situation with AlertPay is other than some hints on the forum.

The givens here is that Paid.vg is a struggling site which locked potential. It is clear there are reasons behind much of the delays at paid.vg but until they come clean about what those things are it leaves the door open for the possibility that they just aren’t trying. All it would take is for the main administrator to take a stand, get vocal and tell everyone exactly why the delays are there.

Until we see this responsibility taken up we are still unconvinced that they are making enough effort.

 

Feb 26, 2008

Paid.vg update & Understanding the rating process

Article by Phil

 Different people have their favourite PTC sites and money making products which is evident when people get collectively bitter about a bad rating. The prime example is the recent situations at Paid.vg which caused people to email us about lowering their rating and when the situation subsided we then had the same people demanding we raise it. We can only take public opinion so far as the end results really depend on what the facts are.

Paid.vg first lost their +7 and UOB approval for missing the 22^nd payment deadline without issuing a reason within good time which mean there was no money coming from the site and no money = 0. They then stalled again by promising to pay people on the 25^th but this didn’t happen as they had put up a verification process that put peoples at risk of ID theft. That action caused them to hit the rating of -5 for delaying the payments further and simply asking for something a PTC should never ask.

In the wake of the events the site itself as clearly become very bitter about its reduced ratings and accused us of calling them scam and starting allegations which means rumour spreading. The reason they are wrong is because a -5 does not stand for scam and our investigation had all its facts presented to us by the very site itself making it a very factual investigation.

If anyone has read a review of a site with a -10 rating they will probably have noticed that it is the only minus rating number that says scam. This is because the -10 rating is the only rating that shows a confirmed scam as a last resort via factual evidence. Anything below +1 is classed as an advisory which requires more careful consideration when signing up to a site and an incentive for the site in question to improve.

 

Now Paid.vg has ditched its bad verification idea and opened up the standard payment process as it should have done on the 22^nd. They now demand the rating to go up as far as it went down which is fair enough. The 22^nd to the 26^th was a bad delay caused not by the quantity of members but bad decisions from the site owner.

The forum administrators themselves seemed very over stretched on the date of the first incident and left by the site owner to clean up the mess. Today they are very vocal about the recent troubles and probably not handling it as professionally as they originally were. Many of the members which seemed on the verge of a riot are now instantly thankful that they are now able to do what they should have been doing on the 22^nd.

2 members commented that UOB are ignorant to not downgrade bux.to and only downgrade Paid.vg which is becoming an old rant. It seems that those two in particular would rather we base our ratings on rumour rather than investigation and decide to spread rumours themselves with the old “UOB is bribed by bux.to because they have an ad there”. Wouldn’t you want to advertise on a site with 2.5 mil members?

If we didn’t investigate our stories properly and purely based our ratings on speculation Paid.vg would have probably hit -10 this week which would have been misleading since they didn’t scam people even though it looked like they might. With no evidence that they had actually tried to scam people with ID theft they of course didn’t hit -10. We would also lose a lot of credibility if we suddenly decided to downgrade sites that have payment delays caused by high demand. Our investigations at bux.to show us that they are not deliberately delaying payments but more a direct result of having those 2.5 million members.

The problem with Paid.vg is they caused their own delays with bad communication between staff and poor research into what is an acceptable verification process. As much as it is evident that they are now trying to smooth over these cracks they were reluctant to issue statements to public in good time as the incidents unfolded.

Now that people finally have their payments in audit we can now decrease the advisory back to 0 and the rest will depend on how they do business in future and if they can prove to the members that they will stay on track with no more nasty surprises.

Feb 25, 2008

STOP!

Do not give out your ID

Preventative fraud warning

 

After the recent fiasco at Paid.vg with their missed payment deadline they have set the 25^th to be the payment date. The Paid.vg owner did not provide a reason for the failure but was clearly trying to regain peoples trust that they would payout on the 25^th which is today. As we have a night time test on this we found that as soon as the clock hit 25^th the message preventing payout was still there which shows us there have been further delays.
 On top of every other delay so far we now hit an impossible one. When clicking request payout today at Paid.vg you will see they have put up a new verification process that requires you to give the Paid.vg owner sensitive information about your identity as they is “apparently” needed to check for cheaters.

 

 

DO NOT "FOOL" FOR IT, the information your being requested to send includes a photo ID and any other form of documented ID such as a pass port or gas bill. If you read the signs you will know that AlertPay does not even request such information and nor does any other PTC site. So why is this guy trying to get your ID?

Speaking from experience the year before I worked for UrOnlineBiz.com I was a victim to ID theft which saw my personal account go into overdraft and in the space of a day I was getting phone calls of various online shops asking my to confirm my orders for various goods I had not purchased myself. It was then found that someone using my ID had purchased a PS3 from a Liverpool England address however it then emerged that a camera was purchased in my name from London. The police were unable to find the perpetrators but thankfully my bank held the policy to compensate me for the losses and provided me with a new bank ID.

The problem was I couldn’t remember or find out where I had given my information away which could have caused such fraud to happen to me. Here is different though since anyone who gives the requested information to the Paid.vg owner is giving the owner the ability to steal your ID. It seems very hard to find any credible contact information with their owner and lets face it his reputation isn’t good enough to warrant your personal information.

Our message is simple in this case. Do not put yourself at risk by giving away your ID to a PTC site that has no proof of registry, company address or clean record. If you are desperate to get your hands on the money you have made at Paid.vg as yourself this, would you rather have that money instead of the money that is in your personal bank account? If you have already given the requested details to Paid.vg we strongly recommend you contact your bank and request a change of details such as a new bank number.

We drop the paid.vg rating again from the now 0 to -5 for asking for information off it members that puts them at risk of ID theft plus again failing to provide a straight out payout as planned. As far as we are concerned they have again missed their payout deadline. Apparently those who have sadly fallen for this already were at least able to tell everyone that even the verification process isn’t working which means your details will still be taken but you still won’t get payout. The only way they can fix their failing position is to stop stalling and pay the members just as any other reliable PTC site would.

Feb 23, 2008

Paid.vg break own TOS!

UOB seal of approval and ratings are removed from Paid.vg.

Method: PTC

Go to website

 

A few weeks back Paid.vg changed there policy regarding payment. The changes were that standard members could only request payment on the 22^nd of each month. The main reason they made it this way is to get higher numbers of premium members which is ok as long as they stick to their promise. Unfortunately they didn’t and yesterday the message on the payout page reading you can only request payment on the 22^nd was still there preventing any payments from being made by standard members.

Unreliably they missed their own specified payment date breaking their own terms. This instantly forced us to remove our UOB seal of approval from paid.vg and down rate the site to 0. Its standard practice that any site that has absolutely no payment option can earn no higher than a 0 rating as there is of course no money made at the site. Checking the forums on Paid.vg we can see that it has sparked a frenzy of topics regarding their failed promise to pay the members on the 22^nd.

The forum moderators at Paid.vg have no means to control the website itself and are just there to moderate the forum. They seem to have as much contact with the owner of the site as anyone else. This has left these hard working moderators to deal with the mess but one has still stated that people will be paid when the site owner is back. Weather they will eventually pay or not the owner wrecked the sites progress by this shoddy missed deadline. Time is money in this industry and people should not have to wait on a site owner who can’t meet his own deadlines.

Looking at the history of Paid.vg is far from the constant rise of bux.to. Paid.vg has been up and down having started well but only to hit troubles a few months after it opened. The problems were again related to the site owner failing to contact members who emailed him. Many people were finding problems with their earnings and needed support however the site owner would ask for their account information weeks down the line which seemed suspicious. That incident cost them a rating at UOB and it wasn’t until a few more weeks after that the owner came to us trying to make amends and prove that communication had improved at the site.

Since then paid.vg had been doing fine until they changed there terms to payments on the 22^nd only. This concludes that the owner of Paid.vg is too unreliable and a poor communicator. The forum tells us that he may have been on holiday but was apparently meant to have been back 5 days ago. The moderators of the forum are still fighting for his attention but to no effect. The PTC industry has always had a wounded reputation due to the numbers of scam PTC sites that wreck its progress. This causes the members of Paid.vg to be naturally suspicious that they will never get their payment and it is something the moderators must expect.

If it turns out that the Paid.vg owner never pays up it will be a big blow to an industry that is in some real need of a clean reputation. As testers of this site we are also currently waiting on a payout of around $70.00 which shows just how far this site has come before tripping up. The progress they were making did indeed earn them the UOB seal of approval back then as the fact remains people have been paid here before, including us. Their Alexa rank also provided everyone with a picture of a site that was on its way to the top. This also shows us that any scam here is never going to pay off as good as sticking at it and improving the site.

We remove the UOB seal of approval and down grade this site from +7 to 0 for breaking a crucial dead ine and failing its members.

 

Paid.vg

 

Method: PTC

 

Go to website

 

After the recent troubles PayPal has been causing for the PTC industry by limiting PTC master accounts it has caused most PTC sites to switch to using AlertPay which is surely going to make PayPal feel like a bit of a nitwit losing so much business. Paid.vg is one of the PTC sites that have made the move to AlertPay.

With paid.vg on AlertPay there will be no silly restrictions on earnings which is great as this particular PTC site is currently the second highest performer we have tested. Since we have used the service we have found plenty of regular $0.01 ads here which over time have really built up on our account. We also find that referrals are incredibly active here so we have never had to ask for replacements.

The fast rising popularity of this site could have a lot to do with why the referrals are so active here as every week paid.vg seems to take a gradual rise on their popularity chart. The PayPal issue did however cause them to dip slightly but this is no different from anywhere else. The prices of ads and referrals here have always remained good value for money and with the speedy earnings that can be achieved here the ad converter is always useful too.

We would recommend Paid.vg for advertisers looking for good value packages that will achieve results as the conversion rate is said to be very impressive here according to those who have used the ad packages here and posted on forums about it as a testimonial or recommendation. The forum itself on Paid.vg is filling up with proofs of payments and success stories that far out weigh any complaints or technical help rants.

 

Performance

The performance has not dropped at all here since we first set up an account. Every time we have come back to review this site we find we have gained an extra $10 since our last review. Of course clicking your own ads here does wonders for your account with their high performance ads but the referrals are what really make this service worth it. We here a lot of very impressive earnings made at bux.to but it should be just as easy to gain those high earnings here after purchasing the referrals and maybe upgrading.

 

Conclusion

There is no question about it here, Paid.vg is a clearly a susses story itself. We are very pleased with the performance and the earnings we have gained here so far. We have been paid by this site ourselves already so we have a lot of trust in it. Not long after our first payment we had already made the same amount we had when we first cashed out.

Paid.vg earns the rating of +7 for high performance and reliable payouts.

Jan 8, 2008

Paid.vg update!

Method: PTC

Go to website

 

It has been a while since we reviewed paid.vg after they had a few slip ups with communication between their members and administrators around the time they changed from paid.nu to paid.vg which meant their rating had slipped from +5 to +3. However recently the administrators seem to have settled with their new servers and work is starting to rise in progress there as it should. The administrator of paid.vg finally contacted us about site updates that are what all successfully rated PTC sites do as it shows enthusiasm and they don’t lie.

The administrator told us of the improvements to the service so we complied to take another look at this potential leading PTC site. While paid.vg was setting about its improvements we also gained our first payment from the site which gave us the ultimate proof that they do pay. The payment was only delayed for a very short time which is understandable as paid.vg has gained members at a quicker rate than most long running medium PTC sites that haven’t progressed much.

Right from the get go when this site was called paid.nu it seemed they had got the balance right by observing how bux.to started and following in their foot steps without copying them down to a “T”. One thing that shows this site is going to be moving with the time is by implementing live support which seems to be the new thing with the largest PTC sites as questions are answered more or less straight away without leading to a mountain of back log.

One thing that has always impressed us about paid.vg is their terms and conditions page which is probably the best written TOS in the PTC industry. They avoided using the wording “delete your account for any reason” and actually wrote what the only reasons could be in such a situation which looks much more professional and fair.

Advertising is still thankfully very cheap here too with a 1000 ads worth $9.40 which is incredibly generous given this websites rate of progress. This site is almost as far from a low weight PTC as bux.to and we would say this site in time should be in 2^nd place when looking at the industry as a whole. To see their current position we take a look at their Alexa chart

 

Performance

 

As the chart shows we can see that Paid.vg are starting to rise in progress again and are starting to reach the level of AdverCash.net which has had a slower rate of climb within a 6 month period. This is largely due to the cheap advertising on paid.vg combined with their many $0.01 ads.

As a comment of interest observe how the peaks and falls of each site are almost mimicked from the start of December. This “phenomenon” if you like is simply due to the word spreading around the industry about paid.vg which means the same people who use AdverCash and other long running PTC sites start to use the new site resulting in similar usage rates.

Evaluation

Paid.vg is clearly back in action and a simple visit to their forum will show you a growing community of many satisfied members who have been paid along with us. So far we have been paid $39.00 and have already gained another $9.00 largely thanks to very active referrals here. If you spend a lot of time in other PTC sites forums with your referral link as a sig you do eventually see the rewards as this was our tactic here.  

The performance is still there and the cheap prices but now they have a bonus of improved member support which means we are pleased to announce paid.vg are back at the rating of +5

Paid.nu or Paid.vg

 

Method: PTC

 

A couple of weeks ago we reviewed Paid.nu which instantly impressed us with their implementing of $0.01 ads combined with some highly active referrals thanks to a good push with its self promotion campaigns. The site seem to rise fairly fast on the Alexa chart right from its inception as the word was spreading that paid.nu could be the next bux.to or high performer. Despite the hype it had never risen above the likes of advercash or clixsense. 

 

There is no getting away from the fact that the progress it was making was rapid for a PTC site and the business was doing great with quick earnings for most members. Our journalist who tested the service found that within 2 weeks he had already gained 17 referrals and had $12.00 in his account which was very impressive.

 

Paid.nu were also very open about providing proof of payments to show the service is legit and so it looked set that this site would eventually gain one of the highest UOB ranks and probably earn the mark of approval. However the progress started to buckle slightly in the weeks after our review one factor being the administrator had ceased replying to any emails we sent. Then the big change came when the site went down for a day and came back as paid.vg.

 

Paid.vg didn’t seem to be working as well as promised on the down time message which read that paid.vg would hold a much faster server than the old paid.nu variant. This turned out to be the opposite in reality as the website had never been slower. We then noticed another server change was taking place which seemed to fix the speed issue however it was at this point we noticed some dodgy things were happening.

 

On the forum of paid.vg you will find a very active community of many members who are no strangers to PTC sites. One individual from this community wrote that the administrator had contacted them explaining that their account information had been lost in the server swap and that they needed to have the log in and pass word to see what was wrong on their account. The individual was having none of this and decided to place a citizen’s scam warning on the forum detailing what the administrator had asked of the member.

 

Of course it may well be the case that information could have been lost during a server swap however no business should ever have to ask for members pass words in order to log into their accounts. It just comes down to the age old rule of never give out your pass word. We would have been able to find out more about the administrators side of this case but then again we never get a response here.

 

 

As you can see from the chart paid.nu which seems to be still running is on a totally different ranking rate than the new paid.vg which begs the question why even bother to change it? What ever the case may be we don’t want to see this website crash and burn. It’s vitally important that the administrator keeps the service legit as going by the progress its making no scam would be of any benefit to the owner in the first place. 

 

Purely because we have had no response of the administrator and given this confusing name swapping situation we are down grading its UOB rank from a healthy +5 to +2. We hope that the administrator can get it back on track and earn a rank better than it’s previous.

 

 

Paid.nu

Method: PTC

 Go to Paid.nu website

 

We reviewed paid.nu a while back after hearing of some high performance benefits that come with the service. After another review we find they have kept their high performance progress since the last review which is great to see. We are noticing proof of payments and very active referrals. The balance is already at $7.00 making it easier for us to test if their pay us. The ads remain generally $0.01 which is working great for the amount of ads they display for even non premium members.

People are already asking us weather they should purchase referrals here and we cannot see why not given the amount of success people are claiming from using this PTC. In such a short time this fairly new PTC site has pushed its way to the front runners and is gaining members at a rapid rate.

Unfortunately they still haven’t improved their terms and conditions page with their flawed policy on terminating accounts without a reason. Hopefully they will reword this soon as it would give them the edge on the other leading PTC sites to have it corrected.

 

Performance

We had another 7 ads to click the second time we reviewed this site which shows they are keeping their advertisers happy and promoting their own service well. The referral system is working great as lots of people are making the most of a new heavy weight site which means most of the members here are very fresh and active.

 

Evaluation

After observing Paid.nu for some time we have seen they have increased their performance and proof of payments are increasing in their forum with enough to give us the chance to rate it. So weather you are looking to invest some to get yourself going here or not its defiantly worth signing up and making the most of this strong new PTC site.

For high performance and payment proof we give paid.nu the rating of +5

 

Paid.nu

Method: PTC

 Go to Paid.nu website

 

Paid.nu got our attention when we saw how many advertising packages they do. They do not have the best prices though as its $0.99 for only 50 ads and a staggering $39.00 for 2000 views which is one of the worst prices seen so far for 2000 views. In their referral purchase area they are also following this usual trend of having lots of package options. You can purchase as few as 5 referrals here for $5.40 all the way up to 500 referrals for $445.

These prices might suggest someone has done their home work on how to compete with giants such as bux.to. Having lots of options is what gives this new PTC a head start and apart from the high advertising prices everything else so far is looking refreshingly packed with potential. The upgrade to premium membership here seems to mimic that of the bux.to upgrade as they are offering 20 guaranteed ads a day for $55.00 for a whole year.

Line 6 of their terms of service is where they mess up this progress with as they made the noob mistake of including the flawed term “delete your account for any reason” It’s a shame they didn’t just list what the reasons are because they now look like they too are saying they have the right to scam you before you reach payout.

Performance

7 ads to click on the first day which is good as all the ads are $0.01 here and it must be added that its 100% with your referral down line. This means you get an extra $0.01 for every ad your referral clicks. Something that should give ads a bit of a kick if you upgrade here is they are actually worth $0.015 for any ad you view. Of course this is a small extra figure but it’s always nice to have something else to build up.

Evaluation

We should be rating this site soon after we have contact with its administration. Its looks as if they have got the balance right by aiming high for their competition and it’s always good to see new heavy weight PTC sites arrive. It will be interesting to see how this new heavy weight PTC does with numbers of members over the