Letter from Netwinner Prez (No one else is going to get their cards)
By icyorchid
@icyorchid (2564)
United States
May 12, 2008 4:03pm CST
I got this from another group I am in.
To our loyal Players:
As President & COO, I want to take this opportunity to communicate
candidly about the current status of our site and our plans for moving
forward in 2008 and beyond.
Since the launch of NetWinner in June of 2006, we have had the
pleasure of giving away over $1.5 million in cash and prizes to over
20,000 lucky winners. Over that time, we have worked hard to provide
new features, new ways to win, and improve our Players' experience.
Unfortunately, we have also spent much of our last two years
attempting to improve how we police fraudulent users who not only
defraud us, but also defraud all of our honest Players. Our most
recent statistics show that over 40% of Players redeeming for prizes
have violated our Terms of Service sometime before redemption. We are
truly saddened that such a significant number of fraudulent users have
impacted our legitimate Player's winnings and our business at these
levels.
During the last six months, we have also experienced ongoing technical
and business issues with our outsourced fulfillment provider of debit
cards.
These two major issues have become virtually insurmountable in
ensuring the prompt fulfillment of prizes. As a result, we have been
forced to temporarily suspend our debit card redemption option as we
pursue new options for points and prize redemptions.
But more importantly, like many other businesses and households, we
have also been experiencing the challenges of the recent economic
downturn. Together with the tightening of credit markets, this has
significantly affected our revenue and our ability to take on
additional debt required to continue to grow our business.
These realities forced our management team and investors to make
difficult choices. We had two options: shut the company down, or make
adjustments to our business model that would allow us to move forward
in new ways – with new games, new prizes, and new ways to win. The
second option would allow Players to continue to have opportunities to
win cash and prizes, and for us to remain a destination site for
casual gamers on the Web.
We have chosen to make necessary changes and move forward in new ways.
But this choice is not without consequences – both to our Players and
to our company. We are acutely aware that these changes may be
unpopular with our Players and may even cause some Players to stop
playing our games. For that I apologize personally.
But for thousands and thousands of others, we will remain one of the
most lucrative casual game sites on the Internet, continuing to give
away over $50,000 in prizes every month.
Our new model will no longer be a "rewards" based model, as many have
come to perceive it. That is, time spent on our site is not directly
correlated with an amount of money "earned". As a casual game site,
our model will be more in line with other popular casual game sites.
Players can earn instant cash wins as always and points may be
redeemed for cash and prize drawings on a daily, weekly, and monthly
basis. This levels the playing field for all our Players and
substantially limits the ability of fraudulent users to convert points
into cash.
To best address the current fraud and operational challenges I've
outlined, all existing redemption points for debit cards that have not
been fulfilled will be doubled and refunded into each Player's
account. For example, if an individual redeemed 25,000 points toward a
debit card, 50,000 points will be deposited back into their account.
These can now be redeemed for entries into any of our growing list of
cash and prize drawings.
By mitigating the amount of fraud we experience, we have revisited our
policies that were designed and deployed to reduce that fraud. We are
now able to dramatically increase and vary the number of daily plays
allowed on our games and provide more frequent multipliers and other
new promotions with even more new ways to win.
We have also modified our fulfillment policy moving forward. All cash
daily drawings will be fulfilled in 30 days or less, and all other
prizes, including prize drawings and instant cash wins, will be
fulfilled within 60 days. We recognize that the delays that occurred
in the past were a major source of frustration for our Players.
As we have been making strategic decisions and directions changes at
our headquarters, we have not broadly disseminated them with all of
our staff and volunteer moderators for confidential business reasons.
Please understand that our support staff performed as best they could
with the information provided them. Realizing that we have not
performed as best we could in supporting our Players' requests, we
have put new customer support processes and staff in place to improve
our relationships with our Players. Our staff can be reached during
normal business hours in the Eastern Time Zone at support@netwinner.com.
We have made these decisions for the benefit of all our Players as
well as the employees and partners of our company. Companies must
constantly adapt and evolve as operating conditions change. It was
necessary for us to do the same.
It is our hope that these changes will create a more fair and exciting
casual game environment for our existing and future Players who come
to our site. I speak for our entire staff when I send my thanks to all
our loyal Players for their commitment and support.
Best regards,
S. Allen Dean
President & COO
5 people like this
5 responses
@scarlet_woman (23463)
• United States
12 May 08
pft.i think i'm done.i never won anything in all the time i've been there except one $25 card they never redeemed.what's their next excuse gonna be?
@FlaKNMB (831)
• United States
31 Jul 08
Thanks for sharing this valuable information, icyorchid. I'm sad that NetWinner is no longer able to pay out gift cards. I enjoyed getting them for playing games. I never could understand how they could make money with their site. Where was the income coming from? They say they paid out $1.5 million in cash and prizes. They'd have to make a whole lot of income to keep that up. Personally, I don't think they have scammed anyone. I don't think they ever intentionally set out not to pay anyone. I think they had a great idea that turned out not to be viable. I'm afraid this will happen more often as our economy sinks, so I'm cashing out as soon as I can at sites like Memolink and My Points rather than save up for a bigger amount.
@fungurly1 (180)
• United States
31 Jul 09
After about an year waiting for card I desided that I was done with the website. This doesn't surprise me at all.