A cautionary story and warning from an ex-ChaCha guide: ChaCha is not good.

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I'll post my first discussion based around the events I've experience during the past weekend and few days involving my status and earnings at ChaCha as a master guide. Please go into this if you have intention of becoming a ChaCha guide, are a ChaCha guide already, or are simply an interloper with awareness of the rising and falling e-schemes of the internet. Pass it along to your circle of friends, and do my story and myself justice where I have been shown nothing but deceit. This is a story of such nasty things emanating from ChaCha and falling upon myself and my fellow guides.Thank you. If you have no knowledge of ChaCha, search for ChaCha in www.wikipedia.org. Alright, with those details cleared, I will begin. I have been a ChaCha guide for 3 months now, and have attained a ranking of Master. I did my work diligently and served their cause well, earning a nearly 500 dollars during my time there. All was for the most part well, until this past Friday. In an e-mail from the VP of ChaCha that came in my Gmail box, I was informed with a blunt and unhelpful reasoning that I had been permanently deactivated from being a guide at ChaCha. Finding great alarm at this, I replied to the e-mail and set up a date this past Monday to talk to the VP over the phone and to find what had happened. Eventually the phone call came to pass, and I was left with a horrid feeling as I discovered I would not be getting any of my $441.80 I had earned at ChaCha. When asked for any reason at all as to why I was being banned, I was informed this was all due to the occurrence of a single event that past Friday morning. Apparently I had accepted some number of searches, as per my job, which isn't strange until they found upon review that the searches all appeared to be coming from the same person. ChaCha took this as a scheme on my end to somehow wrangle the randomly assigned search system so I was guaranteed searches without having to wait for them to come to me. Based on that assumption, I was branded part of a monkey-making scheme in those early hours and swiftly deactivated from ChaCha. Now this is all very strange. I typically get on ChaCha around 4 AM to 6 AM to get the rush of UK searches that occur when my fellow guides are all offline and most likely sleeping. The same goes for anyone else I talk to. I work with no interruptions and I get a fine number of searches from the random assignment system anyways. So where was the scheme I had been involved in? ChaCha had no proof I was involved in anything past correlative evidence, and the correlation was based on assumption. I myself know of no way to cheat the system, I have no clue how a single person could manage to find a single guide amongst the thousands of other guides. But despite all of this, ChaCha played it out that I was involved with someone else and had them give me searches so I could quickly gain money off the system. Sighing, I asked how one event could be enough to cancel my entire three-month long membership under ChaCha. I was then told glibly that upon review of my search history, they had found a number of events that incriminated me further. I asked for an explanation. If I'm to be charged guilty, show me all of the evidence so I can defend myself, right? No, they bluntly said they would not go into detail. Ah, at this point I began to suspect there was really no other evidence against me. ChaCha was up to something. Were they padding their story to get rid of me easier, so they could reclaim all the money I had earned while working based on a few hours of strange activity? Reabsorbing my funds so they could easily distribute money around their ever growing and easily replaceable work force? Really ChaCha, you aren't that low...? But despite my personal reassurance that I was not part of a scheme, my reasoning that one event was not enough to cancel me fairly, and that if they reactivated me they would see nothing else would occur as I would keep a watchful eye of strange activity, then surely we could all be happy. I keep my job, and they could be happy treating their guides with fairness and gaining trust amongst their workforce for it by sentencing their guides fairly, correct? No, it was not to be as they said based on the actions of other, unidentified and never backed-up cases where they had supposedly reactivated accounts only to see the same strange activity happen again, then I would not be trusted or allowed back on. In fact, the VP had the gall to say I was given the benefit of a doubt and that was the only reason I had received a phone call and any explanation at all.. It was directly stated I was being given grace by ChaCha doing what is typically and certainly a given requirement termination at other business. Well, thank you ChaCha for lumping me in with others and honoring me with such respect. Alright, I tried to swallow my indignation and looked to what really mattered: the large sum of money ChaCha had in their system that I had earned and was in the process of transferring to my First Internet Bank account. They told me I would not be getting my $441.80. Instead they were now going to "research" my search sessions and see if I had actually earned any money at all, and in 30-60 days I could expect a check of any amount of money based on what they felt I had earned. They have never done this before, and it's not normal procedure. I think this is outrageous considering I nor anyone else will ever see this research/review process, and for all I know they could decide to give me any amount of money on their own whim. I was being treated like a convicted criminal nonetheless. All of this based on one event and the sudden appearance of a history of incriminating evidence that had not been there to alert them earlier. Taking all of what transpired over that phone call and e-mail in, I truly doubt they'll ever review my history. Most likely they're waiting two months to pass in the hopes I will forget I am owed money and they could forget to send it to me. They never went past sending me the short e-mail saying I was deactivated, never voluntarily told me why I was being kicked off or even not being paid in the first place until I dragged the answers out of them. If I had not replied to the e-mail, I would have been left with that simple message "Consider yourself permanently deactivated, thank you!" and nothing more. Is that not twisted? Yet the answers I got were even more fishy and seemingly pasted together. Why is ChaCha so ready to drop its guides? Its very unique element? Why do they only look to the bad to be seemingly proactive yet when you contact them for help or suggestions you never hear back from them? All of this raises some strange questions, and I have to admit over my time at ChaCha I've seen some pretty awful things. I will post the rest of what I've seen of ChaCha here when I'm able to copy and paste, but if you cannot wait to see it, please look to my blog for the rest of the story: blog.myspace.com/monkeymechx Thanks for reading.