May 15, 2009 "Offer" Talk, and Car of the Week

10:37pm by Cheechoo (Site)

Because of some recent issues from the new “Offers” page (buried underneath the donate page), we felt that we needed to talk about them a little bit. 1) to offer advice to users thinking about using it, and 2) to talk to you about why we chose this route.

Offers advice

1. Most Important: only do an offer if you are actually interested in it. ie: “Hey, there’s a Netflix offer here. I’ve been meaning to get an account. Might as well do it here and get some vDollars for it.” If you are uninterested in what they are offering, don’t do it. Or if you’re really bored and want to try a free offer (like a survey or something)

2. Do not ever give out your social security number to ANY WEBSITE aside from your bank, and perhaps if you are ACTUALLY applying for a yearly free credit report. Your sensitive information needs to be coveted, and you need to be careful with it.

3. If you are actually buying something through an offer, make sure the website looks legit, and there is that little lock icon on the bottom right of your browser, before you submit a credit card number, an address, or a phone number. Again – your sensitive information needs to be kept unless you are really purchasing something that you want.

4. There is a thread stickied on the “General vDream” portion of the vForum where people are posting up successful offers. Visit that thread, and if you were successful, post about it!

5. The offers are NOT run by vDream! If you do not receive your vDollars right away, wait 48 hours. After the 48 hours is up and you still don’t see it, go to the offers page and click on the “Offer Status” tab to see the status of your offer, then click on the link that says “Problem?” and submit a ticket to the 3rd party company from there. They are prioritizing support tickets that come from vDream. If you gave sensitive information or money, wait another two days and if there is no reply, then contact Cheechoo or Lijen through the vDream Support forum and we will personally contact the company. WE ARE ON YOUR SIDE.

Now, to talk about why we chose the route of using “offers”. vDream is a free site that costs a lot of money to run. Currently we are still burning money and we need revenue if we want to keep vDream running. If offers do well for us, we can continue releasing cars and parts and features, and if they do REALLY well for us, we might even be able to hire some help to increase the speed of our releases.

On a lighter note – the Freia garage is open! Go get one!

Car of the week: “Maxed out Saloon” with a sweet Takata Dome NSX look-alike, using one of the new sets of wheels!