14DailyPlus back on my PTS List — Barely
Posted by rabbit on June 23rd, 2006
I finally got paid from this surf program last weekend, after several weeks of waiting. It seems the extra long wait was mostly my fault. They switched from e-gold to e-bullion and I did not upgrade my profile with my e-bullion information in order to get paid. I also did not update my other information such as my address, which were also required in order to get paid. After weeks of waiting, I decided to contact the guy that introduced the program to me since he claimed he was still getting paid. He sent me back an email tellimg me to check and make sure my profile was updated. A few days after updating my information, I received the payment to e-bullion.
So what did I do with the payment I received? I actually turned around and put it all back in the program. Some might think that I am crazy for doing this considering the fact that I had the program on hold for weeks, and waited quite a while to get paid. Here are some of the reasons why I decide to upgrade again and continue with the program:
1. Most of the delay in getting paid was my fault as I mentioned above. I did not keep abreast of the updates from the admin.
2. Others I know (who followed all the instructions) were paid several times while I was waiting.
3. While payments are very slow, everyone ends up getting paid eventually. The program pays a nice net profit of 40% after 10 surfing days, so I do not mind waiting an extra 20 days or so to get paid. Note that the official time frame in the Terms of Service stipulate that payments would be made within 7 business days, and they have been taking longer than that to pay.
4. The program is not as popular as some of the other well-known surf programs out there. Even though they began operations around March, they have only managed to gain about 4,800 members. Compare this number to Compactsurf which started around the same time and managed to rack up over 20,000 members. Although their growth has been stunted for months, they are still paying (albeit slowly). To me this indicate that they are getting funds from elsewhere. Either the admin is paying people from his own pocket, or they have investments generating some income as they claim. It is unlikely that they are paying people from new upgrades, because they are not a lot of new members joining to make new upgrades.
The decision I made is a bit contrarian. Payment problems and delays with Paid to Surf programs are usually a sign to run for the hills. However, sometimes you have to dig deeper and think outside of the box. The 14DailyPlus admin could have made up excuses and close shop as soon as they start to run into difficulties (just as Compactsurf did last week). Instead, he chose to stick around and make things work with the members that decided to stay with the program. I am impressed by this. Was I fool for upgrading again instead of running away? Only time will tell. For now, I am giving it a rating of C- (barely pass). The rating will be upgraded if/when they start to pay on time again.
For those of you that are interested, there is a recorded conference call that was done by the admin a few days ago here. I listened to it and was pleased with what I heard. However, I am usually not impressed by these type of calls as they are usually hyped up.
keywords: 14dailyplus | compactsurf