Freepay (Currently Grade D legit) has FINALLY started shipping out some of their long overdue orders. (Namely the Xbox 360s) Users for other Freepay sites have been seeing a two month wait time or so from completion to receiving their product. The picture above is from my free Xbox 360 I received. It too was well over half a year to get! Freepay has been one of the top freebie companies for a long time but with their recent change to a 3 month time restriction to complete their sites, popularity of the company on our forum has bottomed out. 3 months just flies by. I let most of my accounts with them go the way of the dodo.

I hope that all this shipping is a sign that Freepay will be bouncing back some time and treating their users better. I understand that a multi million dollar company would need to have a time restriction on their site to be able to balance out their books. How about a year instead of 3 months? I think that would be a bit fairer.

Transcendent Innovations today announced a change in their referral requirements for their PS3 site. The announcement came after the availability and price details of the PS3, released at E3. The decision is expected by users, who are happy that those who have completed the requirements will not face the task of finding additional referrals. FreePay has made a similar move, raising the requirements to 12 referrals for the PS3 system. While it first appeared that FreePay would make users obtain the additional referrals, an announcement from our FreePay representative, Jake, today said that users who have completed the requirements will have to do nothing further to receive their items.

Date: May 15, 2006

Time: 16:00:00

Subject: Reward Catalog Changes

Message:

In response to official announcement of, the higher then expected, Playstation 3 price, we must revise the rates for the Playstation 3 system and packages on the site. Effective Thursday, May 18, 2006 at 12:00am Central time, the following rates will go into effect

Item Current Rate New Rate
Playstation 3 system 8 referrals 12 referrals
Playstation 3 Bronze Bundle 10 referrals 13 referrals
Playstation 3 Silver Bundle 12 referrals 14 referrals
Playstation 3 Gold Bundle 12 referrals 14 referrals

Paypal/Cash rates will remain unchanged. Any users that submit their account for review before the time of the change do qualify for the current rate (pending account approval during same submission).

Users who have already ordered their items are locked in at the current rates and are not required to take any further action to maintain their order.

It is a well known issue that FreePay has not been able to get a hold of any/enough Xbox 360s to ship out to their members waiting for them. So, they have begun offering $400 SuperCertificates (from GiftCertificates.com) instead of the Xbox 360.

For more information (on how to get yours), check out this forum posting.

New York’s attorney general sued an Internet company Thursday over the selling of e-mail addresses in what authorities say may be the biggest deliberate breach of Internet privacy ever.

Attorney General Eliot Spitzer accused Gratis Internet of selling personal information obtained from millions of consumers despite a promise of confidentiality.

The consumers thought they were simply registering to see a Web site offering free iPod music players or DVD movies and video games, Spitzer spokesman Brad Maione said. On sign-up pages, Gratis promised it “does not … sell/rent e-mails.”

Instead of confidentiality, Spitzer said, Gratis sold access to their e-mail information to three independent e-mail marketers, and hundreds of millions of e-mail solicitations followed.

In a statement, Gratis spokesman George Thompson said the allegations the company sold e-mail addresses to e-mail marketers, and that these companies purchased personal user information from Gratis, were “completely untrue.”

Thompson said Gratis hired Datran Media of New York City, a leading e-mail marketer, to manage “the logistics of marketing products and services via e-mail to Gratis’ own user base.” He said Datran or two other hired companies “at no time ever engaged in a sale or purchase of data.”

Gratis, based in Washington, D.C., always controlled and owned the users’ information and never profited from any sale of data, he said.

On March 12, Spitzer sued Datran Media, accusing it of using unauthorized personal data “mined” by other firms from about 6 million e-mail addresses nationwide. Datran agreed to reform its practices under a $1.1 million settlement.

“Unless checked now, companies that collect and sell information on consumers will continue to find ways to erode the basic standards that protect privacy in the Internet age,” Spitzer said.

Spitzer’s “data mining” investigation began last year amid reports of companies compiling and selling marketing lists.

Gratis owns and operates Web sites that offer free merchandise for registering their e-mail addresses. The state fraud lawsuit accuses its owners, Peter Martin and Robert Jewell, of privacy violations in 2004 and 2005.

Spitzer claims Gratis wrongly shared as many as 7 million “user records,” creating the largest deliberate breach of a privacy policy discovered by U.S. law enforcement. He said the company’s promises to consumers included: “We will never give out, sell or lend your name or information to anyone,” and “We will never lend, sell or give out for any reason your e-mail address or personal information.”

Over here at Anything4Free, we are watching and waiting, but hopefully they will get a settlement from Gratis and find out if the privacy of FreePay users was violated.

Source: CBS News 

Marketing company, Dartan Media, has recently been charged $1.1 million for violating websites’ privacy policies which protect user information. Dartan Media purchased 7.2 million Americans’ names, e-mail addresses, phone numbers and addresses from Gratis Internet.

Peter Martin, co-founder of Gratis Internet, has disputed the claims and has put complete fault on Dartan Media.

Gratis has had some problems with their prominently displayed Truste symbol. Truste.org monitors websites to ensure privacy protection. Gratis had the symbol on their websites for many months, until it was revoked, and then later reinstated. This move caused conjured much skepticism from the community.

Let this be a warning to users of free sites. Remember to do your research, and follow AT4F ratings to decide where to earn your free gifts.

See the complete Wired News article here.

FreePay has issued a new statement regarding their 90 day policy and the requirement of sending in a form once you have completed the requirements on a FreePay site. As you may recall, they were recently demoted to the grade of C here on A4F, as we felt that this move was unfair to users.

We’ve included a copy of this important statement below.

90 Day Policy Explanation

As you may have heard, anyone using a Gratis Internet site now needs to complete their offer — i.e., complete one offer themselves and have all their referrals’ offers completed — within 90 days of opening their account.

Here’s the background:

We instituted the 90-day change so that our operations would work in tandem with the way people actually use our sites. The bottom line is: You move fast and we want to do the same.

We did a survey and found that 93 percent of our users complete their offers within 90 days of opening their account — and a sizable majority of those users (about two-thirds) actually complete their offers within six weeks or less.

It seems that if you’re using a Gratis site to score a free iPod, or flatscreen or PlayStation 3 or whatever — there are 15 offers in all, check out freepay.com to see them all — you want to get the whole thing wrapped up pretty quickly — and that’s fine with us.

Another reason we’ve made the 90-day change is that, without having an ‘end date’ for accounts it was impossible for us to figure out where we were financially or to make accurate plans about ordering new goods to ship to our users. Sure, only about seven percent of our users had these never-ending (but never completed) accounts, but how many were going to finish the process and get their free item? None?, 10 percent?, 50 percent? More? Less? You get the picture… Too many loose ends — and none of them actually doing anyone any good. So we made the switch to a 90-day structure.

However, we wanted to make the change in a totally fair and aboveboard way. Rather than instituting some kind of retroactive approach — i.e., “Hey there, wanted to let you know your account has been cancelled!” — we decided to set the clock evenly for everyone.

As of March 1, 2006, and going forward, all accounts need to be completed within 90 days of being opened. If you have an older account, whether it was started a couple of months ago or several years ago, you have until June 1, 2006 (i.e., 90 days on from March 1) to complete your account. So far, no one seems to mind, as (like we said) the vast majority of our users complete their offers within 60 or so days, sometimes less. If you’re one of the few people who is disappointed by the change, then we’re sorry, but we hope you now see why the change needed to happen.

OK, thanks, talk to you later. Spread the word: Free stuff at freepay.com if you’re willing to do an online offer and refer friends who do the same.

With FreePay being demoted to grade C, other sites have recognized this as there opportunity to shine. Two new sites were launched today – and we can expect that more are on their way from other networks.

The first new site that came out today was planned for today, and ironically what a good day. The site is AnyGift4Seven.com, owned by Grade B owner Benjette.

The second and most recent is HotStuff.Free4Me.Net, launched just a few hours after the FreePay incident. The grade A site offers excellent referral rates and a new concept that rotates prizes offered on the front page to be only the latest and greatest gadgets (although the owner ensures the users that when the prizes rotate their gift will not need to be changed if it is no longer available on the front page).

With these two new sites, it looks like – although FreePay has made a serious mistake – other owners are happy to show that they can easily replace them.

Click here to sign-up and complete your offer for HotStuff.Free4Me.net and support Anything4Free!

Are you wondering where your free XBOX 360 is? Well, many Anything4Free users are, and the short answer is, if you are waiting on an XBOX 360 from FreePay, it’s not coming soon. FreePay has just posted a new announcement on the FAQ section of their XBOX 360 site stating the following:

Due to Microsoft’s extremely limited supply of the Xbox 360’s, we are unable to fulfill our customer’s Xbox 360 orders until the late February - March 2006 timeframe. We apologize for this inconvenience and thank you for you continued patience while we continue to work hard to fulfill your orders as soon as possible.

Jake also has posted the forums that the shortage is due to an issue on Microsoft’s end, not releasing enough copies of the system. However, many users are questioning why FreePay hasn’t sent out gift cards or some form of cash to those users that want it. FreePay however, is saying that at this time it will not be possible for giftcards or other forms of payment to be sent out, so that users can get their own XBOX 360’s sooner then the given time frame.

Transcendent Innovations, however, has managed to get their hands on their own set of XBOX 360’s for their 3604Free.com site (Which, incidentally, is currently leading the A4F awards as “Site of The Year”). Trainn has said that they have caught up on shipping to almost late November orders, well ahead of any such orders that FreePay has.

FreePay has been the leader of freebies for close to the past year, so many users are asking why the delays are happening with the XBOX 360’s. I’m sure many users are confident that FreePay will pull through, the question is just, when?

Click here to sign up for 3604Free.com and support Anything4Free!

Congratulations to several A4F users that have received their brand new laptops from FreePay’s Laptops Site! One user, cbrady, received a brand new Apple iBook, and proudly displays the Anything4Free Homepage on the screen. We appreciate his support, and congratulations on your new iBook!

Two other users (dudelovesfinch1035 & JesterFX) are receiving the Sony Vaio from FreePay’s laptops site, which features an Intel Pentium M processor of 1.73 ghz, and 512 megabytes of ram!

FreePay’s laptops site just recently started approving and sending users STV. We can only hope that FreePay’s XBOX360 site also begins shipping soon, as users have recently become concerned over the longer wait times. FreePay has said that the shortage from Microsoft has not allowed them to ship any 360’s, but let’s hope they can started getting them out the door like they have with these brand new laptops! Congratulations guys, and let’s hope we are able to see more great laptops from FreePay make their way into the hands of A4F users!

Click here to sign up and support Anything4Free, or click here to join the conga!

On FreePay’s website, they say that they have shipped over 10 million dollars in free stuff! Well, one Anything4Free member, kday, is order number 500,000 on FreePay’s iPod Shuffle website!

There has recently been a discussion regarding this in the forums, and it appears that the site order numbers are consecutive, as FreePay’s order numbers continue to rise about 500,000 on other sites. Congratulations kday, and this marks yet another momentous occasion in the history of not only FreePay, but in freebies overall.

Let’s hope that we will all soon see the day where FreePay ships it’s 1,000,000 order!

Click here to join the discussion in our forums!