Entries
Your Financial Information is Worth More Than $25
Posted by Deamiter
April 12th, 2008
Blogging, Personal, Spending
I’ve seen a lot of blog posts offering $25 to sign up for Revolution Money Exchange. Revolution Money Exchange is attempting to compete with Paypal — the leading money transfer site which has been plagued by complaints of poor customer service and issues with frozen accounts. Revolution Money Exchange could significantly improve the quality of online money transfers, but in order to be successful they need volume. To combat the classic “chicken or the egg” problem where they need users to attract merchants and they need merchants to be useful for users, they’re offering $25 through April 15th.
Sorry, but I’m not biting.
There are a lot of referral programs out there — I especially like ING bank so I’d happily give referrals for their $25 sign-up bonus. I’d get a kickback of $10 and my friend would get involved with a service I know is worthwhile. I haven’t heard a single negative thing about Revolution Money Exchange, but I’ve noticed that there’s little mention on financial blogs of the downside of giving out information for small “rewards.”
You have to give out some pretty private information — not just your bank account, but your address, phone number and social security number! I’m not overly worried about identity theft, but I am very wary of giving my private information out to any company before I know I will be using their services! $25 is just not remotely worth the added risk of throwing your personal, financial information to a startup company you may never use.
The referral program is not evil.
Again, I have heard nothing bad about revolution money exchange. I do have an account at Paypal that I use very sparingly for ebay purchases, so I might sign up in the future if it becomes popular on ebay, but at once every six months or so, the remote risk of problems with Paypal doesn’t entice me. If you make a lot of purchases or sales on ebay — definitely consider this new service (and sign up now to get the $25)! I’m not offering referrals, but if you want to send kickbacks to other bloggers, by all means visit the sites linked above (you can also get the $25 without sending kickbacks if you’re feeling particularly cheap).
Similarly, if you would honestly use Revolution Money Exchange to settle the bill for pizza or to pay your babysitter (as advertised on the site) then by all means, sign up and get a few bucks back! Honestly, I love the idea, but I don’t know a single other person who I’d exchange money with so again, I’d just be selling my social security number for $25.
Bottom line — referrals are great, and I’m a big fan of bonuses for services I use. I have a cash-back credit card and first was attracted to ING by the referral bonus (as well as the great reviews). That said, $25 just isn’t worth the risk of throwing your personal information into yet another company’s servers. Wait until you know you’ll use the service — yeah, you might miss the limited-time bonus, but you definitely won’t risk your financial information unnecessarily!
I do a LOT of paypal transactions, and I pay a HUGE amount in fees. And I hate it. I have no idea if I will use RME - because it has to catch on enough for people to actually accept it - but the reason I signed up was because I decided that paypal without fees was an idea I want to get behind.
Yes, the referral bonus was enticing - and that is why companies (including ING) offer referral bonuses - to entice. The straw to get you to take the jump to do so, so to speak. I am hoping that enough people start using the service via referrals etc for it actually to compete with paypal.
I think saying “some bloggers are too quick to jump on the referral wagon for a quick buck” imho is pretty rude. I can only speak for myself, but there are plenty of referral programs I never participated in because I knew I would never use them - Lending Club for example, I could have gotten $25 for just signing up and $25 per person who signed up from my site, but I never did because I’m just not into peer to peer lending.
I want people to get free money.
I have long since run out of ING referrals but I spent the last three months hosting other people’s referrals on my site (with no profit to me whatsoever) so that the people landing on my site from searches could get their $25 bonus. I only discontinued it a few weeks ago because the referrals stopped being used. I’ll probably do it again once interest rates go back up. I like when my readers can get free money.
(speaking of which it seems my RME account referral bonus right now is messed up, I called them to look into it, so since the first day, I haven’t even gotten any bonuses. lol)
Posted on April 12th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
While the bonus is exciting, as are the referrals, I see this more as setting up a bank account that’ll let me exchange money easily and for free. I do freelance work, which equals lots of paypal (at least for me), which equals lots of losing 3%. Getting 100% of my money (not including taxes) is worth my financial info.
It may be naive of me to think this, but having a former secretary of the treasury, a former vice chairman of JP Morgan, former chairman & CEO of Fannie Mae, and former chairman and CEO of Mastercard International on their board of directors lends them at least a little credibility.
https://www.revolutionmoneyexchange.com/WebSite/AboutUs.aspx
Posted on April 12th, 2008 at 7:16 pm
@paidtwice I’m sorry you thought the comment was rude! That certainly wasn’t my intention, though I see why it could be taken that way. My wife would tell you that I’m horrible with getting that kind of implication, but my social ineptitude is no excuse. I’ll edit the sentence right away!
I’m concerned that with the twelve or so blogs I noticed discussing this company, not one suggested that it might not be a good idea to sign up solely for the money — in fact three or four suggested that “It’s not something you have to use to get the money…” apparently encouraging people to sign up just for the $25.
I thought I made it pretty clear that I’m not anti-referral and I support the company. I do see some bloggers who are very quick to jump on referrals of any sort — not at the money blog network certainly, but again, I didn’t think I’d even insinuated that the blogs I linked to were those that jumped on the bandwagon (you were just the easiest for me to find for some examples).
@ Mrs. Micah — I’ve followed some companies with directors with great resumes that bit the dust badly (just to make a point) but I agree, there is absolutely no reason to distrust the company (that I can see anyway). The company is credible and I hope they replace paypal or at least force paypal to be more customer friendly! It sounds like you are a perfect fit for the program — even using the service once a month would be easily worth the financial info in my opinion!
Posted on April 12th, 2008 at 7:41 pm