Fraud still rampant in Zeekler’s penny auctions?
After confirming that hundreds of thousands of dollars in fraud had occurred through Zeekler back in mid February, Zeek Rewards put out a press release advising its members that the company had implemented some ‘extra fraud detection measures‘ to deal with the problem.
Zeek Rewards claimed that
thieves have used hundreds of stolen credit card account numbers to create fake customers.
They then those stolen cards to purchase retail bids to earn the 20% commission. They request to be paid the commission by STP or AlertPay.
By the time the owners of the stolen credit card number contact us or their bank, the commissions have already been paid to these thieves.
Also admitted was that Zeek Rewards had no recourse to recover the funds paid out to these “thieves”. Ultimately it would be Zeek Rewards members who would take the hit as the hundreds of thousands paid out due to fraud would be deducted from the company’s daily profit share.
So anyway, that was back in mid February 2012. A month and a half later you’d assume that Zeek Rewards was free of fraud… right?
Wrong. Well, that’s if a quick perusal of some of Zeekler’s more recent penny auctions are anything to go by.
One of the more dubious types of auctions made available on Zeekler are the cash auctions. Members essentially gamble in the sense that they hope they are the last to make a bid… with the winner taking home actual cash.
The current auction numbers are in the 22,900’s so all of these auctions have wound down within the last week.
Auction #1 is $100 in cash:
You can see that it is a ‘Retail Paid Bid’ auction, meaning that no free bids are allowed. Each retail paid bid costs 65 cents.
The winner won the auction by placing a whopping 1,241 bids. At 65 cents a bid, that comes in at 806.65. Add on the final auction price of $58.77 and ‘angielieu’ paid $865.42 for $100 cash.
Does that sound like a legitimate penny auction to you? To give you an idea of just how abnormal this particular auction is, another $100 cash auction went for just $5.49.
Auction #2 is for $150 cash:
Once again, ‘angielieu’ wins the auction… by placing 1,574 retail paid bids.
At 65 cents each plus the final auction price of $43.05, this equates to $1066.15 being paid for $150 cash.
And on and on it goes…$100 cash going for $482.47:
And it’s not just Zeekler’s cash auctions that look dodgy either. Here’s a Zeekler member paying $214.86 for a $75 Walmart giftcard:
Again Zeekler member angielieu purchases a dinner set with a retail value of $354 for a suspicious $609.61:
With the ‘send me cash option’, I can’t help but wonder if angielieu took the cash or the actual dinner set.
Now of course like everybody else I’ve heard the ‘but people just like to gamble… it’s addictive and they love penny auctions!’ argument but cmon guys, we’re talking people paying hundreds of dollars over the retail price here.
Keep in mind these are paid bids and cannot be obtained other than being purchased from Zeekler at 65 cents a pop.
Zeek Rewards might very well have addressed the referral commissions being paid out on the purchase of bids by “thieves”, but it certainly looks like Zeekler’s penny auctions are still plagued with suspicious activity.
And these are supposedly the same penny auctions generating hundreds of thousands (millions?) of dollars in investment returns for Zeek Rewards members daily?
Sure thing guys.
With the cash out option, all auctions are cash auctions.
I don’t think this activity is necessarily “fraud”. As I’ve mentioned on a few posts in the other Zeek Rewards posts, the real problem is how affiliates are paid.
Let’s suppose that the user angielieu legitimate purchased a lot of paid retail bids. Let’s say angielieu purchased 4000 bids for $2600. Looking only angielieu’s behavior you would say that is too suspicious or fraudulent because there is no way angielieu will get $2600 worth of profit back from the penny auctions.
However, you have to take it one step further and look at the affiliate! Very likely what is happening is that the affiliate is the one that is actually buying these retail bids. You see, for that $2600 that angielieu spent, the affiliate gets a 20% commission ($520) and 2600 VIP points that now gain profit share for 90 days.
So the actual revenue to Zeekler is not $2600 for 4000 retail bids, but is $2600 – $520 commission – the value of 2600 VIP points that gain profit share.
This is why I keep hammering over and over again that bid inflation is the biggest problem with Zeekler. The affiliate only cares about converting $2600 to $520 cash + 2600 VIP points. The way Zeek has paid out to date, the affiliate could switch to 100% cashout and will make back more than the $2600 spent.
So the 4000 bids that sit in angielieu’s account is really just “cannon fodder”. It doesn’t matter what angielieu wins or how many bids are spent, because the value of those bids to angielieu is essentially zero. The purpose of the bid purchase was for VIP points and commission.
So you can imagine how hard it is for a normal retail customer to compete against this huge supply of retail bids where the bidder has attached a much lower value to them.
Plus, there aren’t that many auctions to begin with, so not only do you have an oversupply of bids, an unbalanced set of motivations between bidders, but you also have a very poor “bids in circulation” to “prizes available” ratio.
I’ve postulated before that it is POSSIBLE that Zeekler may be rigging the auctions to go to their own shill bidders (who’s actually NOT spending paid bids) to prevent too many paid bidders from winning.
However, Oz, I have to point out that your explanation may not be correct. “Won with 1241 bids”… I am pretty sure that means 1241 bids were submitted, but not by a SINGLE people, but as TOTAL number of bids used to “win” this item.
We don’t know how many bids did this angielieu used. But it better be less than 100. 😀 But if like 20+ people all submitted like 60-70 bids you would end up with 1241 bids.
Whenever you ask about such irrational patterns, the answer from those pushing ZR in my country is always “well, those Americans have funny habits.”
I know the US is a very interesting and sometimes weird place, but I’m sure most Americans won’t pay over retail price (or go to classad websites to find about penny auctions, or spend during the weekend only half what they spend during weekdays on online auctions, or stare for 3 hours at an auction they’re very unlikely to win).
The correct interpretation is that the user who won the auction used 1241 bids in this auction.
I know this to be a fact having won 3 items myself, albeit after spending about 6000 bids (I would not have been happy as a retail customer, but I purchased the bids just for the VIP points and commission – this is how I know about bid inflation so well).
The biggest questionable aspect to Zeekler is that people are on very different footings in the auction, yet Zeekler is advertised as a “normal” penny auction like Quibids.
Having won a few items at Quibids, I can tell you there is a huge difference between Quibids and Zeekler. At Quibids you have people that have accumulated a ton of vouchers through BIDDING and that makes some auctions harder to win.
However, the usual max overage factor for a voucher person is around 2x-3x retail – in other words, they would only spend about 3x what a FULL PRICE BIDDER would pay to win an item.
Example, for a $25 gift card and bids at $0.60/bid at Quibids, someone should not bid more than 42 bids to win the item, and also subtracting 1 bid for every 0.60 of price the auction increases to.
In fact, Quibids will stop people from bidding FULL PRICE BIDS beyond the point of break-even, so they are effectively maxed out at 42 bids or less. Vouchers can be used instead of retail bids, but they still take some effort to acquire ( winning past auctions ), so the accumulation of vouchers is mainly a skill issue.
There is no “back door” way to accumulate voucher bids at near zero cost to yourself. Even the best voucher gamers are not getting them for less than about 1/3 of the full price. I have never seen a Quibids auction end at more than about 30-35% of the retail price of the item.
Auctions ending at > 100% of retail proves there are basically a huge supply of “free bids” out there which cost someone basically nothing. Otherwise, why would they keep bidding to lose money. If the bids cost nothing, then it is just a small chance of getting some value on a freeroll.
With Zeekler, the affiliate can create a “customer”, buy VIP bids at $1 each, dump free bids on the customer, get profit-sharing on the VIP points and cash out more money than they put in.
This would all be great except that now there are “customers” with basically infinite supplies of bids and no where to use them except by blasting the Zeekler auctions with them.
So, the deception is the fact that ZeekRewards is promoting the Zeekler penny auction as if it is a “normal” penny auction like Quibids but it is very different than Quibids because the massive supply of bids that cost nothing to certain people, while others are buying them at $0.65/bid and then “competing” with other people who have a nearly infinite supply of free bids.
In my book, that is a scam on any paying customer who has near zero chance of winning such a battle.
@Jimmy
@Kasey
Regarding the total amount of bids used, the amount shown in the screenshots is the amount of bids the winning member used to win the item, it’s not the total for the auction (all members).
In that case Zeekler is a fraud and all participants are ****ing nuts. Thanks for the clarification.
So that’s where the “profits” are coming from… ZeekReward members are pumping money into Zeekler in forms of paid bids (spending MORE bids than the items are worth) in order to drive up their ZeekRewards VIP point count.
So people who joined earlier, have bazillion points, are GAINING money and people who joined late, are pumping money INTO the system.
That’s ****ing crazy. It’s even LESS legitimate than I suspected. This is a PURE Ponzi.
And the Income Disclosure Statement doesn’t say who got a net LOSS vs. net GAIN, it just says who got ANY money out of ZeekRewards.
It could even be winning one of these cash auctions (not counting how many bids used). All they have to do is rig enough auctions to let 97% of members win at least one cash auction and they’ll claim 97% of members made some money when vast majority actually lost money.
Nah, we just dont get it. Everybody loves penny auctions and they are hugely popular. Zeek Rewards’s daily profit share is made up of genius mathematical equations that are more secret than the formula for Coke and Paul Burks is the new Gandalf.
…
…sorry for a second there I forgot I wasn’t a Zeek Rewards member. No need to lie to myself and others about the legitimacy of Zeekler and ZR. Phew, what a relief.
Yes, indeed! This is the key to my argument around “bid inflation”.
HOW AFFILIATES EARN OFF RETAIL ZEEKLER CUSTOMERS:
Affiliates earn 20% commission on all retail purchases + matching points for every dollar spent.
HOW TO MAKE ZEEKLER A LEGITIMATE PENNY AUCTION OVERNIGHT
If Zeek Rewards got rid of the matching points requirement, the penny auction would look a little more like a normal one because bid inflation goes away (the problem then is just a small number of items being auctioned relative to bids in circulation).
But my *opinion* is that Zeek is allowing this “loophole” so they can later show regulators that they had someone high % of retail revenue.
Finally, note that Zeek Rewards stopped taking credit cards for bid purchases that generate points in Dec. So if you have a credit card and don’t want to pay high fees using SolidTrustPay, you are driven to doing the affiliate retail purchase method I describe below (plus you make more money and screw your upline who don’t get commissions).
TWO EXAMPLES AFFILIATE + RETAIL SCENARIOS:
1. I am an affiliate. I sign up my brother as a customer. I give my brother my credit card number and he buys $1000 VIP bids. My brother now has 2000 VIP bids (due to BOGO promotion that lasts til end of year) to use in the auction “for free”.
I earn $200 (20% commission) that I can withdraw immediately. I also earn 1000 matching VIP points. I just purchased 1000 VIP points for $800. My upline does NOT get 10%. His upline does NOT get 5%
2. I am an affiliate. I sign up my brother as a customer. I give my brother my credit card number and he buys $1040 in retail bids. My brother now has 1600 retail bids (no BOGO promotion on retail bids) to use in the auction “for free”.
I earn $208 (20% commission) that I can withdraw immediately. I also earn 1040 matching VIP points. I just purchased 1040 VIP points for $832. My upline does NOT get 10%. His upline does NOT get 5%
ZEEKLER USED TO HAVE DOUBLE MATCHING POINTS
During the promotion leading up to the Mustang, affiliates were getting 2x the matching VIP points. A lot of the “fraud” that Zeek is talking about are just affiliates following the rules and creating tons of accounts, using either friends, family, or perhaps fake accounts using VISA gift cards.
But the point is Zeek encourages this with the matching VIP points, and specifically during the Dec-Jan promotion, double matching VIP points.
My suspicion is they are trying to increase topline retail revenue. If you are a regular, 30% revenue from the auction looks a lot better than 1%. But the only way to get retail revenue is to offer VIP points on the backend.
There’s no way any legitimate penny auction customer would use Zeekler – you have auctions closing at 80-90% of retail (i.e. 10-20% discount). No way that is sustainable for a penny auction without the backend VIP point incentive.
I noticed this the other day as well.
I wondered about the “won with xxx bids” until I read that this was the total of bids that this user used. Now it has been confirmed and im kinda amazed and started calculating what people are spending.
So I looked at a couple winners circle auctions a minute ago. skidmore 660 bid 1663 times on a steam mop, retail $169.99, total of bids, $1080.95….premier 5 auction.
Hahaha…yeah right…
Oh this is so rich. I have several open tickets with customer service, submitted via my back office over 90 days ago. These were serious issues that have cost me about $2000 (well, 2000 VIP points).
This was likely a bug with their back office software, or it could be some other issue but I needed affiliate services to handle because it is not a simple issue. They have to look at why certain purchases were not credited.
Rather than actually addressing my complaint, I now received a notice that all of my open tickets were closed due to age.
HOW FRESH!!!! So now I have to open a NEW ticket and wait another 90 days so it can autoclose? Meanwhile, the likelihood that Zeek Rewards will credit me for what I should have been credited diminishes greatly over time.
All Zeek supporters are saying “oh it’s just growing pain”. I’m so sick and tired of hearing that. Note that I went in knowing it was very likely a ponzi (a gamble), but wasn’t sure, and at the time all the restrictions around banking and compliance was not yet in effect.
Sounds like ZR have banned a bunch of countries from participating in Zeek Rewards around four days ago. From ZR support:
No word yet on whether refunds will be issued. Wonder how those ZR members will thousands of members signed up from “third world countries” are going to take this.
Can’t wait to here why (obvious is obvious?)… guess they can’t stop the fraud so it’s easier to just ban entire nations from participating.
Meanwhile other MLM countries have no problems with global membership… what makes ZR different? Y’know… other then the fact that when you create a Ponzi that gets big enough, inevitably your going to attract those who know what they’re doing and start to use your business for all sorts of purposes you never intended.
They could have won a bunch of bid pack auctions and not paid anywhere near 65 cents a bid.
Yeah… I’m sure that’s what happened. Cmon we’re talking thousands of bids here all day every day.
Do auction bid-packs even come under ‘retail paid bids’?
My guess is they’re banning them for using free bids in order to cash out on items they never intended to buy in the first place.
I actually googled some nickname that won one of those auctions where the end price was much higher than retail price, and it’s some dude in Latvia, who probably never intended to pay for international shipping.
That is, if those BS auctions aren’t a way of laundering some of the Ponzi money through Eastern European bank accounts or whatever.
If Zeekler are going to offer the cash out option though, essentially reducing all their auctions to lotteries, who’s to blame?
It’s not up to Zeekler to make the call that people were never going to pay international shipping on items, they either offer a cash-out option or they don’t.
No, this doesn’t have anything to do with that. It’s hard to win any thing decent with the free bids.
As I suggested in two comments here, the problem is that many affiliates in poor countries are operating Zeek exactly as it has been marketed to them.
They sign up as a free affiliate, take the 100 bonus points, and compound it for 60 days. They only buy the $10/month premium subscription once they have are forced to in order to gain compound income (on day 61, after they’ve converted 100 bonus points into about 140 to 160 VIP points).
If ZR’s business model was even close to as they describe it on the website, videos, and multiple opportunity calls per week, Zeek would WELCOME WITH OPEN ARMS the thousands of free affiliates signing up in China, India, Philippines, Thailand, etc. It only makes sense that those who are free affiliates with only 100 bonus points are being paid the absolute minimum for placing the free Zeekler ad per day, right?
Someone who has amassed 100,000 points is going to cost you $1500 per day for placing one ad, whereas someone who is free with 100 bonus points, costs you $1.50. Wouldn’t you much rather have thousands of free affiliates placing ads for you… if most or of your revenue is derived from the penny auction as is heavily implied by corporate?
The only reason to ban the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of legitimate free affiliates from other countries (where they are willing to place an ad per day for a few dollars, because that is more than a day’s wages for most), is because the revenue is all driven from the investment scheme and the ad placement is completely inconsequential.
The facts that keep coming out from corporate all point to the same hypothesis this site has raised since Sep 2011.
No amount of spin or supporters who have come and gone has provided any response that refutes the original hypothesis – that this is an investment ponzi masked behind virtual points (beginning in Aug, was blatantly obvious before Aug 2011), and the revenue from the penny auctions from real retail customers is insignificant, which is why Paul Burks closely guards the revenue ratios as a proprietary company secret.
This doesn’t really matter to Zeekler and in fact makes Zeekler more money. People who win the auction for more than cash out value, or when international shipping + closing value > cash out value are losing money. They NEVER pay. Why would you pay $120 for a $100 gift card? So most winners just do nothing and Zeekler consumes all of those bids without giving anything out.
As far as shipping goes, 99% of all items that require physical shipping are shipped using Amazon. Zeek buys from their own Amazon affiliate account and earns 8.5% and being a prime get free shipping. Depending on the country, shipping is usually free as well (Zeekler buys from that country’s Amazon website). In some cases, prime dosen’t cover shipping but the international shipping fee covers that.
Most people take the cash out option anyways If you search Amazon from some of the physical items, the cash out option is the exact Amazon price to the penny.
The logistics or costs of billing and shipping have nothing to do with Zeek’s “international problem”. The “problem” is simply free affiliates utilizing the ponzi for how Zeek described it, they just didn’t think tens of thousands (or hundreds of thousands) of people would actually think of placing an add per day only for compounding bonus points.
Zeekler could simply say “no more free affiliates” or “no more free affiliates in certain countries” and at least require some up front money. This move would make the most logical business sense, but Zeek cannot make this move for the inevitable question that would arise is “why is it a bad think to have thousands of people place an ad per day and pay them the minimum?” So the only narrative that works is “woe is us, so much fraud from these countries, let’s refuse to do business”.
And I don’t understand how fraud is a problem if Zeek is forcing everyone to use third party processors? The only time fraud directly is a problem is when you as a company have VISA/MC merchant services because you get chargebacks. The reason why these third party processors thrive in the HYIP and AdSurf world is that they do not chargeback to the merchant other than some cases of egregious fraud or theft.
I checked with an affiliate in China who was able to login. If the countries being blocked are the just credit card related fraud, but the thousands of customers who are all free are still active, then that isn’t as dire (but Zeek will have to deal with this group of “baby boomers” soon enough when they start withdrawing cash).
I guess we will have to wait for the official announcement from Zeek. What will be interesting to see is how effective these blocks are.
Wouldn’t the fraudsters, if they are currently being run sophisticated organized attackers, just start operating out of another country? It’s just the Internet.
It will also be interesting to see if there are any DDoS attacks against Zeek if they start escalating a virtual war.
As I read all these scenarios, I am dubious as whether any of these who post actually are affiliates or just kibitzers. I am not surprised that Zeek had to cut off these specific third world countries as they are a hot bed of credit card fraud.
I have to question Zeekler’s wisdom in ever allowing them to participate in the first place. I would bet that a lot of those countries GDP is credit card fraud, thus why their governments do little to nothing to stop it. I personally have had credit card numbers stolen from both Boznia and Crotia. Debbit cards that I never use, so they have gotten the numbers by random selection.
Fortunately, I spotted these charges only a day after the posting and they were for amounts only between $100 and $200 and the bank reimbursed me without question. In fact, I was told that it happens all the time from countries such as the ones that hit me.
As to the auction irregularities, I suspect this is more likely the same credit card fraud, not affiliates “working the system.” Getting free bids after buying bids to get commission, is too convoluted and complex considering you can bid lots of bids to never win anything, nevermind the time involved in watching auctions.
Again, I would think if you bid 1600 bids to win $100 cash for $50 has to be from someone who stole the bids initially. Hopefully, their anti-fraud upgrades and eliminating countries that are notorious for fraud will clean up the system.
Bid inflation, I have to agree seems excessive where I see free bid auctions where the winning bid is $150 for a $100 gift card is a matter of people using their “free bids” that they get for signing up and have no clue that they still have to pay for the item, or in this case, the cash.
I can understand that first, people don’t read…frankly many are just simply stupid, and second they believe that since they have to generally pay for bids that the purchasing of the bids pays for the item.
The only issue I see with Zeek is that it will grow to a point where it will become the victim of the “Law of Large Numbers.” Which simply means that the affiliates and the amount paid out will overwhelm the system, not just the servers, which it has done requiring the server upgrades, but the entire system itself.
Where once those just allowing their bid points to accumulate and not taking any money out until they have accumulated, say a million points, then they begin pulling 100% equaling $20,000 per day payments. That is when the balloon pops and everyone tries to cash out at the same time.
@Dubous — so you’re claiming that scammers are using Zeekler auction as a money-laundering scheme? That is one possible explanation, yes.
The solution is very simple: stop offering cash prizes or ability to “cash out” the win.
You can’t win anything worthwhile with the free bids any way.
You think too shallow, what with worrying with the auctions themselves. The auctions are a small and, I would think, labor intensive way to steal. And by just not offering cash or cash out doesn’t fix the biggest problem.
The real issue is the 20% commissions. And, if you stop the commissions, you stop the business itself. Cashing in a fraudulent credit card number at 20% on the dollar for cash is the easiest and simplest way to steal. It takes only seconds to buy bids, and only a few more to rake the commission into an AlertPay or STP account.
I have to believe there is a way to stop this simply by doing what every other online company who allows credit cards has to do. The credit card user has to provide the CCV code, the expiration date, and the user has to provide the correct card holders address for the credit card to be used.
I do not know what direction zeek has taken with their anti fraud measures, but they have to be sure the credit cards used are legit.
It has become very hard to sign people up when they have to buy sample bids to give away in order to take advantage of the profit sharing part of the business when new affiliates have to set up an AP or STP account, mail a check, or fax a check, which takes a week or more if everything goes right.
They really need to get the credit card system up and running for buying sample bids. This is hard enough to explain without the difficulties of explaining why they don’t take credit cards except for subscriptions and buying retail bids.
I would think that trying to earn that 20% commission is even MORE labor intensive than bidding for the cash prizes for the auctions. Are you telling me it’s EASIER to make 20% commission on the bids by buying them with fraudulent CC?
If you immediately freeze accounts and VIP pools of those suspected of fraud this should be pretty easy to fix. Kill the cash auctions to discourage them from showing up in the first place.
Setting up STP / AP account and pay to/from that just transfers the risk and responsibility.
@Chang I guess you just don’t get it. By the time you freeze them they are already gone. Another account, another bank, another 50 credit card numbers.
You can charge 50 credit cards with 10,000 bids each thru in a matter of hours particularly if you have a banker working with you. Transfer the money, close the bank accounts and start all over in two days. STP accounts and AP accounts are easy to set up.
All the money from Zeekler could be funneled into one AP account as I am sure Zeek has no way to cross check if they are transferring money from more than one zeek account into a single AP accout, and there seems to be little to getting verified.
The documents I had to send in could easily be photoshopped and bank accounts can be opened easily and closed just as easily in these countries as there is little effort to stop these kind of transactions, or verify account holder identification.
Total take from what I just described $500,000 in bids, $100,000 in net profit. Seems easy enough to me. I have served overseas in a number of shitholes and believe me there is little concern over “non-violent” crime, particularly the ones against foreign individuals.
Unfortunately every system has loopholes. Zeek Rewards has created the matching bonus on customer purchases + the 20% commission as an incentive for affiliates to go out and find more “real” customers. Unfortunately with examples on this page you have a few BAD APPLES trying to take advantage of the system.
Its people that try to cut corners and cheat that usually mess things up in the long haul.
Eventually Zeek Rewards will eliminate these incentives and just make things harder to earn more. So you can thank the people thinking of strategies to cheat the system.
Also remember anyone trying to take part in plans like “Giving your brother your credit & signing him up as a customers and buying bids etc…”
If caught cheating the system your BAN and you lose everything.
So the small % cheating the system good luck to you & I hope making a quick buck is the way to go because as we can tell Zeek Rewards is already on to these types of tactics and people lose there accounts then cry the blues when caught with there hand in the cookie jar.
Zeek Rewards is a reputable company and makes tons of profits from all different areas. In my opinion they are 100% sustainable & the system is getting stronger as the days go on.
Hopefully Zeek Rewards figures out a way to stop the cheatings and the crooks & everyone can go on making good money from the business.
There are simple solutions for this that every other major internet business that pays commission or cash prizes has already dealt with, and I have already addressed them in earlier comments on Zeek and have sent them to Dawn at Zeekler (with no response).
1. Don’t accept credit cards from those countries. You don’t ban people from entire countries. Why do you think every HYIP AdSurf and scam uses AlertPay, SolidTrustPay, Liberty Reserve, etc?
They transfer risk to the third party processor.
2. Don’t allow commission cashouts for new accounts for X days. 2 weeks or 30 days is reasonable, plus Zeek already has the 2-3 week drag.
Casinos, lotteries, sports books, poker sites use “account age” as one form of verification. If you use a new stolen credit card, then commissions are accrued but not eligible for cash out X days.
If it is an existing retail customer that has been a member for X days, then enable commission payouts. In fact, if Zeek did this they would increase the investment rate in general.
3. Use #2 combined with a country filter. Don’t require all retail customers to go through account age verification, just the “banned countries”.
I think your logic on this is reversed. People are not to blame for working the system, the system is flawed.
When Zeek Rewards pays 20% commission and matching VIP points on all retail bid purchases, where does the money come from to pay ever increasing VIP points?
Why doesn’t Zeek Rewards just stop that altogether and pay standard commissions like every other affiliate program? The answer is Zeek Rewards needs the money to pay out ever increasing VIP points, i.e. classic ponzi, just with a virtual points wrap.
The reputation hasn’t been questioned. The public statements on things such as the rationale behind banned countries has been suspect.
The actions of the company such as deactivation of hundreds of accounts with zero notification, the compliance 12-hour “comply or be deactivated” demand emails, and the poor execution all around with server downtimes show inexperience and poor judgment, but not bad reputation.
I do question the Zeek’s motive and credibility though. If you look at all the corporate approved marketing and listen to the weekly opportunity calls with DD, the focus is on the penny auction.
They spend 80-90% focusing only on the penny auction. Yet affiliates focus only on recruiting and investing. It is a total bait & switch to disguise the true source of revenue.
The analysis of the business model doesn’t support sustainable growth. Where does new money come from? What happens if revenue flattens, i.e. same revenue very month?
All other MLM’s and brick & mortar companies could handle profits flattening with no growth. But Zeek has ever increasing VIP point balances to pay against…
If you apply a mere common sense you would not purchase Monopoly money (bidding point) to bid on anything.
You’re better off going on Ebay and start bidding, because if you don’t win, you get to keep your money; with Zeekler your bidding point are gone!
This system requires the constant flow of individuals with below average IQ and little or no common sense at all.
If you read the bio of the top executives of the firm, they have had several MLM operations in their career – not to say that MLM business is bad. some of them are real opportunity as long as it serves all parties involved well, meaning the client, the agent, and the firm. Here the client is the guinea pig.
I have invested $500.00 cash in zeek rewards about 4 weeks ago. As of this morning with my bid repurchase set to 100% i have 1200.00 in my vip bid account. I have taken 100.00 in cash and have 360 bonus points.
I have questioned the legitimacy of the business from day one. However the only way to find out the real truth is being involved from the affiliate side. I signed up one person in my down line that put in 4 thousand dollars. All in one envelope in separate $500.00 money orders.
only 2 thousand has posted to his account and we getting runaround about what happened to the other 2 thousand. They haven’t been cashed yet though. We keep getting the growing pains business from everyone. It’ll be resolved shortly.
In the meetings they hold to prospective new affiliates they guy giving the speech has 190,000 vip points as of now. When i started he had 107,000 points a month ago. He also takes a 20% commision every week and currently that is about 8,000 a week.
He claims he gets check like clock work every monday in his mail box. I requested a measly 100.00 check two weeks ago and got a email saying it would be here in 2 more weeks. WTF?
Also in the pitch he never discusses the point retirement process or calender. And Zeeks webinar makes it sound like your stupid if you don’t understand how it works, it’s so simple, the points must retire, they can’t afford to pay us for them forever.
So here’s the deal. They recommend everyone come in with $5,000.00 dollars and as a diamond wich would roughly cost you about 5135.00$ the first day you sign up. Now on day 91 your $5,000.00 drops off and dissappears. So Basically it seems to me they get free cash donations so to speak from thousands of affiliates that they get in cash, money orders, or cashiers checks, and they pay your 1.5%-1.9% depending on the daily profit share and then in 91 days it’s gone and your left with your earnings you made off the $5,000.00 assuming you set your bed repurchase to 100% to grow that account.
They guy that gives the meeting i do know as a exbusiness owner for the past 10 years and have a hard time believing he’s a bullshitter. I’ve seen his prior success. This is a little shady feeling and I can only wait it out to see what else occurs.
I disagree with your conclusion. You don’t gain any more information from the inside as the inner workings (distribution formula, profit share amount calculation, total number of VIP pints in system, etc. etc.) is not shown to you either. The only thing you can prove from the inside is that money does flow.
The way I see it, you basically gave thousands of dollars to Zeek on a 60-day or longer loan for free, for promise of gradual payback later at usurious rates.
i disagree that you disagree cha-chang. Well if it’s a money making business and i make thousands that is information i’d never know being on the outside.
and i only gave them 500.00 dollars not thousands
You don’t need to spend money to be on the inside. You can be a free affiliate and have access to everything, including daily profits hare of virtual bonus points you are given for signing up as a free affiliate.
You can also talk to others who are affiliates without needing to actually spend money yourself.
All I’m saying is the ability to analyze the business model does not require one to be a participant; and if one did want to be a participant in case it offered more insight, one does not have to spend money to do so.
Invicta Men’s 9211 Speedway Collection Chronograph Watch
Retail $355
Won for $30.55 for 22 bids, VIP point auction
So they can cash out for $355
This is the crossed out retail price that every amazon product has.
Real cost is $78.73 to anyone.
Im sure Zeekler gets a discount for buying so much garbage off there.
to get all the benefits they offer you have to sign up as a diamond affiliate not for free. As a diamond you get commision on every bid purchase and montyly renewel of everyone in your downline.
i hear about all the guys in my area putting up to 10 k in this and there virtual money has tripled in less than 90 days, but I have yet talked to anyone who has cashed out even there original investemnt back.?
does anyone know of someone who recently received there money back.?
I think most people see the points go up so rapidly they get excited and greedy so they dont choose the 80/20.
Some one posted on here that he gets a check for $2500 every monday. But I take those comments with a grain of cat $**t.
Cant even trust Troy Dooly anymore now that he is being paid by Zeek for “compliance training”
I have been noticing a few of auctions being won by 0 bids. Have seen 3 or so like this.
The winning bidders name doesnt even show up in the “Bidders in the last 15 minutes” box. Must be a glitch….
Yet you had to resort to giving the other side racially insulting nicknames. Really proves your point, doesn’t it?
You don’t listen to other people’s testimonies? Or read Zeek’s Income Disclosure statements?
The point still stands: you gave them money, with hopes that you’ll get back MORE than you put in, while doing minimal to no work. You gave them a free loan for over 60 days as an “investment”, while accepting the lie they told you that “it’s not an investment”.
It’s also hard to believe that Bernard Madoff, at one time head of NASDAQ, could be deceiving people for over a decade to the tunes of hundreds of billions of dollars. Your point is rather flimsy.
reguardless of all youre statements. If you put money up you get tons more in return. Who cant use an extra couple of dollars a month when gas is the way it is?
Oh, sure, new nickname. Funny guy.
(sarcasm on)
No, there’s nothing wrong with you making money off a scam, as long as you don’t care to KNOW it is a scam or care where the money came from (which would be… other people)
(sarcasm off)
It wouldn’t have been any problem if the business model was able to support it, like if they had a growing number of retail customers paying for the bids to use them in auctions. Most of the red flags here are related to that issue.
And it’s not related to what we SAY, it’s related to the business model itself. A business needs retail customers to be sustainable, not affiliates or investors. Using the fresh money from new affiliates to pay the old ones will only work for a limited period of time.
Adding: And you have no ethical/moral issues with recruiting others to join if you personally know it is a scam. Because the last group to enter will be left holding the bag.
If the money game crashes in 3 months, then it might be your direct recruit. If it crashes in 9 months, maybe theirs. If it crashes in 2 years, you and your direct recruits all did quite well, but OTHERS will get screwed.
Just wondering how long it usually takes to receive your item after winning and paying for it? I won and paid for an item on 4/17/12, the site says 5-7 business days. Does anybody know? Any help, please. Thanks.
I thought the sample bids were separate in the auction, therefore how is there bid inflation?
@Bill Piper
The inflation is directly connected to “balance”, “points”, “VIP points” or whatever they call it. It will indirectly inflate the bids too, the number of bids vs. the real money used to pay for them.
INFLATION
Inflation means the same number of customers will have to use an increasing number of bids to win (or participate in) an average auction, compared to the number of bids they had to spend 6 or 12 months ago.
Inflation will apply both to sample bids and to retail bids, but sample bids will probably be more inflated. It can probably be seen in customers being offered an increasing number of free bids, and be seen in affiliate generated customers spending an increasing number of bids on each auction.
CHEAPER BIDS FOR SOME
Inflation means the bids gradually have become cheaper to buy for some of the customers, funded from their increasing balance of points. They pay the same “price” in points for each bid, but they have much more points to spend. The value of each point has decreased because the internal pool of points has increased more than the internal pool of money.
Other customers will have to pay full price, funded from their own pools of money (derived from a normal economy). Naturally, they’re not very interested in adding their own good money to ZeekRewards’ pool of money, in a 1:1 exchange for VIP Points – unless someone promises them ROI. This is probably visible in the Zeekler auctions, with many affiliate generated bidders compared to the number of real customers.
CUSTOMERS VS INVESTORS
External customers putting in real money will decrease the inflation, and so will new investors putting in real money. Real customers will increase the pool of money without increasing the pool of VIP Points. New investors will put in some money at a 1:1 ratio (money:points), and thus reducing some of the inflation.
The profit share and all other incentives will increase the inflation, causing the pool of money to decrease and the pool of points to increase.
PRINTING CURRENCY FROM THIN AIR
ZeekRewards can be compared to a central bank printing it’s own currency via the profit sharing. Zeek’s central bank is printing VIP Points and Bonus Points from thin air, not related to the amount of real money that comes in or to any other value. Their only option in the future is devaluation of their own currency.
Investing in ZeekRewards can be compared to investing in Zimbabwe dollars a few years ago. The real value of the VIP Points are probably less than 5 cents per point.
THE RISE AND FALL OF A DICTATOR
Paul Burks has probably enriched himself and a few top leaders, like most other dictators. He has probably enriched the most loyal and most “valuable” people from his own viewpoint, the ones that indirectly have helped him keeping his position and bringing in new fresh money.
He has rised as a dictator, and ruled as a dictator. We have still to see if he will fall like a dictator. Most of them will try to flee the country when their government collapses, trying to avoid being prosecuted by their own people.
@Bill Piper
The example of central banks printing money from thin air was actually a good example for how ZeekRewards is operating.
The initial investors were putting in money at a 1:1 ratio, exchanging their money into VIP Points. Then ZeekRewards started to print more VIP Points in order to pay ROI in VIP Points, while the money was used to pay expenses, salary and recruitment commissions.
Like any other currency, VIP Points will need to be connected to something to maintain it’s value. “Gold standard” currencies were connected to a fractional reserve of gold, while fiat-currencies largely are connected to GDP and creation of values in a country.
VIP Points should be backed up by an increasing pool of money, created primarily from external customers spending money on bids and using the bids in auctions. Instead, ZeekRewards are using their own currency supply (and how the currency is circulating) as the most significant factor to print more VIP Points.
As an investor, you will exchange your money into almost worthless VIP Points without knowing the real value of them. You will make almost worthless ROI for a while, and then you can start to recover parts of your initial investment after a few months, by exchanging some of the worthless VIP Points into real money.
There should be plenty of red flags here for most investors.
#1 Zeekler has no responsibility to stop bidders from over bidding on items. Its up to the bidder to do the SIMPLE math and decide BEFORE HAND how many bids they are willing to bid on an item.
#2 The pictures above DO NOT prove that one bidder bidded a 1,000 + times for the $100 prize. I clearly see on the lis that there are other bidders engaged in a bidding war with the winning bidder and the list is not showing the identity of all 1,000+ bidders who bidded for that item.
I’m pretty confident that the $53 selling price reflected the TOTAL number of bids made by SEVERAL bidders over the span of time the prize was up for auction. The winner won the auction for that price, they did not actually bid the 5300 times it took to get to that price.
And if by some chance they were silly enough to spend more money bidding on the item than the actual worth of the item itself, that’s on them. That in no way makes Zeekler a crook, because the bidders can’t handle their money.
@vbabygirl
Nobody said that they did, but the fact that it’s clearly happening is highly suspicious and raises questions.
Presuming you are a member of Zeek Rewards, I suggest you learn the mechanics of the Zeekler website you’re supposed to be promoting then.
The amount of bids used by the bidder is clearly stated in the screenshots, the total number of bids used is able to be worked out mathematically.
If we isolate Zeekler then perhaps, look at the bigger picture though.
Also, I have not heard of any ban on affiliates from China, India, or any poorer countries. In fact, Zeekler does business and operates in these countries and several more.
As far as this whole ‘ponzi scheme’ claim and questions about where Zeekler gets most of its money from and if it can pay out the money it does in the future, you’re forgetting several facts about Zeekler.
#1 most people who are affiliates don’t put in anywhere near the $10,000 limit simply because most people do not have $10,000 laying around for a business venture and they are apprehensive about the company when they first start. Therefore, its going to take most Zeek Rewards affiliates MUCH longer to get to a place of making $1500 a day than someone who put in the maximum $10,000.
I would say close to or over 2 yrs or so IF they put their ad in everyday. Most affiliates probably put in anywhere between $100 to $1,000 initially so its going to take some time before you make that BIG money. This will automatically prevent the company from paying thousands of affiliates big checks all in the beginning
#2 Zeek Rewards has a 3 month retirement plan on points in the bid bank. Once money is placed in the bid bank or retail points are used to repurchase bids, they have a three month life span and then they are deducted from the bid bank.
This means that after 3 months of being in the biz, starting from your initial purchase of bids, everyday points will be subtracted from your bid bank as they reach their 3month retirement. This forces affiliates to put much of their earnings BACK into Zeekler to repurchase bids no matter how big their bid pot is.
If they don’t and try to COMPLETELY stop repurchasing bids at a certain number and cash out all their earnings everyday after, their bid bank will be at zero in 3 months as all the current points they have will be retired by then and their earnings will rapidly decrease each day, because as the points are retired and dissappear from the bid bank it gets smaller, meaning they make less earnings each day.
The company did this to ensure that at any given day most of its affiliates are repurchasing bids with anywhere between 80%-100% of their earnings in order to keep their bid bank growing at a faster rate than its points are being retired.
A person making $1500 a day will probably only cash out just one of those days a week, because they know that everyday hundreds or even thousands are being deducted from their bid band because the points they put in their bid bank 3 months ago are being retired.
#3 As mentioned above given the method that penny auctions sale and make their money I don’t doubt that Zeekler is making enough money from the auctions ALONE to stay afloat.
As mentioned above, collectively ALL of the bidders together spend far more money bidding on the items then Zeekler spends purchasing these items to sale. The $100 prize that sold for $53 dollars earned Zeekler $3345 so I don’t know why its questionable that Zeekler earns a lot of its cash from the auctions.
If other penny auctions are staying afloat, why is it so hard to believe Zeekler can based off its earnings?
I don’t see how someone over bidding raises question or suspicions on the side of the company. No one is being lied to or manipulated to bid more than they do.
Each bidder clearly knows how much each bid costs, they know how many bids they are making (at least they should be paying attention to that), and how much the item they are bidding on is worth.
That’s enough info to make a wise decision how many times to bid. There’s nothing suspicious about lack of self control and poor money management.
That’s a rather short sighted approach. And after “the beginning”, then what? KABOOM!
No matter how much money you force your members to re-invest, mathematically you still run out of money to pay out eventually. This is the fallacy of all Ponzi schemes.
You’re (conveniently) assuming that a lack of self control and poor money management are the reason why it’s happening, rather than looking at the suspicious bidding as a symptom of Zeek Rewards’ dodgy business model.
And no one said they did. It is a part of OVERALL pattern of suspicious behavior.
Yes it does. Confirmed by several current ZR members. I thought the same way you did. I thought it was 1410 bids TOTAL. Turns out it’s from one single bidder. Total bids are far worse. Probably 4-5000 bids total.
Unfortunately, in this case, you are wrong. Look at the price history: each time someone bid, it goes up by a penny. So if it ended at 53.00, at least 5300 bids were used. Thus, the winner, with 1274 bids, is indeed from one single bidder.
Your story doesn’t gibe with the visual evidence.
We didn’t say Zeekler is a crook. You’re answering the wrong question. We’re pointing out that bids doesn’t seem to be worth as much as ZR members seem to think or want people to think.
Unless you’re accusing the company of creating fake accounts to out bid real bidders (which you’d still need to prove), I still don’t see how over bidding is suspicious.
Penny auctions can attract people who want to get a deal on an expensive item as well as those who love the ‘sport’ of winning items. The second group of people have addictive tendencies and will over bid just to win the item. Zeekler is not responsible for that type of abuse.
I don’t see where the Kaboom will come from. Due to the point retirement system, even if most of Zeekler’s affiliates eventually reached 100,000 points, they still wouldn’t be able to consistently cash out $1500 a day.
They have to use MOST of their earned points to repurchase bids to keep their bid banks from depleting in a few months. Also by that time, Zeekler will have accumulated more awareness and customers for its penny auction due to the marketing efforts of all its affiliates.
You seem to be forgeting that Zeekler is a Penny Auction. Its an actual business that SELLS items so it has an income independent of its affiliates UNLIKE a ponzi scheme. As Zeekler affiliates advertise the penny auction by posting the ads more consumers are being made aware of its existence and using its services.
Clearly you can tell from your own examples that the penny auction is making profits off the items its selling as well as other penny auctions in business.
Penny auctions are definitely becoming more popular and have been predicted by many refutable business/financial sources as only growing in the future as more people discover them and use them for entertainment bidding and sources of big savings on high priced items.
Your whole premise is based off the assumption that the Zeekler’s penny auction is not making any money and the affiliate subscriptions are the only thing paying the company’s bills. You need to seriously provide hard evidence to prove that.
If other penny auctions with no affiliate programs are still surviving then zeekler should be able to survive off its penny auction as well. If it goes out of business it won’t be because it promised fake money that it couldn’t pay (zeek affiliates know that they only get a check if they cash out and that they can’t cash out everyday because their bid bank will deplete itself in a matter of 3 months) it will be because the Penny Auction itself may no longer be profitable enough to cover its expenses.
That’s not a scheme. That’s just business. We all know that investing in ANY business is a risk and most businesses have a short life span. Heck even well established world renowned businesses are failing in this economy and people are losing their jobs/life savings. That’s the risk you take though.
The affiliates are not ignorant of this and fully aware that the worst can happen not because the firm is dishonest or a crook, but because its a business and these things happen to businesses.
Rather irrelevant, isn’t it? The ban is on six countries, and the official stories keeps changing. First ZR Customer Support says “it’s those countries’ laws”. Then Paul Burks himself says “it’s OFAC sanctions”. Then Troy Dooly says it’s probably FTC warning about penny auctions, then next week conveniently changes to “it’s about fraud prevention”, and he had direct access to ZR staff.
This is a pattern of “weird and potentially fraudulent behavior” by ZeekRewards. There may be an innocent explanation, but they are not offering any.
Irrelevant to the question “is ZR a Ponzi scheme”. Ponzi schemes can involve big payments or tiny payments.
Still irrelevant to the main question. Ponzi schemes always tell people to reinvest, and keep the money in, don’t take any out. Madoff is famous for reply to question why should people keep putting in money, ‘The strategy is too complex for the average taxpayer to understand.’
What you explained is true, but does NOT separate ZR from a Ponzi scheme at all. Thus, it is irrelevant.
The question is… WHO is bidding on those items? Are there any OUTSIDE NON-ZEEKREWARDS PEOPLE bidding on these and how many?
If it’s “mostly” ZR members bidding on stuff, then ZR is a Ponzi scheme because there is little if any real “profit”, just members (and new members) throwing money in to grow their VIP point balance, while ZR taking their “50%” cut every transaction.
The idea that people can spend THOUSAND bids for $100 would suggest these are either shill bidders or people who consider bids to be worthless. NEITHER is good for reputation of Zeekler, as both would cast doubt on your premise that “Zeekler is very profitable (because real people want to bid and win stuff)”.
Because you are ignoring the fundamental question: are the ZR members just paying each other through zeekler and Zeek Rewards? (i.e. is ZR a Ponzi scheme?)
With no verification required there’s nothing stopping affiliates from creating fake accounts to dump bids onto now is there.
Yeah it doesn’t really matter how you try and dress it up. At the end of the day nobody is paying massive amounts over retail for items.
At least not legitimately.
Your entire premise is that bid retirement will stop the Ponzi from collapsing “in the beginning”. So what happens after?
You’re thinking way too big, knock it back a little. Let’s say to withdrawing $100 a day (I’m being generous).
Got 1,000 affiliates withdrawing $100 a day? That’s a payout of $100,000 a day.
Got 10,000 affiliates withdrawing $100 a day? That’s a payout of $1,000,000 a day.
50,000? $5,000,000 a day.
Where the hell is this money going to come from? Forget the fact that we’re only talking about withdrawing $100 a day.
In this sense Zeek Rewards is a ticking time bomb, and I don’t care how succesful Zeekler may or may not be – it ain’t ever going to generate that sort of revenue. Penny auctions aren’t some new and exciting business model, they’ve been around for years and it’s an established industry.
Not neccessarily. The retail bids have a double value of VIP points to the referring affiliate. There’s no extra value being created here as ZR have to pay out a 100%> ROI on these bids dollar for dollar.
VIP bids are already a loss leader because they have to pay out a >100% ROI on each bid bought.
Baseless assumption. Even the FTC has warned against participating in penny auctions, nevermind the horrific attrition rate due to the fact that people very quickly realise they can blow large amounts of money and walk away with nothing.
The tired line of ‘gamblers love penny auctions’ is equally ridiculous. As far as percentage chance of winning goes, penny auctions are terrible.
Actually, Zeek Rewards need to provide hard evidence this is not happening. Thus far they have failed to do so.
Well that makes no sense. Zeek Rewards have to theoretically generate more revenue from their penny auctions to cover the ever increasing payouts their affiliate scheme demands. Other penny auction sites don’t have to worry about this ever-increasing expense.
What?
If the penny auctions aren’t making enough (discounting the fact they contribute a negligible amount to the daily profit share to begin with), Zeek Rewards precisely fails because ‘it promised fake money that it couldn’t pay‘.
Your logic is flawed.
Yeah that’s not going to cut it here. Not even remotely.
You are ignoring a third possibility: that the bidders see the bids as worthless and need to spend them on SOMETHING to get for real $$$.
I’ve actually done the math. As long as profitshare * reinvestment >= 1.1% the VIP points can only grow, not shrink, even with the points retirement.
As the average profitshare is 1.4% (let’s be conservative, I could have used 1.5%) that means I can use 80/20 and see my VIP point balance grow indefinitely (albeit at a slow rate) while cashing out every day. So if you have 100000 points, you’ll be cashing out $280 per day, $8400 a month, etc.
Not 1500 a day, but then, 1500 a day is 45000 a MONTH. THAT would be ridiculous.
The realistic numbers are less ridiculous, but almost as improbably: do almost nothing, and get HUGE return on investment, yet they insist it’s NOT an investment, and the return is better than most scams.
Wrong, as you’re not looking at the right part. The premise is ZR members are buying bids, and such “profits” are transferred to other ZR members as “profits” with ZR keeping half of it. There is no “real” profit, merely the same money shuffled around, and ZR members are paying each other indirectly. Once ZR members stop buying bids, the whole thing collapses.
You’ve basically constructed a strawman argument, and defeated it. Congratulations.
Try this blog for some realistic assessment of penny auction potential:
http://www.quibidsblog.blogspot.com/2012/03/are-penny-auctions-losing-their-charm.html
Note, this is talking about top tier penny auctions such as Quibids which have Buy-it-Now preserving customers bid value/reducing the risks. The outlook for niche auctions such as Zeekler is much worse. This isn’t a fresh wave to ride – this is a spent out fad dying a slow death.
The problem with Zeekler is that they are hiding things such as real non-affiliate-related customer revenue, pathetic number of auctions ( Quibids has 10,000 auctions per day, Zeekler has maybe 100-200 at best ), lame reasons for banning 6 countries (keeps changing for some reason), clear evidence of minimal actual bid value ( auctions bid beyond retail ), amateurish IT staff, and escalating VIP point balance without money to back it (ponzi scheme).
@Kasey
According to the income disclosure statement the top US affiliate was earning over $700,000 USD annually from memory.
Of course that factors in re-investment but still, give it enough time and it is theoeretically possible, which is the entire problem to begin with.
When they launched Zeek Rewards offered a guaranteed 125% ROI. They’ve been running from this ever since.
700000 USD, that’s $1918 per day actually withdrawn. Assuming 80/20 reinvestment and 1.4% profit share, that’s 7631 VIP points per day, which would indicate this member has… about 548000 VIP points.
Of course, the question you have to ask is… how much of that money went back INTO Zeekler as bids, fake customers (if any), monthly fees, and so on?
YES it does. If you’ve actually used Zeekler you would know that the number of bids used by the winning bidder is shown.
Also, even if we all agree with you that bidders need to do simple math, you are overlooking the problem. The problem is not that there are dumb bidders. The problem is that many bidders value the bids as next to nothing because of bid inflation.. I had 6000 VIP bids I purchased, plus BOGO offer, so I had 12,000 VIP bids. I bid with wild abandon not caring the true value of the bids because I purchased them ONLY for the matching VIP points and the 20% commission.
I was playing the Ponzi, not the auction. So if I happened to have won an item, great, I’ll cash out. In one case, I spent 1387 bids to win $22. In the end, I didn’t care. After the first 1000 bids went, I just enabled ABE. I wasn’t planning on winning just $22, but I configured ABE and hoped to win at a lower price or one of those famous Zeekler server timeouts would occur and I would get lucky and beat out all other non-ABE bidders.
Zeek’s big problem, if they were serious about the penny auction, is that mix the population of real retail bidders with affiliates who buy bids as themselves using friend/family/fake account just for the VIP points.
Don’t you see? The virtual currency is the motivator. It is the what is driving the minuscule retail penny auction revenue that Zeekler does have. Take away the matching VIP points and stick with a standard affiliate model of 20% commission only, and the penny auction dies.
Let me give you some real world data here. I personally now of 7 affiliates who have between 135,000 and 350,000 VIP points.
I have seen the back office of two affiliates assuming they have stayed at 80/20 and their rate of growth was fixed (no new recruiting, their currently recruits are doing the same as when I saw this in Nov), they are both well over 700,000 points by now.
I know of 18 AFFILIATES who will hit 100,000 points within the next 60 days, assuming an average rate of 1.5% growth.
So that is a total of 25 affiliates I know, and 2 I have seen back office for (and many more I have talked to but don’t have personal info on their points, just generalization). If we are just going to be conservative and say these 27 affiliates all have 100,000 points (that’s way conservative), and they all run at 80% reinvestment, these folks are pulling out $300 per day average at 1.5%.
Their actual rate is higher as many of these affiliates have downlines and they get the 10% on level 1 and 5% on level 2 commissions, so their growth is more than 1.5%.
In one case specific case, I know an affiliate who has 135,000 points and is pulling out 40% per DAY. He reinvests 60% and still has steady growth because he has a large downline. As his downline grows, he lowers his reinvestment rate to keep the cash flow coming. Yes, that is $810 per day average.
He actually is kicking himself daily that he switched to “maintenance mode” so early and didn’t let it ride longer. On the one hand he is living high on the hog with the weekly $5-6k checks, but at the same time as greedy as ever and looking at how he messed up his growth strategy.
This is a pure ponzi. All these 27 people I mentioned above haven’t put an additional penny (pun intended) into the system in months, other than the monthly subscription. Some are recruiting others but haven’t put their own money in.
Remember, the Income Disclosure Statement was as of Dec 31, 2011. There’s been 4-months of compound interest growth since then!
@Jimmy — maybe we can use the IDS to reverse calculate how many VIP points are active for US “active” affiliates…
@Jimmy
Can you repeat the information about the method for how to earn 20% commission? Mostly for vbabygirl, but for others too.
1. withdraw money as cash, or use fresh money if you want to invest more money into the program
2. create a customer, a family member or friend, or someone willing to act as a customer
3. sell bids to the customer, earn 20% commission in addition to 100% VIP Points. You pay for the bids yourself, but the customer is needed to earn the commission. If you sell the bids to yourself, your upline will get the commission instead of you.
4. use the bids in auctions, just to get rid of them or trying to win something. You’re NOT very interested in the bids, only in the VIP Points and the 20% commission.
As far as I understood, this method will give you 20% more ROI than the automatic reinvestment? And give you some bids you can use in the auctions, too.
I’m not sure I got all the details correct.
“won with xxx bids” is how many times the winning bidder bid
K. Chang already answered that but you didnt bring it back up.
Bids have an inflated value for most, so winning an auction would make them more money then if they cashed out the bids. Even if they overbid.
349 x $.65 = $226.85+$10.81=$237.66
Actual amazon price, $69.99 + free shipping
For a savings of……. -$167.67
Prolly better off just going to quibids if you are addicted to penny auctions…
I crunched the numbers on the IDS and came up with a number of 58.5 million income of all active US members. That comes out to about 160K a day. However, we don’t know if they counted VIP Points in that, or just cash. Assume VIP points are counted as income, assume 1.4% avg profit share, that gives a TOTAL VIP POOL of about…
11.4 million
given that the total number of members is in the 67000 range, average point balance is… 170 points.
I goofed up the math. Here’s revised version.
700000 USD annual is 1918 per day.
Assuming 80/20 reinvestment, profit share per day is 9590
Assuming 1.4% average profit share, VIP point balance is 685000
I don’t see anywhere where it states you get 1 vip pt for every retail bid sold. At the highest level executive, you get 20% commission on retail bid purchases.
where are you getting the 1:1 matching vip pt commission number from?
@Crush, see the URL, look under “step 2”
https://www.zeekrewards.com/howitworks.asp?username=Master
Give away 1000 VIP Bids, get 1000 VIP ProfitPOints. 1:1 ratio.
thanks, and that has been verified to actually happen? that’s the only place i can see it mentioned, in this example, everywhere else just states you get 20% on bids purchased.
@Crush — would be kinda hard to disclaim what it says on “How it [ZeekRewards] works”, on their own official website. 😀
not really, would be nice to know it actually happens, since the only mention of it is in an ‘example’
It’s verified by several members, never contradicted.
I can verify you absolutely get 1-for-1 matching VIP points for every dollar spent by a retail customer. This is in addition to the 20% commission. It is capped at 1000 VIP points. I’ve purchased over $8k worth of retail bids using credit cards.
It used to be 2x matching VIP points during the January promo.
This is how many people have bypassed the ban on credit cards starting in Dec for buying VIP bids. The answer that Zeek gave on banning credit cards was that it was due to fraud doesn’t make any sense, because Zeek accepts credit cards for everything else.
There are many ways to fight fraud without banning all credit cards. For example: limiting time to withdraw after initial purchase, limiting credit card purchases to a maximum of say $500 or $1000, requiring verification, banning credit cards from high risk regions only and not all credit cards, etc.
There also is a limit of $10k investment purchase maximum using your own money (excludes commissions earned and compound interest from daily profit share). Some who aggressively wanted to play the ponzi would buy bids as retail customers, allowing you to use a credit card and get 20% commission on top of that.
Note that this screws your upline in that they don’t get their 10% and 5% commission, instead you get 20% as the sponsor of the retail customer.
In short:
– Zeek Rewards is a full blown investment ponzi and any hope of retail penny auctions having legitimacy is undercut by the matching VIP points.
– Buying bids as a retail customer allows you to use credit cards (banned in Dec 2011) and get around the 10k purchase limit.
– This results in bid inflation (which I keep talking about) because you have retail customers who value the bids as nothing. They purchased bids for the VIP points, not the value of the bids themselves. Therefore, if it costs me 3000 bids to win a $200 auction, I’ll do it, because the alternative is to do nothing.
If I am reading these replies correctly some bidders are placing bids at retail cost exceeding the value of the product and forcing the selling price higher for whatever reason. I’m not actually understanding the reasons suggested at this stage.
These bidders seem to be creating a situation where legitimate bidders are fleeced or forced out of the auctions or both.
It seems to me that there may be members out there buying many thousands of bids and giving those bids away for whatever reason.
A recipient of those bids might just throw bids at an auction in order to convert the gifted bids to some value to them.
Would it be possible for Zeekler to maintain the value of bids and make the bidding more even simply by restricting the bidding of any member to a number of bids on items to the equivalent number equal to (retail price – the bidding price.)
That should reduce interest in trying all the fraudulent uses mentioned including the use of stolen credit cards or stolen card numbers.
Any Thoughts anybody?
The bids lose their value due to saturation and a lack of value in the bids themselves. Capping bid spendage on single items will just spread out the bids over more items without really addressing the problem. End result is inflation more evenly spread out across the auctions but still very much persistent.
Also when it comes to fraud, spending bids equal to the retail profit and then cashing out is still net profit – given that no funds were spent by the bidder to fraudulently obtain bids.
And then of course there’s the bonuses made off the purchase of bids via fraudulent means, which is an entirely seperate issue.
They are buying bids and “giving them away”, as required by ZeekRewards, to get VIP Profitshare points, and with that, earn their share of daily profit. It’s OFFICIAL.
Exactly!
No, because people looking for profitshare are NOT buying bids its value as bids. Bids to them have NO INTRINSIC VALUE other than you have to buy them to get VIP ProfitPoints. This any restriction would be meaningless to them, as long as ZR allows you to trade bids for VIP Profitpoints.
ok, i have read this entire thread. Can it be possible that Zeekler is a legit enterprise based on this example?
Penny Auctions are “popular” – Look at Quibids
Quibids spends $25MM per month on advertising and reaps around $30MM per month in revenue – netting around $5MM profit/month…
Now, Zeekler launches and maybe the owners say “I don’t really want to spend $25MM per month to get “new customers” so why don’t we figure out a different way to get customers…
oh yeah… first, can a penny auction make money for the company? well, if an Ipad goes for $50 which means there were 5,000 bids in one-penny increments… and if the bids cost .60 cents each then the company pulled in $3,000 for this item that may retail for $500…
not bad (I know, you will say that there were many “Free Bids” that were placed in this particular auction so they didn’t really make this much profit… I’ll come back to this)
So, if we don’t want to spend a bunch of money on advertising why don’t we get advertising partners? Let’s start an affiliate program… the affiliates can buy bids from the company and give them away… NEW customers will claim the free bids and use them… hopefully they will like the idea of penny auctions and then purchase bids with real money…
Since the “free bids” were not actually free (The affiliate purchased them precisely to give them away) then it is cheaper to split the profit the company makes on a daily basis with our advertising partners (affiliates) and we get more customers and the net cost is lower than Quibids…
If we have thousands of ad partnerss out there posting ads on free online classified sites then we can have thousands of ads EVERY SINGLE DAY creating awareness about our company… (I don’t know how many affiliates there currently are) but let’s say there are 100,000 affiliates – placing 100,000 ads – surely there will be lots of new customers coming to the site to try it out…
This has to be less expensive than a full-blown TV ad campaign that Quibids runs? right?
So, Zeekler then says, well, we are making bank on individual items – and we aren’t having to pay for the bids or the ads… so we can afford to generoulsy split the daily profit with those affiliates who qualify to share by placing their daily ads… crowd-sourcing works, does it not?
Sure, there will be ads that no one clicks on or claims the free bids but they WERE purchased… as long as Zeekler is getting a lot of new customers then why can’t they be making a crap-pile of money and why can’t they be paying a bunch of money out to their ad partners?
I see how the whole model could work.
Now, to be fair… i identified two ‘risks’ that could create a flaw:
1)Regulartory Risk. Let’s say there is no “ponzi scheme” element…but this does not preclude the FTC or some hot-shot AG wanting to run for governor somewhere making his bones by calling the system a fraud and outlawing it in his state.. then the domino effect happens… EVEN IF it were legal – so even if the system isn’t a ponzi it could still become a target to regulators…
2) Customer Fatigue. I checked out a penny auction a couple of years ago and messed around with it for a day or so until i figured out it was like the Radio Give-away where you place you hand on a car along with a horde of others and the last man standing that didn’t leave won the car…
I wasn’t about to sit around for hours clicking on a bid to try and save a bit of money… I had better things to do… but I did try it and I did spend real money for a bid package or two during that short period… If more people leave the system than new customers coming in, because of fatigue, then the company will not continue to grow and will have to change their model…
I see this last risk as insulated for several years due to what I call the “Dave Ramsey Syndrome” – Dave is a radio talk show host who preaches debt-free living and cutting up your credit card. I actually know Dave personally.
When you first hear him he may sound a bit radical cutting up your CC… But maybe you hear a caller who has a similar situation and you listen a bit closer… then you hear a guy bragging about getting totally debt free and he’s loving it..
You get hooked and your go all in and follow Dave’s plan… you’re a regular listener… but eventually you realize that you know exactly what Dave is gonna say to the idiot caller who claims he HAD to have a car and thus a car loan…
You realize you are bored and aren’t having much fun or learning anything new, so you tune out Dave and find another program to listen to…
no worries… Dave just picked up a new station in his syndication and has many new listeners as well as the new listeners tuning into your station… Dave can go for YEARS with this “revolving door” model cuz there is always new folks who LIKE what they find and participate long enough for the company to profit from that customer…
The world is a big place and there are millions and millions that will discover Zeekler and become customers…
however, i do think there is an eventual shelf life just like everythign else… but if I were to become an affiliate i think the business could go for several years before “saturation fatigue” finally has an impact…
So, can this not be a legitimate business for an affilliate EVEN IF I DON’T “make up fake accounts and purchase bids for VIP points etc?”
I have been studying this and I have seen the back office of a guy that has 130,000 points and recruited 31 directs and has about 63 total recruits thru 2nd and he is “ordering” checks to the tune of $30,000 PER WEEK in the last 3 weeks, prior to that he took out many in the $20k range and of course going backward to when he began in Nov the checks were smaller…
I don’t think he is messing around with trying to cheat the system… he recruited his ass off and he is making serious overrides as most folks are doing the 80-20 reinvestment of their money… most defer any checks for the first 6 mos and then go to the 80-20.
So, from a big picture view, more ads = more customers
more customers = more profit more profit = happy affiliates + happy company… not?
He now focuses on repurchasing 5,000 points per month (or week, can’t remember) instead of % to keep his money coming out…
Why can’t it work this way? I agree that the “customer” is really a lottery ticket purchaser… and you can buy one ticket (cast a bid) or many tickets (cast many bids) – we know there are many people who line up to buy lotto tix and have a better chance of dying from a flesh-eating virus than winning the jackpot, but people cross state lines to puchase tix when the mega-jackpot cranks up…
so why is it a stretch to envision a bunch of couch potatos trying to win that 60″ TV or that new Ipad while they are watching their TV and clicking that mouse?
There is a lot of folks who do not have ANY inclination to analyze how poor of a choice it is to mess around with penny auctions (my opinion) and spend real money and ‘get hooked’ on it for fun, entertainment and the trying to get a good deal…
@Anotheropinion
1. Where did you get Quibids advertising figures from?
2. You can’t compare Quibids to Zeekler. They are vastly different in size and the amount of auctions being processed daily. Also the bid values are wildly different too.
Except that Zeek Rewards is not exclusively affiliate program. Affiliates do not earn ongoing ROIs, nor can they re-invest their commissions.
If ZR only paid out a fixed dollar amount commission per bid purchased (by themselvesand or customers) and this was the only commission members earnt (making it a true affiliate program), we wouldn’t be having this discussion.
Which on a handful of sites with identical copy is worthless. In terms of SEO and exposure and visibility on the advertising site itself.
Not when you consider the audience a TV campaign is capable of reaching.
You also need to factor in that if you’re going to talk about bids, with the VIP bonus and reerral commissions, it’s not the money spinner made out to be. The value of bids is drastically impacted on Zeekler compared to other penny auction sites.
Another reason why comparisons are not really valid.
They aren’t infallible but these are established laws we’re talking about. When in history has a ponzi scheme been declared legal in court? Either it is or it isn’t – there’s no grey area when we’re talking specific definitions here.
Apart from conceeding that most of his money is coming from investment by his downline, what do you think is going to happen when this downline mathematically approaches cashouts of even $10,000 a week?
You could have just opened your comment with your example of the $30,000 a week guy and his downline. That alone pretty much negates your entire comparisons and opening paragraphs before it.
Because, as you yourself stated typical examples of those making serious bank are only doing so due to large downlines investing money. Success in ZR has nothing to do with customers, and neither do the payouts.
Ultimately it is not sustainable, and your “real world” example of one guy’s account is wholly reflective of the business and it’s members.
There is and never will be enough revenue to pay out thousands or tens of thousands of people $10,000 a week. The company protects itself against this by reducing the daily profit share but once people can’t sustain their point balances with repurchases, shit will hit the fan.
Remember, the price of VIP bids is fixed, it doesn’t decline just because the ROI on VIP points does.
i am comparing them because they are both “penny auctions” – i am not saying they are exactly the same or else we wouldn’t be having this disucssion
right, they are sharing in the daily profit, so if there are more advertising then maybe there is a growing profit to share and of course, since this is business it is reasonable to assume the company could see their profits decline for various reasons, including poor SEO and over-exposure of ads on classified’s sites.
really? you could say the same… too many of the same commercials on a channel and people tune out? So, if it works in TV why wouldn’t consistent placement on classified sites work too?
I don’t know what you’re talking about here:
what is there to factor? if a company can sell a product that cost them $200 and collect $3,000 as an example, please tell me that even after commissions, vip bonus, referrals, shipping, overhead, labor etc and you STILL can’t make a profit – then how the hell does ANY company make a profit that doesn’t involve thousands of % markup?
I am not suggesting it is a “legal ponzi scheme” – to clarify, i am suggesting that EVEN IF it is NOT a ponzi scheme that doesn’t mean a gov’t agency wouldn’t shut it down for whatever reason the agency could come up with. And we all know gov’t agencies are always correct and proper, right?
I was pointing out that when a company gets too prosperous or maybe becomes the “disruptor” of an industry many times politicians and ‘crats move to protect their buddies… like when we broke all rules concerning who gets paid back when a company goes bankrupt (GM and WH thru bond holders under the bus but allowed Unions to renegotiate) – this is a pure political play w/ GM and Zeek could find itself in the crosshairs of a gov’t takedown because someone somewhere doesn’t like the new kid kicking ass…
Really, how so? if a guy can make a buck with 10,000 points then if he scales up to 100,000 or 130k points what is the dif?
and if he recruits thity people on his first level affiliate and you get 10% of his purchases (because, by definition you are helping the company expand their reach by hiring another “worker”) why wouldn’t the company pay out for each of his 1st level as they do what he did… put in a chunk of money… $5k or $10k and get on the 80-20 plan – meaning most of the profit is being plowed back in to purchase bids to give away and get more customers to come to the site and play…
Duuuh, just what is it you want? why wouldn’t someone with large downlines reinvesting their profits create a big bank for the guy who worked his ass off to build it?
most ANY MLM success story is someone who had an incredible work ethic, great people skills and learned how to develop a team… why would Zeek be any different…
unless YOU KNOW the company does not make thousands of % margin on items and YOU KNOW how many customers are buying bids how the heck can YOU KNOW they can’t be wildly profitable and willing to share the profit with their affiliates?
One problem is that Zeek Rewards affiliates tries to attract new affiliates rather than retail customers. The majority of customers are only used to dump free bids onto, to earn the VIP Points.
Another problem is that most of the bids aren’t paid for with real money, they are paid for with the virtual currency Profit Points. And Profit points are NOT equal to money, even if they can be withdrawn as cash or be used to buy more bids for.
The first 90 days
In the first 90 days, if you don’t withdraw anything in that period, only 25-30% of the bids are paid for with real money (70-75% are paid for with Profit points).
* If you extend the period to 180 days before you start to withdraw money, 9-12% of the bids are paid for with real money (approx. 90% are paid for with Profit points, the average value of the bids is closer to 6 cents than to 60 cents).
* If you extend the period to 270 days using an 80/20 plan in the last 90 days, you will have withdrawn your initial investment plus 50 to 100% profit, and have bought bids for 15-20 times the amount you have invested.
It means that most of the bids spent in the auctions are worthless. They are not paid for with real money, so they won’t generate much revenue either.
Revenue and profit will require a monetary transaction.
* spending bids in an auction isn’t monetary
* buying bids for Profit points isn’t monetary
* buying bids for money is monetary
* membership fee is monetary
* paying for an item won in auction is monetary
So you will have to recalculate your example with the 5,000 bids spent in an auction. Most of the bids spent in Zeekler auctions are worthless affiliate-bids.
So, your premise is “ZR attracts customers by offering them a portion of profits”?
Profit-sharing is legal… to employees and affiliates. When a company shares profits with the customers, who are the ones generating the profits in the first place. That’s called a Ponzi scheme. The customers are paying themselves, basically.
Right now, all this alleged “profit” in Zeekler are potentially from the affiliate themselves buying bids to “give away”. In other words, viability of Zeekler alone is UNKNOWN. While it appears to be profitable, the picture was distorted by ZeekRewards. There is no proof that it would survive without ZeekRewards to prop it up by requiring all participants to buy bids (to give away).
In other words, Zeekrewards makes all their members buy bids, generating the profits in zeekler, then Zeekler in turn pays 50% of profits back to Zeekrewards to be redistributed to bhe members. That’s a Ponzi scheme.
It may not have STARTED as a Ponzi scheme, but then, neither did Charles Ponzi’s scheme.
The primary question here is: how many REAL customers, i.e. who are buying bids, but NOT A PART of this ‘profit sharing’, are there?
Or to restate the above, borrow Mr. Gerald Nehra’s examples (one of the guys ZR hired for compliance review), there must be a division between affiliate and customer. Affiliate is INSIDE the company, and customer is OUTSIDE.
Profit-sharing is not done with customers, but affiliates.
If there is no division between customer and affiliate, then the affiliates are basically paying themselves by pumping money into the system to generate the profits. Add to that the ability for affiliates to earn extra profit by referring MORE affiliates, and you have a Ponzi scheme.
In a regular MLM, the Amway 70% rule and required refund policy prevents inventory loading, i.e. for an upline to require downlines to buy inventory just to drive up his own commission.
ZeekRewards gets around this restriction, i.e. Affiliates buying bids to drive up their profit share by 1) claiming the bids are “given away” 2) claiming the activity is a promotion, and 3) add the layer of this “daily profit” to tweak the formula, and 4) claim they are not MLM.
They are vastly different in function, so comparisons as far as the auctions themselves go are useless.
The Zeekler advertising has nothing to do with daily profit. As per your own example, it’s all about recruiting other members and getting them to invest.
When was the last time you visited a free classified website to learn about penny auctions? The daily spam ads published are useless.
Dollar for dollar ZR aren’t making that much of a profit on bids sold. You can’t just look at the penny auctions, you have to factor in VIP bonuses, referral commissions and the 90 day ROI paid out on the bids themselves.
This makes the net profit on each bid plummet.
Irrelevant and I’d ask that you refrain from bringing up your silly government conspiracies elsewhere.
Money doesn’t grow from trees. You can’t scale anything if downlines aren’t investing and re-investing to pay out the top members.
Customers have nothing to do with it. It’s the ongoing membership fees and investments that pay get paid out with.
Because ponzi schemes are illegal and unustainable.
Again, if you factor in VIP bonuses, referral commissions and 90 day ROIs – the profit margin plummets, no matter how much they make on a penny auction.
Oz
You seem to be ahead of the FTC… maybe you should clue them up to the “fact” Zeek is a ponzi scheme…
I can buy bids to give away. I never have to become a “customer” by bidding on items… a potential customer can claim their “Free bids” which i paid for…
Zeek makes a profit from the bids their customers pay for AND the free bids that I PAID FOR. IF i choose to take my 1.52% or 1.48% share of the profit in cash I can… or if I choose to buy more bids to give away to drive more traffic to the site to get more potential customers to try it out to eventually buy more bids with their own money and to use the free bids THAT I PAID FOR then how is this a ponzi scheme…
it would be no different than if McDonalds let me purchase $5,000 worth of hamburger coupons… I give them away and maybe someone who never ate there decides to give it a try…
maybe they come back and eat again maybe they don’t… but maybe I can create more new customers than regular advertising channels… so you throw in a lottery aspect to it and it makes sense…
you think that because I choose not to take my cash and instead buy more bids to give away, that somehow the “points” (I could cash out) has no monetary value… I disagree.
just like any business, i can spend/take/blow all my profits and maybe watch my business eventually dry up or I could take some of the profits (most businesses don’t have any profit to take as much as the first five years) for myself and reinvest the rest into marketing, expansion etc.
I also disagree with:
You are wrong… i don’t have to hire one person to start claiming my share of the profits… i can start immediately taking my 1.52% or whatever it may be the first day… as long as it is at least $25 I can order a check… and I never have to recruit one single person…
I can choose to recruit because if you understand the law of large numbers, I would rather make 1% on a hundred people than 100% on myself… why can’t you see that me bringing an affiliate to the table brings a business owner who purchases bids to attract more customers and grows the customer base? it is not very hard to understand this logic…
Until you can bring me proof that Zeekler doesn’t have customers or until they are shut down for being a ponzi scheme then the jury is still out… just becaue YOU proclaim it a ponzi scheme doesn’t make it so..
actually, I see this differently. Zeek does not allow any sample/free/paid for bids to be used past 90 days (just like McDonalds coupons would have an expiration date) the bids will either be used or expire worthless… customers can only use the first batch of free bids… then they must purchase more.
I give bids away.. some ads work others do not… that is the nature of me, as a business, buying ads to hopefully drive customers to my business…
most advertising doesn’t work anyway… putting your name on a pencil or phone book cover or google ads – most of it is a write off in the pursuit of getting new customers… the fact that I am in an “army” of internet advertisers and aggregate numbers of ads by sheer volume will continue to drive new customers to the site.
What if Zeek just hired salesmen to work on salary and told them to place an ad each day? If they hired 100 salespeople and each placed an ad there will most likely be a measurable amount of new customers attracted to the business. Or do you propose that NO NEW CUSTOMERS will EVER come from placing ads?
If Zeek then decided to ramp up and hire 1,000 salespeople and paid them salaries and each placed an ad, wouldn’t you suppose a field force of 10x would generate more customers than the 100 person sales force?
the point is, no matter how you pay them or what you call them you either have a bunch of salespeople or a bunch of affiliates… instead of paying a whopping salary then could ask the affiliate to purchase bids from a minimum of $10 to a lifetime maximum of $10k to give away…
and if you allow them to hire others and save Zeek the trouble you can grow a salesforce… that actually spends their own money to buy “inventory” (bids to give away, coupons, whatever) why wouldn’t Zeek pay a meager 10% of what the inventory spend would be for that new salesperson… a lot cheaper than hiring an employee.
K. Chang
depends on who “them” is…
ZR attract customers by offering AFFILIATES a portion of the profits to help attract customers… if that’s what you mean… then yes, i agree.
I think you are missing the point… the act of placing an ad is the mechinism of choice by Zeek to attract new customers… if you do this everyday and you get others to help you do it then it stands to reason you will get more/new customers…
it is a crowd-sourced advertising program that everyone who does their daily job gets to participate in the profits of the customers who come back and buy… granted, if all my first and second level affiliates decided not to reinvest their profits back into more bids then I would see my income plummet… on my overides… but I can still earn money on my own efforts… just like any other business…
if your salesforce quits you are gonna lose business/profits… and just like most businesses you get it while the gettin’s good cuz most business will either level out or could become obscelescent or leap-frogged by technology or a better model… that doesn’t make it a ponzi or irrelevent
K Chang
did you hear what you just said?
You’re smoking crack.
the whole point of an affiliate program – especially a 2 level program is for affiliates to attract other affiliates… how the hell do you suppose affiliate will join?
this is not a ponzi scheme no more than Amway is.. a rep can hire a rep (and make extra profit on him) can hire a rep (and make extra profit on him) can hire a rep (and make extra profit on him) to “X” levels deep… this is called “multi-level” for a reason.
An affiliate program with 2 levels is really no different just much less “multi”
you wanna try again?
M_Norway
you are assuming no new customers are coming to the site and are purchasing subsequent bids with real money… how do you factor in this to the overall equation?
the idea is to get more customers to come… if i use “virtual currency” and it creates a real customer spending real dollars then the virtual currency has value, does it not? or I can make sure it does by cashing it out for real money… how does that not have value?
So lets look at ones options with Zeekler. I as a new customer can use another members free bids or purchase my own at .65 cents a bid and compete against who knows how many non purchased bids in a given lame retail product or more free bids or a couple 100 dollars.
Wow I rather spend the day with my wife at the mall. My option with Zeek Rewards, post the same few mandatory ads after paying my monthly membership with legal tender and purchasing bids for virtual vip points that i have to have to have share in the profit with all the other affiliates.
Now lets be completly honest here, that ad can have thousands of views and not a single customer so no new money coming in from the auction. Have a look at Reward site and see the passive investment side of things and people might think they are onto things.
But forgeting the downfall of the customer co-op and the lack of reality that they are recruiting more affiliates than new customers for the auction, that this is just a giant pool of zeek reward affiliates money being redistributed amounst members. So no thanks to either.
That’s correct. I wasn’t counting any customers at all in that example. The math wasn’t 100% correct either, but it was close enough to illustrate the point (I made up some Profit share Monday-Sunday, 1.8% 1.9% 1.8% 1.7% 1.1% 1.2% and 1.1%, repeated for 270 days in a spreadsheet). The main point was about monetary and non-monetary transactions.
Your friend painted a true picture of the situation, clearly showing that he was focusing on recruiting affiliates to his downline rather than recruiting customers to the auctions.
You can ask him how many retail customers he has, not including free bids, family and friends? And did your friend try to recruit you as a customer or as an affiliate, or did he TRY to sell retail bids to you at all?
To be able to support his own payouts, he should eagerly be looking for retail customers to the auctions. He should at least have tried to sell you a couple of bidpacks before he tried to recruit you.
The monetary transaction happens when the bids are SOLD, not when the bids are used in auctions. And paying for bids with Profit points is not a monetary transaction. And affiliates trying to recruit other affiliates won’t generate much profit.
It’s probably easier to understand if you can separate transactions from each other. Giving away free bids is one transaction, a customer buying bids is another transaction (because you don’t know which customers who will buy more bids).
* Your initial purchase – 100% real monetary value
* Reinvesting the profit points – no monetary value
* give bids away for free – no monetary value
* selling bids to customer – 80/20 value (20% commission to the affiliate)
* cashing out and then reinvest the money – this action won’t create more revenue for the company. An “in-out” operation won’t create any additional value to the profit points.
* retail customers buying retail bids directly from Zeekler, and not via affiliates – 100% real monetary value
I made it simple, not including any commissions to the upline in your initial purchase. I haven’t studied that part of the compensation plan.
To identify a relation between the free bids and people becoming regular customers, you will need reliable statistics showing the number of bids/free customers needed to create one regular customer, and how much money an average of these customers will spend in auctions over a period of time.
No statistics will usually mean it is too unimportant to spend time and efforts on.
Sure, but affiliates to do what? They are supposed to be SELLING the idea of buying bids to others, NOT TO BUY BIDS THEMSELVES
Your turn.
@AnotherOpinion:
Your analysis here is completely flawed. You assume that retail customers, even if they exist in some meaningful quantity, result in net profit to Zeekler/Zeek Rewards when they purchase bids.
But I have proven multiple times that based on the present business model, the net revenue is NEGATIVE due to the matching VIP points.
Therefore, even taking the most favorable view of your opinions, Zeek Rewards makes no money.
Jimmy
you may have to remind me since I don’t remember what you’ve proven… please clarify…
K. Chang
actually, I don’t have to find retail customers other than placing the ad that may attract a customer… why should I market that way when it makes sense that Zeek has hundreds of thousands of ads that in aggregate attracts customers…
of do you have some proof otherwise?
M_Norway
he is doing exactly what Zeek has asked him to do… along with 300k to 400k other affiliates… place ads… that attract customers… can you prove this does not work?
@AnotherOpinion
I’m not sure why but you seem to be editing the quotes and putting your name there rather than the person you’re actually quoting. Makes things a bit confusing.
Customer bids have a VIP bonus attachment to the referring affiliate, which in turn generate a 90 day ROI. The bids you pay for attract the same. The profit is negligble.
(which is why the entire operation looks and feels like it’s run out of a $2 garage).
Irrelevant. McDonalds don’t pay out referral commissions on hamburgers or 90 day ROIs.
What?
Of course points have no monetary value, they are a virtual investment currency that is entirely worthless outside of the ZR program. You try cash in some VIP points down at your local bank and see what happens.
So who are you going to give your bids away to? I suppose you could always generate bogus free accounts like a lot of affiliates do but that introduces a whole set of new problems.
Whether they expire or not is irrelevant. Of course the majority of bids expire without being actually used. The only reason they are bought is to generate vip points and create referral commissions. And with the auctions so bogged down with an oversaturation of worthless bids it’s not really worth wasting your time trying to win a few hundred dollars a pop.
What happens to the bids is entirely irrelevant, the 90 day ROI and referral commissions are paid out on condition of the bids being bought, not whether they are used or expire.
The above only just further highlights the complete irrelevancy of Zeekler’s auctions when it comes to reshuffling money between members who pay membership fees and purchase bids themselves. If the profit share was actually tied into the use of the bids rather than the mere sale of them, things would be entirely different.
As for the ads, please don’t bother with company approved compliance bullshit talk here. Whether you publish 1 or 1 billion ads on free classified websites, the end result is the same. Nobody is reading them and they are largely ineffectual.
Google trashes duplicate content so organic acquisition via the search engines is out too. Over the last 12 months 135,000 people searched for “penny auction” on Google and Zeekler currently ranks on page 3 for this term.
Comparitavely, over the last 12 months 165,000 people searched Google for “Zeek Rewards” and just 33,000 for “Zeekler” (remember these are monthly averages over the past year).
We already know ZR dwarfs Zeekler traffic wise so please don’t crap on about customers propping up the business. Especially when you’ve gone out of your way to provide a real world example where you yourself admit the focus was on the recruitment of affiliates to invest 80/20 in bids.
@Anotheropinion
Go read over what you published, you mentioned a downline and affiliates you never said anything about customers.
You could backpeddal now and say you meant customers yada yada but that’s not going to fly as your “friend”‘s situation isn’t unique. All the top earners in ZR have huge affiliate downlines who are investing like crazy on the promise of withdrawing $10,000+ a week.
Problem is the only reason people are able to currently withdraw $10,000+ a week is because of all this recent investing.
Once that slows down…
Usually I’d publish these as one comment but this warranted it’s own reply…
@AnotherOpinion
Seriously…?
Mate affiliate marketing on the internet revolves around the sale of goods with commissions paid out on each sale. There are no tiers otherwise you’re talking MLM.
MLM companies use the term affiliate to refer to their members collectively as being in a group, not in the marketing sense.
Don’t mix the commission side of affiliate marketing on the internet with MLM terminology.
You don’t get any VIP Profit points if you post ads and don’t buy and give away bids. (You could recruit additional affiliates though) No VIP profit points, no profit share, thus no $$$.
Your turn.
Also the value of publishing ads has been previously quantified by Zeek Rewards.
When they banned members from six countries a few months ago, despite publishing ads for the company for over a year in some instances, these banned members received no money for their “work”. All they were promised was a refund on money they had personally invested into Zeek Rewards.
To date, some of these members have yet to even receive their invested money back.
you don’t have to give away bids… you only have to post your ad… if someone claims them, great… if they don’t they will expire in 90 days…
they are very similar to a coupon… as long as the ad is out there someone may claim the free bids… My obligation is to place the ad and through that process some of the bids are claimed some are not.
…? Claims them from where? You have to give the bids away. ZR stopped running their dodgy customer pool a few months ago.
Any third party set up that functions in a similar manner is not part of the Zeek Rewards opportunity.
If you want profitshare you have to give bids away to people you’ve recruited. The publication of advertisements alone does not cover the giving away of bids and recruitment of people to give said bids away to.
These are completely seperate actions we’re talking about here.
so, if I put $5,000 in when i start up and then start placing an ad each day and then I take my 1.52% of profit share and begin to buy more bids with those dollars are you saying I won’t be able to cash out the points I have for real money?
come on bro, you can’t have it both ways… i can either buy more bids or claim it as cash… you can pontificate all you want about whether a bank will take the points are not.. i don’t really care… I care about the Bank of Zeek when I order a check and it hits MY BANK as CASH…your turn
You cannot cash out points at any time. Instead you are paid a 90 day variable ROI on the purchase price of said points.
More points = a higher ROI but not so co-incidentally also means you’ve invested more into the scheme.
Please educate yourself on the basics of the Zeek Rewards business model before continuing this discussion any further.
so, do you know for a fact the Zeek is not getting new customers?
Would you sign up as a customer to compete in Zeeker’s penny auctions to compete with other “customers” who don’t hold any value to the bids they are bidding with because either they were given them or they only bought them to earn VIP points/referral commissions off?
There’s little to no attraction for genuine customers to sign up to Zeekler. And when I say genuine, I’m differentiating between customers solely signed up to dump bids on and fraudulent accounts (created by affiliates as is happening now en masse).
It’s still a ponzi.
1) Customer buys $1000 in retail bids
2) Sponsoring affiliate gets paid $200 in commission
3) Sponsoring affiliates receives 1000 in matching VIP points
Net revenue to Zeek: $800
Net liability to Zeek: 1000 VIP points that earn ROI over next 90-days
Someone show me how Zeek is profitable? So many Zeek defenders forget #3 (it’s still a ponzi without #3, but it’s an obvious ponzi with #3).
Zeek Rewards is a ponzi combined with massive bid inflation in the retail penny auction.
Yes, definitely not anywhere close to sustaining the daily profit shared owed on the affiliate investment. This can be verified by looking at any affilaite’s back office.
How often did they receive commissions from external retail customers? Ask 100 affiliates (I have talked to more than that) and the answer is next to nil. You also have to exclude the affiliate-who-buys-retail-bids-as-for-themselves to gain 20% more in VIP points and use credit cards which were dropped as of Dec 2011.
You’re missing the point. Those $5000 you put in at the beginning are officially for buying bids (to give away). You insist that you don’t buy bids to give away. FAIL.
Your turn.
Do you know for a fact that they are getting new customers? Enough to pay for all the profits?
Or is it just affiliates buying bids in order to get VIP Profitpoints?
When you talk about the legitimacy of Zeekler and how important it is in terms of Zeek Rewards daily profit share, the reality is that it’s so insignificant that Zeekler don’t even bother to pay out “winners”.
Here’s an interesting read to give you an idea of what happens when you win an auction on Zeekler.
And before anybody asks, the above are all quotes from verified Zeek Rewards affiliates. God help Zeekler’s random unverified customers.
Anybody who claims Zeekler is a top penny auction site or comparable to the competition with any sort of legitimacy is deluding themselves. Without Zeek Rewards’ members investing in VIP bids via Zeek Rewards and participating in the ponzi side of things, Zeekler wouldn’t even exist.
I won a cash auction and it’s been over 30 days and I haven’t been paid. I paid the closing price and am waiting. I’ve won other auctions and were paid within about 10 days, but this has been over 30 days. Yes, I’ve opened a ticket but haven’t heard back “within 48 hours” as they say on the form.
If this was a real penny auction, customers would be leaving left and right, and you’d see posts on scam.com and other consumer reports sites about poor customer service, non-responsive, missing transactions, bids purchased but errors with ewallet systems not posting the bids purchased, etc.
but with a complete lack of genuine retail customers, all you’re left with are complaints from disgruntled Zeek Rewards affiliates.
I don’t have to prove it doesn’t work, you can check your own statistics for the ratio between customers and affiliates. It’s meaningless to ask for proof when you have the answer right in front of you in your own statistics.
My point was where the main focus in Zeek Rewards is, whether the company and the affiliates tries to attract real customers or tries to attract more affiliates.
“He is doing exactly what Zeek has asked him to do” was my point, too. People are not trying to attract customers, they are trying to attract new investors to the Ponzi scheme. To be able to continue to pay money OUT they will need far more customers than affiliates.
Sustainability
You will be able to withdraw Profit Points as cash as long as money comes IN from somewhere, from other affiliates or from customers. The ratio between affiliates and customers will tell you how long it will last. A high ratio of affiliates means more shortlived, a high ratio of retail customers means more sustainable.
The ratio between affiliates and customers will also tell you whether it is a Ponzi scheme or a sustainable business. Ponzi schemes will typically use money from new investors to pay the old ones.
1) personally I don’t use penny auctions
2) How would someone who does not know anything about penny auctions to start with even know what you just quoted? You are assuming everyone views this opportunity (As a customer) with the same jaundice eye as you.
4) a Customer’s lifetime value… repeat buying… you don’t even consider this as a variable.
So no, you’re just in it for the investment ROIs. You don’t even believe in the value of the “product” enough to use it.
Because they have the internet. Jaundice has nothing to do with it. Having half a brain and understanding where your money goes however…
Any more pointless deflections?
For good reason. The notion of legitimate retail customers in Zeekler is laughable. The notion of repeat customers is just absurd.
Zeekler’s penny auctions are stuffed due to the affiliate program and bid inflation. Nobody with half a mind would bid there… and as it turns out they’re not even paying winners, the affiliates who are bothering to use up their bids and recoup some of their investment via the auctions.
actually, I have not initiated funding as an affiliate yet. I am still researching and your comments along with others are valuable. But I don’t take what you say as gospel, however, I will take what you and others have said and vet your claims.
I also know that it is EASY for any naysayer to assume they know how it works as I have been successful in other companies that provide true value but competitors are ruthless and will lie, assume, create many false claims to try and bolster their own positions or justify an inferior situation.
I am using logic to argue this system is viable – but I can also be wrong. Until I see hard evidence (like paltry customer numbers) I will not pass judgement.
now you’re just being an ass…
I don’t have to eat pizza everyday to own a Papa John’s franchise… I did and I almost never ate pizza… got sick of it… I don’t have to use the product for others to enjoy it.
I personally don’t like lotteries and have never bought a lottery ticket. You, as a customer, are welcome to buy as many as you want. I don’t have to like lotteries for it to be a viable business model.
You have a personal grudge it sounds like to me.
Here’s some hard customer numbers and typical of those investing in Zeek Rewards:
Your words and no mention of customers (although no doubt he’s buying/creating fake ones like everybody else to dump bids onto).
Like M_Norway said, the answers are right infront of you. You might be new here but we’ve been discussing and analysing ZR for months now. You’ve got some catching up to do.
Anyone with half a brain won’t use Zeekler’s penny auctions due to the affiliate program and bid inflation it introduces. There’s no value because ZR kills bid value by flooding the auctions with worthless bids.
All bids are essentially worthless as they’re only bought for ROIs and referral commissions.
The fact that you yourself think penny auctions are not worth using is a perfectly normal reaction to the model and one most people have. Yet here supposedly we have a bunch of people that know Zeekler’s auctions are stuffed but want to run around pretending this is where the money comes from.
Yeah… good one. Without Zeek Rewards member investments and membership fees there is no profit share. End of story.
All your cited examples are irrelevant to the discussion.
First and last warning, stay on topic.
Customer can stop buying at any time. They are only “life time value” if they continue to buy bids. Thus, “life time value” is an opinion / assumption, not fact. FAIL.
Don’t get personally insulted here, that’s not logic.
Nothing wrong promoting ZeekRewards in itself. That’s perfect legal. The POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL PART is you PAYING Zeekrewards, which generates the money that pays you. There is insufficient proof that there actually *are* customers, not affiliates, paying the system (or in sufficient numbers to generate that much profit to share with you).
Now, now, you’re going on ad hominem attack here, attributing motives to your opponent.
You are arguing for “ZeekRewards is viable”. We’re arguing for something quite different: “ZeekRewards is POTENTIALLY ILLEGAL”.
There is a period where a scam can be BOTH… a Ponzi scheme continues to run and is “viable” until enough people cash out or want their money and causing the collapse.. or the authorities shut it down.
I don’t consider this because:
– The affiliate sponsor still gets matching VIP points.
– Even if Zeek limits this to a maximum, it’s a joke to assume a real customer would buy more than $1000 in retail bids.
– The % of customers who would ever go over the maximum is negligible.
You’re just drawing at straws now.
Oh, and I should have said something earlier. The math on this doesn’t make sense.
Even with the 10% level 1 commissions and 5% level 2 commissions, and 100% cashout (meaning the points start expiring and the balance is not sustained), there’s no way to reach $30k PER WEEK.
BULLSHIT.
@Jimmy, work out the numbers.
130000 points, at 1.45%, is less than $2000 per day, and due to expiring points, steadily decreasing. There’s no way it can produce $30000 a week even at 100% cashout.
uh, you’re not counting his 31+ 1st level & about that many 2nd level overrides…
then you need to go to his webinar… there’s one tomorrow night… he logs into his back office and shows pages and pages and pages of overrides, bid buys, bid retirments etc plus checks
— Webinar link is join.me/myzeekpays then CALL in to 415.464.6999 and when prompted type in the pin 860-525-544#
OR click phone icon and check internet audio
All Times Pacific Coast Time
Monday May 21st 7:15PM
Tuesday May 22nd 5:30PM
Thursday May 24th 6:00PM
If we boil down the comments over the last couple of days I think we can all agree that what will be left stuck to the bottom of the pot will be “customers”. That’s the issue.
I’ve explained in a comment on another thread here why people would buy bids and be a repeat customer at Quibids but not at Zeekler. I won’t go into it again here. The important thing is there are no real customers at Zeekler. Using the same logic as AnotherOpiniion we can KNOW this.
I joined as an affiliate because I saw this exactly the way AnotherOpinion layed it out. It wasn’t until I took a closer look that I realized something is wrong and I’m in the process of cashing out. No customers = not sustainable.
Quick story….
I set my rebuys to zero…up line says “hey, what’s up?”. I say I’m out…no real customers. They get me on a conference call with the big guys, people in for quite a while with huge down lines and VIP balances.
I beg them to convince me I’m wrong (who doesn’t want to make bazillion dollars?). Go round and round until someone says they know of a customer. I’m not kidding…one customer. I said great, have them message me.
Still waiting…still at zero. Remember, they represent HUGE down lines and found one customer…well, they say they found one.
Agenda hawks should be aware that you can’t use free bids on almost any meaningful Zeekler auctions. That said, Zeekler can certainly stand to be a lot better.
Then you can join as a free affiliate for a short period of time, to see how it works from the inside? It isn’t exactly “worth the effort”, but it’s a method to TRY the system for a short period of time (60 days). You can upgrade to an affiliate (Silver or whatever) when you like to.
Free affiliate will give you 100 bonus points that expires after 60 days, and you will then have to upgrade to Silver and buy $10 worth of bids or something. I’m sure you will be able to make a decision within a week or so, whether to upgrade or to quit. Free affiliate is only a method to get started.
Problems you should know about before you sign up is the taxes for U.S. citizens. Other affiliates received a 1099 in February where ALL profit points were listed as income. They received general tax advises from an expert (Howard Kaplan) in a conference call, but he was very vague on how to post income and expenses.
It means if ZR collapses before you have withdrawn any money, you will owe income tax for all the profit points even if you haven’t withdrawn any money (if you’re a U.S. citizen).
MoneyMakerGroup.com has a 300+ pages forumthread about Zeek Rewards right from the beginning. Changes in Zeek Rewards’ “Terms and Conditions” has been made in August 2011 and in January / February 2012. Next change will come 1st June 2012, about a requirement to have 2 customers or something.
Affiliates buy bids to be given away as free bids. Affiliates don’t by bids for its own sake, but to be traded for VIP Profitpoints. Whether free bids have more or less intrinsic value is almost irrelevant. They have only one value to the affiliates: they can be traded for VIP profit points.
Value to affiliates is a red herring; value to the company is the issue and regardless of why bids are purchased or by whom, they are in fact purchased and therefore represent money coming in to the company. This is why ZR is different from prior programs.
Interesting argument, but fundamentally flawed, as the bid purchase neither proves nor disproves it’s a Ponzi scheme or not.
Why? Because, again, the affiliates are buying bids to generate VIP Profit points, which entitles them to a share of the profits, but the profits are generated by the bid purchases, so they are in effect paying themselves, which is the definition of a Ponzi scheme.
The fact that the bids can be categorized as legitimate bid purchases is irrelevant.
And showing your backoffice is strictly prohibited by zeek compliance and is grounds for immediate termination. I bet the presentation focuses entirely on the investment portion, I.e. ponzi.
Also, he is not cashing out 100% so the numbers are misleading.
OT but interesting. A bit of news that came out of the Red Carpet Event and just passed down to us…a dozen people in Zeek making over a million dollars……PER MOMNTH!!
Yes,there are a few people with 7 figure point balances, and a large downline so they are earning 6-figure monthly commissions as well as daily profit share from their downline, and of course profit on their own VIP point balance which compounds.
The Zeek problem is that the rate of growth at the top is faster than the base of they pyramid. So collapse will happen much sooner than a typical HYIP with fixed investment scheme.
Also, that million number is total payout which includes the amount they reinvest, so not actual money cashed out, but that’s still a significant number.
Someone should have asked if any of those dozen people including officers employed by the company such as Dawn and DD. There’s a conflict of interest Zeek hasn’t admitted to in public and Troy Dooly won’t comment on despite the question being asked of him.
I thought I knew how the auctions worked buy apparently not….so correct me if i’m wrong….which i don’t think i am.
I posted this on mlmhelpdesk:
Troy’s reply:
So after the first bid i’m charged $.01 each other bid and not and actual VIP bid?
So i brought up a retail auction and not a VIP auction:
Then Troy replied:
Doesn’t make sense to me…
Troy forgot to count the cost of the bids.
Troy’s numbers are also wrong. He doesn’t factor in the liability of matching VIP points given to the sponsor, nor the 20% commission. Also, the cost for a retail bid is not $1 = 1 bid.
Let’s take this from the top:
The “first bid” per bidder costs 10 bids and that’s not included in the final price. These “10 retail bids” which does not cost $1.00.
Since these are retail (but not VIP) bids, they cost 65 cents each. The winning bidder on the Galxy Tab spent 430 bids which means it cost him $279.50 (65 cents per bid) to buy those bids. In addition, he has to pay Zeekler $113.18 + $12 shipping (even though they drop ship by Amazon free shipping to you… yes, your package actually is from Amazon not Zeekler).
Total price paid by winning bidder = $404.68.
Total cost to Zeekler = $249.
Now, you may be asking, why would anyone spend $404.68 for something they can buy on Amazon for $249?
The answer: Because the value of the retail bids to the winning bidder is next to NOTHING.
Here’s how it works:
1. I want to participate in the ponzi.
2. But I want to use my credit card, not these PITA eWallets that require verification and charge you up to 6% fees + transaction fees + max credit card limits per day.
3. So I sign up a retail customer (mom, dad, uncle, Santa Claus).
4. I buy $1000 worth of retail bids (this gives me 1538 retail bids at cost of 65 cents per bid).
5. For my $1000 spent at the retail penny auction, my affiliate account makes 20% commission ($200) and I get 1000 matching VIP points. (Sucks to be my upline sponsor, they won’t make 10% on 1000 VIP points, and his sponsor won’t get 5% either… they will get commissions on the daily profit share, just not the initial purchase, since I did it via my retail customer).
6. So I have my 1000 VIP points that earn ROI for 90-days. I’ll reinvest the $200 commission as well, so I’m at 1200 VIP points that don’t expire for 90-days. This was my goal.
7. Meanwhile, I still have these 1538 retail bids. What should I do with them? No point letting them go to waste. Let’s bid on stuff!
You see, at step #7, I don’t care if I spent 1 bid or all 1578 bids on an item. The only thing I care about is the difference in what I have to pay Zeekler, and what the items is worth.
In my mind, I’m paying Zeekler $113.18 + $12 shipping for a Galaxy Tab worth $249 (the value of the bids are meaningless to me at this point in time). Plus I have my 1200 VIP points earning compounded daily profit share. All this for only $1000.
LET THE GOOD TIMES ROLL!
Well said Jimmy-)
@Abelyn — Jimmy is being somewhat sarcastic here. Right Jimmy?
@K. Chang – yes, the last line was sarcastic, and I think Abelyn got it hence the smile. Everything I wrote above is exactly true and I’ve lived that scenario multiple times before I switched to 100% cash out.
My point, in addition to the sarcasm, is that how could this be remotely sustainable? Zeek makes $800 in revenue ($1000 minus 20% commission) and they have 1000 VIP point liability. The business model is obviously a ponzi as long as the matching VIP points for retail purchases are available.
Of course, Zeek needs the matching VIP points so they can “entice” retail penny auction revenue. In a month you’ll see Zeek tout how great the retail revenue is (without disclosing that they pay matching VIP points that earn ROI for every dollar in retail revenue).
so it has been stated that Zeek has a 25:1 customer to affilitate ratio… do you dispute this number?
Nope. When you consider the sheer amount of VIP points that have to be dumped each day that’s a hell of a lot of fake accounts set up.
A far more revealing number would be a ratio of customers who actually use bids purchased from their accounts (less than 1%?), but we’ll never get that info as it gives the game away.
how do you know? “NOPE” really? you are the final arbitor?
prove it.
Zeekler’s auctions do not suggest a 25:1 “bid using” customer ratio. Neither do the traffic statistics for Zeekler and Zeek Rewards (25 times more customers than affiliates and ZR has more traffic than Zeekler? Please.)
Ergo the bulk of customers are just merely created to dump bids onto and never used again.
You want to make the assertion that the customers are legit, you prove it. The auction and website traffic data (actual bids being used vs. generated and dumped, number of auctions a day, bids being spent like they have no value (something a genuine customer who paid for their bids would not do over and over again), visitor numbers certainly suggests otherwise so you’re already off to a bad start.
edit: I’m not interested in a circular discussion either so keep that in mind if you wish to continue asserting that raw Zeekler customer numbers somehow legitimise the business.
It has been stated by Dawn, the VP, with no numbers to prove her own story.
Given that customers are not verified to the degree as affiliates, and there is no evidence that these so-called customers bought significant number of bids after consuming the initial free bids, I’d say the claim may be factually true, but their definition of “customer” is not the one of “customers who bought bids and continue to buy bids”.
Unless she defines exactly what exactly is a “customer” we are all working off assumptions. Which means your evidence is rather… useless.
This is very easy to prove by example. Ask any Diamond affiliate how much commission they have ever received from their retail customers. Remember, the free/fake customers that affiliates create on their own, bought for previously through 5cc, get for free from Zeek today after signing up 2 PRC’s, or pay one of the many companies that have popped up sign up fake/free customers on your behalf… all of these “retail customers” would generate commission if they ever bought anything.
So just be honest here and talk to any affiliate with 5-figure or 6-figure point balances. They have a good sample size of customers. Out of the 100’s of affiliates I have talked to, NONE have received a single retail commission other than ones they bought for themselves.
This is made further suspicious when:
1. To date, email verification is still not needed, you can create fake customers with a push of a button on a web form
2. The free customers Zeek provides for you have the naming convention (first name) + (3 digit number) like “bill002” “susan156” etc. I have almost 100 free customers from Zeekler like this. These aren’t real people, probably some mailing campaign where ZR signs people up from a list they bought. “You have free bids waiting for you, your login is jimmy123”.
3. Not a single retail customers has every showed up here, on MMG, TG, or any other forum. Contrast this with other penny auctions, poker rooms, online lotteries and casinos… you find people talking about it somewhere.
If there really are 25:1 ratio for customers, you’d think one of these millions of customers would say something somewhere. Almost all users of the penny auctions are affiliates.
You have lots of “proofs” already, in your own behaviour. You have been hanging around on a website that talks about Zeek Rewards being a Ponzi scheme for several days. You would probably have joined it more directly if it hadn’t been any doubts about it. 🙂
Analysing your own behaviour will tell you something about what you gut-feeling tells you about it, whether it feels quite OK or if you feel lots of resistance against it.
Flipping a coin “Join it” and “Not join it” can also be used. You should look for feelings of resistance against a choice, or if it feels quite OK. The coin is absolutely neutral, and will have similar chances for “Join it” or “Not join it”.
Joining as a free affiliate can be used in a similar way. If it feels quite OK to invest more within a few days it’s probably OK. Joining as a free affiliate can be compared to testing something in a small scale.
I have some different methods that can be used.
* One of the methods is to pretend you are doing the work for someone else. The method will force you to focus on some other motives than your original ones.
You will have a different sets of motives if this was about giving an advise to a family member or friend, when it’s THEIR money that’s involved and not your own money, and you should only act in the role as a qualified and trusted advisor.
You would have had different sets of motives if you were a paid advisor for a big company, and they have paid you for a report to the next board meeting – whether they should invest several million dollars in Zeek Rewards or avoid it.
Use your imagination and try to visualize roles like these. You can even add some more pressure to the situation, like in visualizing you are one of the apprentices in Donald Trump’s “The apprentice”, and your decision will be broadcasted to millions of viewers around the world. 🙂
My in-laws asked if they could set me up as a dummy customer, and I gave them one of my “throwaway” email addresses.
To date I haven’t received anything asking for confirmation for joining zeekler.com. They set up one of their other sons-in-law and I don’t think he’s received anything either.
To be completely fair, Jimmy, while I appreciate the example, you need to warn people that your example may NOT be “typical”. There *could* be honest affiliates out there recruiting customers/bidders, not other affiliates.
We just don’t know the ratio of “promoter” vs. “ponzi-player”, and it is VERY risky to join something that has a VERY HIGH POTENTIAL of being a Ponzi scheme.
Even if there were some number of normal retail non-affiliate customers willing to spend some cash on bids, the likelihood of getting them to be repeat customers (the most valuable type of customer) is going to be very low, given the hordes of affiliates out there sucking the air out of the room in the auctions by over-bidding everything to high prices.
Having been a Quibids customer prior to my brief time as an affiliate with ZR, I can tell you that Zeekler is not competitive at all with other legitimate penny auctions for many reasons, and even those more competitive penny auctions have problems developing a lot of repeat customers.
The chances are quite high that a Zeekler “customer” will be one-and-done. If their first experience is with “free bids”, then no revenue will be derived whatsoever from them.
I have been waiting over 37 days now for a payout on one of my auctions. I have another account (technically a relative but I did the “buy retail bids for VIP points deal”) that is going on 60 days now.
These were auctions with cash prizes that was won, paid for, and no payout yet from Zeekler. I’ve been paid in the past within a few days.
I’ve opened multiple tickets now, without a single response from either account. Not even an auto-reply with a ticket id. The support form says they will respond within 48 hours.
Today if you try to open a ticket, you get a web server error. So you can’t even open a ticket to ask about your existing ticket.
I’m sure Zeekler isn’t hard up for a few hundred dollars in auction winnings. But this goes to emphasize that Zeekler doesn’t give a rats a** about the penny auction. How many other penny auctions with such poor customer service (and poor site functionality, and poor bid value) would survive?
Of all my Zeekler accounts, I haven’t received a single marketing or promo email from Zeekler. Every other penny auction, poker room, online lotto, etc. are constantly finding ways to invite customers to use the site.
Zeek Rewards doesn’t care about Zeekler. It’s just a device to attempt to justify retail revenue for the Zeek Rewards ponzi.
This company has gone from nowhere on the map to a billzion hits per month as proofed on the Alexa rankings (261 yesterday) You can’t expect the company to not have some serious glitches from time to time because they are realizing serious real time web traffic.
They had no idea when they started that it would be this fast growth at this pace. It is not a 20 year old system that has all of the bugs worked out and running smooth as silk.
You must give them a break. They are not defrauding people and they are just doing the best they can with what they have. Yes of course you wish they had no problems but you are just going to have to be patient and stop going through life with your underpants pulled up over your eyes.
Get real.
Oh please. One and a half years on and you’re going to crap on about ‘growing pains’? What about all that crap about ‘we have 3 million Free Store Club members’?
If they told you it was due to unicorns in the servers you’d be here trotting out that excuse too. Please use your brain before wholesale swallowing the company kool-aid.
And as far as the number of bids made on the items. Just because it says Paid bids does not necessarily mean that they paid for the bids other than as an affiliate or a Preferred Retail Customer. At the $99 per month subscriber level, you get 250 bids and they can build up over time.
Bandwagon fallacy: they are popular therefore they are legit… bogus logic. Alexa is nothing but a “vanity metric” like a hit-counter. Considering that you are REQUIRED to visit ZR once at day at the minimum (to “prove” you posted an ad) this metric is meaningless.
The two statements are NOT related. The problems they are having are operational, and thus NOT RELATED to why their business model resembles to a Ponzi scheme.
Given the number of bids blown in one or two auctions is often in the thousands, 250 bids will last about… 10 minutes, and thus, insignificant. Vast majority of the bids are BOUGHT, not received free. While your point is valid, it is of minuscule importance.
@Mike
Yeah except that we’re not just talking about paid bids, we’re talking about retail paid bids (as per the screenshots in the article).
Getting free bids with your membership subscription is not retail.
There is another issue that seems not to have been addressed here (apologies if it has). Ironically, it would go to both helping prove the ponzi scheme, but also, help making it A LITTLE more sustainable…
you can only cash out the amount of interest you have made that day. You cant cash out everything, anytime.. For someone with a lot of VP points, that’d take a LONG time to withdraw / convert to REAL money…
The expiration of points and limited cash out / forced reinvestment reduces the daily ACTUAL YIELD to roughly 0.5% a day. Still ridiculously high.
Not really. In 30 days you cash out half of your total available cashout. In 45 days, you’ve cashed out 70%. So you don’t have to wait the full 90 days to realize most of your gains.
If a significant number of people moved to cash out 100%, just a few days, Zeek corporate would be in panic mode. This is because by the time this happens, the pyramid structure is off balance. A much higher % is being paid out to the top half of the pyramid.
If you consider that in 30-days you can cash out 50% of everyone’s available balance (except for those who joined less than 90 days ago), and that in 12-days, 20% of all available balance is cashed out, it will only take 1-2 weeks for Zeek to enter panic mode.
You need to consider a pyramid in terms of *density*. Not just growth based on volume (the number of people at the top, middle, bottom), but their mass. Zeek’s compounding point growth means that they not only need more people to join (ever expanding base), but they need them to join at a high initial investment (volume x mass = density).
@Joe Mama — This skeptoid episode on “What should I do when my friend/family believe in ‘woo'” should help
http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4187
In reading all of the exerpts, how do you explain troy Dooleys intense evaluation studies of 25 customers to 1 Zeek Affiliate. This means Zeek is #1 in the world for network marketing companies, ratio of 25 to 1.
This obviously proves that Zeeks EMM marketing works brlliantly. Customers are being driven to Zeek’s penny auction sites with free bids. I am also sure when they run out of free bids, the majority use their own money, until they can acqire more free bids. This works hand in hand.
As far as credit card fraud as seen back in Feb, Zeek will have to get money back from credit card companies & the rest will have to come from company profits.( A Tax write off ) Obviously this problem is not as serious as some of you have stated, as company checks are still being cashed with no problems.
I am sure when Paul Burk,started analyzing exact formula’s with his computer science employees along with a mathmatecian or two, he made sure it was going to work & not fail, as we have seen nothing but success in the last 16 months.
Fast growing companies run into growin pains, however Paul & his executive committee have invested a lot of money to fix all these problems as soon as they arise. He has hired the #1 network marketing attorney in the World to make sure that Zeek is in compliance 24/7.
If this is a scam why would he be investing millions more to make it right. All I can say, you go Paul & Zeek affiliates, let’s prove all the nay sayers wrong, as we have been doing for the last 16 months.
Ok… So how should Zeeks tweek their model, besides the obvious – focus on getting REAL customers spending REAL money to a REAL auction (not devalued) to allow it to become more sustainable but still allowing the MLM model to function???
Honestly? They don’t. If the auction is profitable as they claim, they don’t NEED the MLM side at all. Run Zeekler by itself WITHOUT ZeekRewards. All headache solved in a flash.
You know they won’t do it. ZeekRewards, AFAIK, is the only thing propping up Zeekler. The two are conjoined twins that if you separate them neither would survive.
Hey Mr. K. Chang the whole penny auction business would have to go bust before Zeek would go under & I don’t see that happening. You are so unrealistic when you say if no more affiliates were to join Zeek would go bust.
As I explain to my affiliates, the affiliate pool is receiving up to 50% of the company profits a day. Where is the Ponzi scheme now & affilate program is just another way to make money. A ponzi scheme is paid out weekly, monthly or yearly receiving equal or more than your original investment, until you stop receiving payments.
Zeek pays a percentage to their affiliates each day, which fluctuates on daily profits. So Mr. K Chang where is the ponzi scheme here. One more point of why this is not a ponzi sheme.
Ponzi scammers after paying so many people end up pocketing all the money & running, which you will eventually end up in Jail. Paul Burk has taken profits & continually poured them back in the company to make everything run as professional as possible.
Paul is not out there buying luxury items & expensive jewelry, as I believe he is committed to success not Jail.
This is what I’ve suspected for some time now. If Paul & Co. could run Zeek Rewards without having the penny auction site, they’d have done so.
I’m convinced the penny auction site is just a front for the ponzi.
Which if ZR wasn’t a ponzi, then they’d have enough money to pay everyone everything they’ve earned in the scheme in one day if everyone involved suddenly decided to cash out. But I’m willing to bet that they don’t have that kind of money laying around. Which is why they require everyone to withdraw their money slowly, as opposed to getting a lump sum.
It’s amazing that ZR members have blinded themselves to this fact.
@ncontos
Easy, because the more VIP points you invest in the more fake customers you need to create to continue to dump bids on. Or you can pay someone else to create fake accounts for you.
The entire investment scheme lends itself to the mass creation of fake customers.
No it wouldn’t. Other penny auctions rely on genuine customers. Zeekler is just a dumping ground to facilitate Zeek Rewards members’ participation in an investment scheme they fund themselves.
So… where have you been? ZR stopped issuing checks almost three weeks ago now. With each day that passes it looks more and more likely that they’re going to be unable to find a bank (offshore or otherwise) willing to do business with them so they can start the check run again.
Wonder why that is…
Ponzi schemes are mathematically unsustainable. Period.
Those company profits… that’s all invested money by Zeek Rewards affiliates. That’s where the Ponzi is.
I’m curious, you mentioned your affiliates, how many genuine non-affiliate Zeekler customers do you have. Y’know, customers who have actually gone on to purchase retail bids themselves?
contribute is a bunch of unsubstantiated rhetoric? Zeek Rewards can’t even get the RSS feed code on their news blog right (it’s been broken for well over a month), and you’re crapping on about investing millions? No worries son.
You sound like your trying to pitch Zeek Rewards to a small village of uneducated morons. That might be the case where you live but it won’t fly here.
And your proof is what, exactly? Your own explanations? Got any FACTS OR LOGIC to back that up?
And where does the profit come from? You affiliates buying bids!
Which renders the rest of your explanation rather moot.
Zeek does NOT look like a company that earned almost 60 million in 2011, which according to them and their own statements, they did. Many Zeek affiliates will disagree about “run as professional as possible”. Server outages, bad customer support, ignore affiliates, deleted auctions…
It doesn’t change the business model: you affiliates buying bids generates the profit which you share in. You are paying yourselves. That’s a Ponzi scheme.
He didn’t. Dawn quoted the numbers to him.
The definition of “customer” was never defined any way. So the ratio is useless, even if it’s true.
Remember, Herbalife, one of the biggest MLMs in the world, don’t even know how many customers it has vs. affiliates. I’d be surprised to see how was this number arrived at.
It is very easy to prove to yourself how successful the penny auctions are. Check your own back office. How many of your retail customers (not affiliates) purchased bids?
Remember, you get 20% commissions plus matching VIP pints…. so if a real retail customer bought bids, you would know it. Every affiliate I talked to has said ZERO. None of my customers that I bought from Zeek rotator ever bought any bids.
As for the millions Zeek is generating, maybe they can afford to not use stock photos and remove the AdSense blocks on their website.
The Zeekler site hasn’t had any innovation in how long? 18 months and the same look?
Dawn looking to bail out? Of course the conflict of interest with officers being amongst the largest affiliates earning millions per month doesn’t seem to bother any of the members.
Zeek could be the targer of regulators because it has the double whammy of being an unregistered security investment AND a ponzi.
I am sure that affiliates to customers fluctuates with every company in the world. There is not a company in the world that can have a purely accurate ratio. They all play with numbers.
Perfect example Facebook, Grossly overstated numbers to dupe investors & Nasdaq. Seriously Zuckerburg & his executive committee should all be locked up in jail.
I would hope that zeek has reported its numbers as best as they can. Look at Zeeks explosion over seas, which are significant to their bottom line numbers. Hard to put a finger on accurate numbers especially with this type of explosive growth.
Obviously, they are still making a lot of money, as I see the growth in my back office daily & checks being cashed weekly.
Association fallacy.
Why not answer the specific question? How many of these 25:1 Zeekler customers:
– Know they even have a Zeekler account?
– Have every logged in, once? I’m not talking about bidding or using the auctions… just logging in?
– Select their own user name and weren’t assigned a name like jimmy054, alice056, michael057?
– Have confirmed the email address is live by clicking on a verification link after creating the account? (zero because Zeek does no verification)
But every Facebook account has at least logged in once and has at least verified email once.
Does that include all the banned members? Where are you getting the affiliate total info from also?
Last i checked all the info is from the 2011 income disclosure.
Zeek, 1 person,1 account,1 social security number & 1 I.P. address per affiliate & customer.
If there is fraud it is committed by thieves located all over the world. I understand from Corporate there are currently 700,000 affiliates world wide to date.
So you think the free customers that Zeek was selling via company customer rotator was the fault of the affiliate or customer? You don’t think the 25:1 customer ratio included any fake accounts?
I’m talking about the accounts that all look like:
jimmy054
susan055
alice056
michael057
ricky058
martin059
scott060
Isn’t it a coincidence that all of the customers that corporate sold had it assigned using (firstname) + (3 digits)? How many ever logged in, let alone use the free bids, let alone actually buy something?
As for IP per affiliate – that is not enforced, only for the (3) customers per IP is enforced, not per affiliate.
Translation: I have no clue what constitutes a Ponzi scheme vs. legal MLM.
They are making a lot of money because you affiliates are BUYING BIDS. You are being paid with your own money. Ponzi scheme.
Red herring. We’re not discussing Facebook.
Give that there were only 15000 “active affiliates in the US” in the US as of 2011 that number is not very reasonable, judging by the traffic stats as per Alexa.com
Russia 31.4%
United States 21.9%
Ukraine 4.6%
Kazakhstan 4.0%
Pakistan 3.8%
Spain 2.5%
United Kingdom 2.1%
Germany 2.1%
Uzbekistan 1.9%
Hungary 1.7%
The Walmart gift card, they didn’t overpay for it. Not all bids are 1.00 or .65, when you sign up, you USUALLY get free bids, OR you can get bids from somebody else. Overpaying is nearly IMPOSSIBLE to do.
So seriously, this isn’t possible to be fraudulent, or illogical. It is (in my mind) ingenious to have as a company. This is a very good idea. It is one of the only companies that everybody benefits.
Like: Zeekler sells a phone for $10. a bid is usually $1.00. The person who wins the phone got a new $200 phone for $10(win). Zeekler gets $1000 for that one object(win). Finally, the people that are in ZeekRewards get a small percentage of it, typically at 1 1/2%(win).
So thank you to any who have read this, and hopefully you can see past the illogical stuff, you can see the real deal.
Thank You
@ncontos
As far as customers go, all you need is an email address, Zeekler don’t even verify it’s a legit one either.
Irrelevant, just as blabbing on about other companies is.
When you make it so easy to commit fraud and fashion a MLM business model that so readily incorporates it, you share some of the responsibility when widescale fraud happens.
@MiniG
Sigh, another Zeek Rewards affiliate who doesn’t understand the business they are in.
The auctions quoted explicitly mention retail paid bids and these aren’t given away they’re purchased with real money (in dummy accounts so the affiliate owner can get the VIP bid bonus/referral commission).
Naturally the affiliate doesn’t care about overpaying because they’ll get their money back with the referral commissions + 90 day ROI on the VIP bids they get. Thus they login to Zeekler and drop the retail bids trying to score back whatever money they can (if they win).
Please understand the business you’re in before you start crapping on about “illogical stuff”.
Thankyou.
Of everyone I know involved in Zeek Rewards, I don’t know any who actually have real Zeekler customers who aren’t ZR members. All they’re interested in is recruitment.
I do know many of them have set up fake customers, though. So all the money ZR members are getting is coming from other members buying bids. In other words, a ponzi scheme.
Of course one would not run without the other, anymore than Q-bids would continue to run effectively without their continual advertising, however they choose to do it, by Television commercials and so forth.
Ridiculous statement that Zeekler should get rid of ZeekRewards when that is their entire advertising division. The sample bids given out can only be used for the retail auction, not the premier auctions..The Premier Auction activity comes for VIP bids all purchased by Retail Customers……
You might want to become a little more informed before you suggest to Pepsi or Coke that they should stop all of their advertising to prove how successful they are without it!
@PJ
who are actually just affiliates wanting their VIP bonus points on the purchase.
You seem to miss the point: Zeekler is perfectly legal “thus far”. All the POTENTIAL non-compliance with law is with the ZeekRewards side. Getting rid of ZeekRewards would get rid of all the problems at once.
If you claim that Zeekler won’t run WITHOUT ZeekRewards to prop it up, then you are SUPPORTING my premise that they are conjoined twins and they NEED each other to survive, which only PROVES they are indeed a Ponzi scheme / money circulation scheme, as they fed on each other. ZR won’t exist without Zeekler’s “profit” to share.
And if you claim that Zeekler will run fine without ZR to prop it up, you have absolutely NO PROOF of that.
Just finished watching a presentation of the Israeli organization of ZR, summarizing what they learned at the red carpet event.
They dedicated about 5 minutes to business model and feasibility, the rest was what a charming guy Burks is (“he wishes to help as many people as he can”), what a great fan of Israel, how he reminded the narrator of his grandfather, and what great lawyers Zeek has working on compliance.
They also quoted Burks as saying “this is my second time wearing a tie. The first one was at the first red carpet event.” I guess the 0 time was when he took this photo:
https://behindmlm.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/paul-burk-ceo-zeek-rewards.jpg
They mentioned future plans for “capping”, that is limiting soon the amount people could withdraw each month to “only” tens of thousands of dollars. They said Burks also said something about not allowing new ones join when they hit around 2M affiliates.
When the presentation seemed as if it were about to address the matter of “where the money is coming from”, it somehow segued into some general explanation about Mary Kay, finally saying something along the lines of “we make money of the auctions, but the major component is VIP points purchased by affiliates and given to customers”.
Was the narrator realizing what he had just said?
“Capping” is to prevent the runaway growth of the people at the tip of the pyramid, but it probably won’t make much difference.
First of all, they will likely grandfather in existing affiliates and give them a cap based on their current withdrawal level (just speculation based on some second hand info from someone who talked to one of the top 12 affiliates who talked to Dawn).
Another side effect of capping will be that if you are above the cap, you’ll just aggressively cash out to push your VIP points down to a level that will sustain you at around the cap.
If the cap is so high that no one is there yet, then it doesn’t really matter anyways.
The idea that all bids are the same and free bids are being used in Retail Bid auctions is not true. There are different types of auctions depending on your bid type.
Anyone ever seen this:
It is under the Description of every Auction Item.
In fact you cannot even use VIP bids in a Retail Bid Auction. I know because I have tried to do that. If you want to participate in a VIP/Affiliate bid Auction you have to go to a VIP bid on an item that qualifies for VIP Bids.
However, you can use retail bids in a fee bid auction…but as noted in the description it is NOT RECOMMENDED.
Do you really believe that? Do you really think any company is going to stay in business by paying thousands of people a good chunk of money to post one spam ad on spammy classified ad websites that few people read, as opposed to just buying some national TV or radio ads or buying some internet banner ads on various websites?
Or, if the classified ad spam really does bring in lots of people to the auction site, why would they pay thousands of people an increasing chunk of money every day to do this when they could hire a couple of IT guys to run an adbot to post the ads themselves?
Lastly, do you really think that Coke or Pepsi spend 50% of their daily profits for advertising? I’m sure they do have a huge chunk devoted to it but 50% of all profits is pretty huge.
If Zeekler really is spending 50% of its daily profits to post spam ads on classified ad websites, they’re not going to stay in business long.
You might want to become a little more informed about how business works.
@Tim
Thanks for an explanation to an idea that doesn’t exist.
To date I don’t think anyone has asserted the various Zeekler bids available are the same.
OZ…apparently “tpDate” you haven’t read every comment. Which is why most of this BS on here is being spewed. People talk about sh#t they know nothing about or have no understanding of how it works.
Here is the quote from an earlier comment.
Sooooo, think again.
Zeekler nor ZeekRewards is a scam. I still question whether it is sustainable. But, the only way to know is to see the Auction profits. In my opinion a “CAP” for affiliate earnings is necessary or it is not a sustainable business model.
I have a friend who takes out over $6k per week and is approaching 400,000 VIP points. Too many like him and ZEEK will have a problem keeping this ship afloat without a CAP on something.
I have also noticed that the payments have slowed down. It was every week…I just requested a check and the processing date was pushed out 3 weeks.
Irrelevant, since ALL BIDS PURCHASES (retail, VIP, free) all generate profit for Zeekler, and the same profit is then shared with ZeekRewards members, who then buys more bids…
And your evidence supporting this hypothesis is what, exactly?
So you’re dissing his entire analysis / entire website based on ONE THIRD-PARTY COMMENT that gave an mistaken impression of how things work? Sounds like biased sample fallacy to me.
Only in MLM fantasy land could Zeek Rewards be construed as an “advertising division.”
What it is, precisely, is a company-sanctioned spam factory that almost certainly is designed to undermine one of the prongs of the Howey Test on what constitutes a security/investment contract.
The worst MLMers in the world have been trying to chip away at the Howey Test for years and basically give themselves a license to print money that is further buoyed by disclaimer language that no return and/or “rebate” and or “profit sharing” is guaranteed.
It is wretched and it is monumentally dangerous to both the United States and the world at large.
Please point to a specific instance in which Pepsi or Coke distributors by the tens of thousands are told they can make more money by spamming classified-ad sites.
While you’re at it, please point to a specific instance in which tens of thousands of Pepsi and Coke distributors are told it is their duty to themselves and the company to support the “advertising division” by spamming on a daily basis.
Meanwhile, please point to a specific instance in which Pepsi and Coke distributors approach prospects and read aloud a disclaimer that they’re not signing up for an investment by becoming fellow Pepsi/Coke distributors and taking advantage of a “program” that plants the seed it pays between 1 percent and 2 percent a day.
Here is just ONE of the dangers of Zeek:
Zeekler could divine an auction in which the “product” is 100 case of Pepsi or Coke. Zeekler would not even have to have the product on-hand to auction it; it could simply create an electronic representation of Pepsi or Coke.
Bids could stream in — even with Zeekler not in possession of the product — and someone could “win” the auction and decide either to accept the Pepsi or Coke, which Zeekler would have to buy and ship, or just take cash.
Zeekler has just “profited” from a fantasy holding of 100 cases of Coke or Pepsi and the successful bidder has just profited (purportedly by saving money) on a “purchase” that is a complete fantasy.
The entire transaction is a fantasy.
But Zeekler likely would not advertise Coke or Pepsi because of the bulk and the problem with actually acquiring the product and getting it shipped to a winning bidder who actually was interested in it and NOT the fantasy.
Zeekler is much more interested in putting purported electronics and even sums of U.S. cash up for auction — even though it may not have either “product” in its possession at the time of the auction and is simply creating a fantasy auction.
Zeekler therefore can “profit” from items it doesn’t even hold or items that exist in theory only at a place outside of Zeekler — and then U.S.-based Zeekler has the UNMITIGATED GALL to tell successful bidders they can collect their winnings through offshore processors that prop up HYIP schemes globally.
And while U.S–based Zeekler is doing these things, it is wrapping itself in the American flag.
The curious thing is that American MLMers apparently see no incongruity in any of these things — almost as though it’s wholly natural.
PPBlog
I was only pointing out the mistake in his comment…that you said it didn’t exist.
You’re mistaking me with Oz. I didn’t say it didn’t exist. I said it was irrelevant.
First of all….a hypothesis is an educated guess… something that so far does not exist in this forum. There is a lot of guessing going on…but not very educated ones.
The very definition of a SCAM -: a fraudulent or deceptive act or operation.
So, tell me what is deceptive or fraudulent about ZeekRewards. Everything is laid out in their website and so far they have followed that model. It is a new model never tried before. So, they ahve tweaked it a little to make it work better.
Affiliates place ads to drive traffic to ZeekRewards and Zeekler Auctions, (which by the way has both websites with very high ALEXA Rankings) Proving that the traffic is there. Affiliates buy bids to give to customers and get paid to do it. What about that do you not get? What about that is deceptive or fraudulent?
I don’t think it is a scam by the very definition of a scam.
Now….some of the comments above are fraudulent and deceptive. But, it is only from ignorance (not knowing facts)
Dr. Keith Lagos and MLM Attorney Kevin Grimes are advising Rex Venture Group as well. Surely you all don’t think they are part of a SCAM.
I did my due diligence before joining and a conference call with Kevin Grimes helped me make my decision. The company had him on a call.
I hope it is not a scam…I would be very disappointed if it turns out to be one. I have been in it since July 31 2011 and have just started referring others last month.
I am cautious about recruiting until I feel sure it is a good thing….so I waited for almost a year and gathered all the information i could find.
How about real ratio of “customers” vs. “affiliates”? Or how the profit share percentage was calculated?
Without those two numbers, it’s VERY possible it’s a Ponzi scheme.
What’s wrong with the comment Tim says is inaccurate? It is spot on. Any real customers paying $0.65/bid have to compete with artificial bid inflation from affiliates using their own customer accounts for the VIP points.
These affiliates have thousands of retail bids that they value at close to zero. If Tim had ‘read all the comments’ he would have seen this discussed ad naseum.
Tim thinks the commentor is comparing retail bids to free bids. The comment is comparing retail bids purchased by a real penny auction customer vs. Retail bids purchased by affiliates for the 20% commission + VIP points (plus the convenience of using credit card).
In other penny auctions, you compete against other customers who have the same net cost for bids. With Zeekler you don’t because the vast majority of retail and VIP bids are bought by affiliates with their own customer accounts. That was the point of the comment Tim thinks was incorrect (but is spot on).
Fallacy: appeal to association with authority.
It’s Laggos, two G’s. He publishes NMMJ, a “vanity” magazine written for network marketing people, often mass-ordered by the company that is being featured to be used as sales brochures. How many did Zeek order?
Kevin Grimes supplies “compliance course” on his compliancevt.com website to anybody who wants to buy it. It doesn’t really point either way.
And how about Mr. Gerald Nehra, another compliance officer Zeek hired, who was most famously known for reviewing the Ponzi “Ad Surf Daily” for compliance, and claimed it is NOT a Ponzi, and ASD was shut down ANY WAY as a Ponzi?
Don’t believe everything you read. It’s likely one-sided.
@ Jimmy..I guess I don’t get your point. I have never got a discount on retail bids because I am an affiliate. I did bu a bid pack a while back and paid .65 per bid just like any customer pays. It was with my own real money. Not traded for VIP bids or anything else.
I do have VIP bids…but I cannot participate in the Retail bid Auction with them…that would be cheating and unfair to customers.
@Tim you bought bid pack, so you generated profit for Zeekler (whether you use the bids or not is irrelevant).
Zeekler then gave 50% of that profit (their claim) to ZeekRewards, which then doles that out among the affiliates based on VIP Profit points (which is based on how many bids you bought to “give away”, which ALSO generates profits)
You essentially PAID YOURSELF AND OTHER AFFILAITES, just as other affiliates paid you.
That is a PONZI SCHEME.
@ Cnang…Ok so Laggos is no big deal. He probably owns several VIP bids himself.
But, Grimes has stood by this company pretty closely. Not just selling the compliance course. I went though that and it is good.
I actually learned that most MLM’s are not in compliance because they use autoship as away to stay qualified and they do not lead with an IDS. Go figure.
But, I digress….as far as an Attorney to be guiding your every step. I think Grimes is a good one. He has corrected course more than once with Rex Venture Group in the last year. They depend on him for legal counsel and that makes me feel somewhat better about the opportunity.
I am sure we have more changes to go through….and I feel sure Paul Burks will do it to keep things above board.
@Tim: It works like this.
1. Sign up your own retail account (mom, brother, Santa Claus, doesn’t matter).
2. Buy $650 of retail bids in that customer acccount.
3. Your affiliate account gets 20% commission + 650 VIP points.
You don’t care how you blow the 1000 retail bids because the value was the commission + VIP points. That’s why you see customers spending thousands of bids to win a $100 item – something you would NEVER see at other penny auctions.
Oh, and the kicker is you can use a credit card rather than eWallet and fund your VIP points balance past the $10k limit.
That is called commissions and overrides. The product is an Bid Pack to use in the auction. According to your definition of a PONZI Scheme every MLM out there would be one.
That is incorrect. I have to first buy Sample Bids to give away. I would buy those with the 20% commish..then VIP Points show up in my account to equal the number of bids I just bought to give away. I don’t get both the commission and VIP Points.
MLMs don’t have the affiliates buy the products themselves and share in the profits from that. FTC sued the companies that failed to enforce the retail sales rule (remember Omnitrition case?)
Try again.
I am a ViSalus Distributer..we do have to buy product to qualify for pay. We do get a deep discount not given to retail customers. My upline sponsor gets paid on my PV (personal Volume) which is dirctly related to how much I buy and sell.
I have been in several MLMs over the years and they all work this way. Your sponsor makes money from anything you buy.
It’s called Commissions and Override Commissions.
I guarantee you what I said is correct.
If you are a retail customer and signed up under someone else as your sponsor, then THEY are getting the matching VIP points instead of you. That’s why most affiliates create their OWN retail customer (so you have Tim-the-affiliate and Tim-the-customer: two separate accounts).
When Tim-the-customer buys retail bids, Tim-the-affiliate gets 20% commission and matching VIP points.
Even if you purchased the retail bids and didn’t think ahead to signup under yourself to get the matching VIP points, the bottom line is that:
– For the $650 that you spent to buy 1000 retail bids
– 20% commission went to the sponsor
– Zeekler has $520 net revenue after commissions paid
– Zeek Rewards has 650 VIP points liability that earn ROI for 90-days
So how is Zeek Rewards making money? They are paying matching VIP points on retail purchases!
Then your company was doing it wrong. Here’s direct quotefrom Grimes and Reese’s website, who you quoted before:
http://www.mlmlaw.com/saleswatch/omnitrition.html
AHA!!…I just went and did that and you are right Jimmy. I am now a customer and an affiliate. Had to use a different email address and username. I just don’t think like that…that is cheating no doubt about it.
Also checked to see if any of my customers have bought bid packs. Nope…not a one. So where does this leave us?
Zeekler makes money from Affiliate Subscriptions and Retail bid sales. But, the Retail bid sales are suspicious now. So, who is bidding in these auctions with Retail bids.
I would like to talk to you for 5 or 10 minutes. I have often wondered if this was sustainable. Because I know folks who are making a lot of money. I have been Repurchasing bids since July 31 2011 to build up my VIP points. I just went and set my Re-purchase to 0% to see if I can get paid.
In an attorney/client relationship, the client will be supervising himself and the attorney, not the other way around. So the “guiding you every step” is a misinterpretation of the attorney’s role in the relationship.
Zeek has probably not asked any difficult questions about “Can you make sure this business model is completely legal in ALL parts?”. The attorney isn’t responsible for making the business become legal either, he will only be responsible for the work assigned to him by the client (but only for his part of the work, not for how the client will choose to use it).
The main concern about ZeekRewards is that it probably is a Ponzi scheme, defined to be “an investment scheme where ROI derives from the participants themselves rather from external sources”.
All the advisors they have used have barely touched this topic, and only made cosmetical changes to make it look less similar to investments.
Compliance efforts so far has mostly been about marketing methods, not about the business model itself. The advisors have solved a few problems “here and there”, but without solving the main problem.
The way I understand it (forgive me if I am mistaken) is that these two were hired because Zeek realized they were not running in compliance with the law, and hoped to get advice on changes to make them compliant.
However, the actual business model did not change one bit, the only thing that changed is that affiliates are not allowed to refer to Zeek Rewards as an investment in any way, shape, or form, in hopes that it will appear as a legitimate MLM business to the authorities and not an investment scheme.
Yet everyone involved in ZR recruits more people into it by showing them high returns on their invest- sorry, not investment, but “what they put in.”
I agree with your assessment of the Relationship. But, I have heard them say that Grimes is helping them to stay out of trouble with FTC, SEC etc. Therefore I assumed this meant in all areas…maybe it doesn’t. I don’t know for sure.
Do you know anyone in ZR who has actual Zeekler customers (non-ZR members) buying bids on a regular basis? I suspect that most Zeekler auctions are being participated in by Zeek Rewards members who either want to use up their bids or are just playing in hopes of winning an auction.
My in-laws don’t seem to care about recruiting customers to buy bids from them, but they sure as hell want to recruit other ZR members to join underneath them. I think that’s a major red flag that any MLM which relies far more on recruitment rather than actual sales of product is a ponzi.
That is something to think about. If they are not making money from the auctions retail customers then we are all just paying ourselves through subscriptions.
That sounds as if it could be a ponzi scheme. BUt, they say the auctions are very profitable. Folks are always in there bidding…don’t know who they are.
I agree. But, they do stress in all of their calls that we need auction customers. I have no clue if any exist though.
When you look at the huge returns that ZR members are claiming to be getting, there’s just no way a small penny auction website with around 100-150 auctions a day could be bringing in that kind of revenue. And supposedly that’s just 50% of the daily profit.
The problem is that people’s point balances keep growing and growing, while traffic on Zeekler.com remains basically the same.
So the problem is that even if ZR is not a ponzi, it’s eventually going to fail anyway since at some point the number of Zeekler customers is going to level off, but ZR will still have to pay huge amounts of money to pay off everyone’s earned points.
The only way it could feasibly work is if the penny auction site experienced infinite growth, which we all know is an impossibility.
Again, as I said, if they really wanted to drive traffic to their penny auction site, they could do it far more cheaply and more effectively by buying some ads on TV networks or spots on radio shows, as well as internet banner ads.
It just doesn’t make sense for any company to try to advertise the way Zeekler claims to be doing.
For something to be profitable, it will require a monetary transaction. Spending BIDS in an auction is not a monetary transaction, so each time someone spends one bid it will not generate any revenue – other than it will raise the price by $0.01 for the item.
Selling bids is profitable when it involves a monetary transaction. So it isn’t very profitable when affiliates are reinvesting their daily profit points into buying sample bids. Profit points are not “cash equivalence” other than in tax rules.
To make the Zeekler website profitable, they will need to sell bids directly to customers, or other solutions where there are monetary transactions from the customers to that part of the company.
Zeekler seems to be a typical part of a Ponzi scheme, a business idea that LOOKS highly profitable for most people, where most people can be willing to believe in how able it is to generate profit. Most people will focus on the bids spent in auctions, and assume they will generate profit.
In reality, profit and revenue will only be generated from monetary transactions, from someone paying money IN to the company. And the only money that counts are real money or any equivalent to real money (credit cards, etc.).
BIDS are not real money, and neither are the profit points.
Adding: and not reward the affiliate who refers that customer with matching VIP points for the retail purchase, because it sets up a liability that can only lead one to conclude that Zeek Rewards is a ponzi.
If there were NO matching VIP points given, and only the traditional 20% commission, you could argue that the business model has a chance of being legitimate if there is enough penny auction revenue.
But with matching VIP points, even if the penny auction generated ginormous amounts of profit, you still have a ponzi with the matching VIP points.
@Tim
If an affiliate purchases retail bids via a fake customer for the referral commission and 90 day ROI, it doesn’t take long for the retail bid purchase price to be recouped, thus the bids are/were free.
Other than that, you’re free to correct any other mistakes you’ve found.
The deception is that the profit-share is being largely created by genuine retail customers (25:1 no less) playing the Zeekler penny auctions. This is not the case.
Zeekler refuse to divulge the makeup of the profit-share because it would obviously reveal that the overwhelming majority of the profit-share is affiliate money being either directly invested or invested via dummy customer accounts (for referral commissions and matching VIP points).
Now be honest. How many genuine retail customers do you have who have purchased bids (more than an initial test purchase) with their own money?
None. Thought so.
Not for us, they’ve always been suspicious. It’s just that every now and again a Zeek Rewards affiliate will barge into this discussion, spurt out whatever PR garbage Zeek Rewards have fed them and claim steadfastly that the opportunity is legit.
Sigh… and the guy accusing others of talking shit is clearly confused about some aspects of the Zeek Rewards comp plan.
…and I quote:
Finally,
If you don’t even understand the business you’re in yourself, stop wasting my time. Your sureties contribute nothing concrete to the discussion.
that is true. You don’t get VIP Points plus the 20% commission. You may be correct about the lack of retail customers. Either way I am staying in and probably buying 5000 bids soon.
I don’t think I am confused about anything. I just didn’t know you could cheat by signing up as an affiliate and as your own customer. That’s hardly confused…it is just that I don’t sit around thinking of ways to cheat the system.
I totally agree Joe, I have always thought that this may not be sustainable.
Except that it’s not cheating the system. With such abysmally low customer verification systems in place attached to an investment scheme dependent on the creation of said customers, what did Zeek Rewards think was going to happen?
Zeek Rewards don’t care if member’s create thousands of fake customer accounts to dump bids onto. So long as they can add them to their customer to affiliate ratio and run around professing to have the largest MLM customer affiliate ratio in history (gross misrepresentation?) they really couldn’t give a shit.
Otherwise they’d have added extra verification for the creation of customer accounts months ago.
You’re just another Zeek Rewards member who has confirmed the lack of retail customers. I think all up we must be near 10 or so now who have admitted as much (discounting Jimmy’s reports of access to a downline of thousands who don’t have even one legit retail customer).
So knowing full well Zeek Rewards it’s a Ponzi scheme funded by members, you’re going to go ahead and invest another $5000 into it. Each to their own and here’s to the next half-arsed defense of a Ponzi scheme that even once acknowledged the defender will still go ahead and invest in anyway.
This is an important point… Zeek’s liability on the retail bids purchased have nothing to do with whether you are “cheating” the system or not.
If you purchased 1000 retail bids for $650 and:
(1) You sign up as your own customer, then:
– You earn $130 (20%) cash
– You earn 650 matching VIP points that earn ROI for 90 days
(2) You are a random retail customer, then:
– The sponsoring affiliate, even if you don’t know him, earns $130 (20% cash)
– The sponsoring affiliate receives 650 matching VIP points that earn ROI for 90 days
No matter WHO purchased from WHOM, Zeek is still paying out commissions & matching VIP points to SOMEBODY. This is why it is such an obvious ponzi.
How can Zeek claim all these great profits (even if it were true) but on the back end is paying out matching VIP points? That means the VIP points by definition have to be worth less than $1. Yet they keep gaining compound interest. Something doesn’t compute.
They care LESS than not caring. I was on the phone to my mate this morning (affiliate but new, 3 weeks) and after being able to shed some wisdom found here from oz, Jimmy, Chang, Norway and others (not Tim but) in the last week, he was concerned.
As he was firing up his computer he told me he was checking his emails for his “leads” (He doesn’t find them. Not 1. They get emailed to him) so I say, “Tell me how many have just christian names followed by 2,3 or 4 numbers.”
There was just white noise from his office for 10 seconds until he said, “ALL of them have a christian name followed by numbers. Every single one. ALL 25 OF THEM.”
They’re taking the piss! That’s not trying very hard to make it look even half real. I shake my head…Tim if you think (and I use the word think in it’s loosest possible context) yet that this is anything but a steaming pile of ponzi shite, seriously, you really aren’t smart enough to play this ponzi.
Don’t worry, the irony isn’t lost on me 😉
Nice observation! I didn’t catch that all Christian names angle. They were all white American names from what I saw with my own free customers.
You would think they could spend 5 minutes and build a better user name generator than “john123” and “mary456”.
Yes, it’s all very transparent. I mean, go to any internet chat room or message board and look at the wide variety of names. I think they just got lazy while trying to come up with usernames.
well I dont think zeekler would want to just display their customers real usernames, they want those people to remain customers. They probably use their real first name and attach a number to it so they can be tracked if necessary.
You probably don’t understand how it works.
When you sign up for Zeekler, you select your own user name, just like you select your “name” here as “Matthew” when you posted. When you sign up for a Hotmail account, you select your own user name.
So if these are REAL customers that Zeekler is giving you, why would they all have (Christian first name) + (3 digits)? You don’t even see that on forums or email accounts in real-life. How many Mathew825’s have you seen as handles on forums or Twitter?
So you’re saying that there may be Matthew001 all the way to Matthew999 running around? None of them bothered to use their surname, or nickname, or middle initials as part of their screenname?
Possible, but not very likely.
About as likely as that guy who claimed that his cat downloaded all the kiddie porn on his computer by jumping on the keyboard.
It ain’t cheating the system if they designed it that way.
If they don’t want you to cheat they would have put in more security in place and rules/penalties against cheating.
They don’t WANT to know as long as you keep buying bids to generate those “profits” you share in.
That story about the guy who said his cat downloaded kiddie porn to his PC? True story.
http://www.tcpalm.com/news/2009/aug/06/report-jensen-beach-man-claims-cat-downloaded-chil/
The cops didn’t believe him, of course. He got 12 years.
The use of the word “cheating” implies that if you took a different course of action, there would be a different result.
Zeek is paying SOMEONE 20% commission (if not you).
Zeek is paying SOMEONE matching VIP points that earn ROI for 90-days (if not you).
In other words, the business model is a ponzi regardless of whether you decided to buy bids in the most optimal way for your benefit, or naively just bought bids and someone else benefited.
To clarify Jimmy’s position, the only way it’s NOT a Ponzi scheme is you are NOT an affiliates, and you’re still buying bids (i.e. you don’t share in any of the profits).
@K. Chang: Actually, I’m taking it one step further! I’m claiming it is a ponzi scheme even if there are real retail customers. This is because the payout that Zeek is giving the sponsoring affiliate is more than the income they are taking in, where Zeek implies that 1 VIP point that earns ROI is worth $1.
So Zeek pays to the affiliate more than the value of the bids purchased. While the customer who bought retail bids is not participating in the ponzi, the overpayment of compensation via matching VIP points perpetuates the ponzi.
I know you mentioned this in another post but being you just mentioned the 20% commission I need to see if this is correct. I would like to use Dennis as an example because he has 103 happy affiliates.
Lets say Dennis contacts me and asks me to signup as an affiliate. Now I want to invest or what ever you what to call it $6500.00 through zeekrewards. As I understand it Dennis would get 10% of my $6500 = $650.
Now here is my second option. Dennis signs me up but instead of giving zeekrewards the $6500 I decide to use my zeekler auction url and make a dummy customer say santa claus to buy bids. At $65 a bid pack I would get 100 bid and zeekrewards would match 100 vip points.
So if I invested all $6500 in zeekler auction that means not only would I have 10,000 bid to use in the auction to maybe win a crappy gift that I may never get. But that also means zeekrewards will match the 10,000 with vip points in my account not to mention the 20% commission.
So for not going through zeekrewards but going through zeekler I just added 3500 more vip point plus 20% commission. THAT’S HUGE! I’m sorry Dennis I sure hope that didn’t effect you wallet in any way by me going though the back door.
OZ let me know if I am wrong if this is how it works.
@NE14aponzi
The bid packs are in an auction right? You’re assuming you can win a bid pack 100% of the time with just one bid. Realistically that ain’t gunna happen so the numbers are off (unless you’re able to directly buy bid packs at a retail level?).
Also I don’t think bids won in bid packs can be converted into VIP points (?).
What you can do though is sign up under Dennis as an affiliate, create a bogus customer and buy $6,500 of retail bids.
As you referred yourself via a dummy customer account, you now have 6,500 VIP points to participate in the RPP ponzi scheme with and earn a 90 day ROI on (rough average is 1.5% ROI over 90 days at present). This instantly negates the revenue of the bids purchased and puts Zeekler at a loss.
On top of that though you as the referred also earn a 20% cash commission on the $6,500 bid purchase you made through your bogus customer (another $1,300 loss to Zeek).
Now Zeek Rewards affiliates and the company will try to convince you that they make all this money back and then some because there’s only one winner per auction… but to top it all off if you follow the above methodology you also have 10,000 retail bids to use through your dummy customer account.
You can use these bids to win auctions to cash out and incur futher losses to Zeek on your initial bid purchase or just let them expire. A key concept is that these bids are worthless to you to spend because you’ll make your money back via the RPP point ROI and referral commissions.
This is why there’s no legit retail customers on Zeekler. Spend 2 minutes looking at the auctions and across all types of auctions it’s clear you’d be bidding against affiliates who are bidding willy nilly because the use of their dummy customer account purchased retail bids hold no loss to them upon use (or customers accounts who just had bids dumped on them and will never purchase a bid themselves).
In summation, the argument that because there are lots of auction losers Zeekler is wildly profitable doesn’t add up when you consider the overwhelming majority of retail bids being purchased by affiliates through dummy accounts for the referral commission and matching VIP points.
In the above example you invested $6,500 and ZR will pay out
– a 135% ROI over 90 days (1.5% daily average). 1.5% of $6,500 = $8775 (assuming a 100% cash out from day 1)
– 20% referral commission = $1300
Meanwhile you pay Zeek Rewards $10 membership fee (which you get 10 bids on but for simplicity’s sake I’m not factoring that additional loss to Zeek once they are converted into points and enter the ROI game).
Total revenue for Zeek on a $6,500 bid purchase = $10,075 – $30 (3mths memebership) = -$10,045.
This number increases if you use your 10,000 dummy customer bids to win an auction and cash out your winnings (which everyone does because nobody actually wants the prizes they win, even the winner of the much-hyped Mustang).
The number also increases exponentially over time if we discard the 100% cashout and re-invest the money (allowing ZR to juggle payments to other members with our invsted money for as long as new money is continually invested by new and existing Zeek Rewards members).
Zeekler are clearly losing money on every bid purchased. Membership fees make a dent in that… but either way you cut it the sustainability math just doesn’t work out over time when you factor in constant bid balance and overall affiliate growth.
Of course despite the above being wholly actionable, everyone instead sits around winking at eachother professing the legitimacy of the program because the above method of investing is not mandatory. Trouble is people aren’t idiots and there’s absolutely no reason (other than sheer ignorance) that a Zeek Rewards affiliate wouldn’t maximise their investment return by doing the above.
I see one possible error here.
You will get the dollarvalue in VIP points, not the number of bids. 10,000 bids * 0.65 = 6,500 VIP Points (not 10,000).
Zeek has 4 types of bids, AFAIK:
* Free bids
* Retail bids $0.65
* VIP bids $1.00
* Sample bids (ZeekRewards)
Free, retail and VIP bids are used in Zeekler.
Please wait for corrections from someone else here.
I thought about putting a disclaimer on the math but there’s M_Norway with it. Let me adjust the calculations.
Ozedit: Wait the bid amount purchased is off (now fixed) but the referral commissions and VIP bids calculated are right aren’t they?
In virtually every post I have read I see the term “Ponzi Scheme” thrown around. If this is indeed a Ponzi scheme, then why isnt anyone being brought up on charges?
Why isnt this working its way through a court system? Whats the difference between ZR and a true Bernie Madoff Ponzi scheme where someone is actually going to do some time?
I am pretty new to ZR. I personally know people who have gone ‘all in’ with 10k, people who put in only 2k and are cashing checks weekly. I have a basic understanding of MLM but am far from an expert, (I’m a mechanic).
I joined ZR because I got tired of friends who got in a while ago and are cashing checks that exceed what I make in 2 months. I joined ZR and invested what I could afford to lose…only 1k. That 1k would be sitting in my bank for the next year making next to nothing.
The way I figured it….nothing ventured nothing gained. If I can double my CASH (not points) in a year im all set and everything else is just icing on the cake
Ask the authorities. All I can tell you is it takes authorities years to act. CBC did a special report on the Canadian Ponzi called Business in Motion back in 2009. RCMP didn’t file charges against the perps until 2011, and none of them had seen a courtroom as of now.
Burnlounge started in 2005 and wasn’t sued by FTC until 2007, and only because the state Attorney General investigated them for a year already. The case only wrapped up earlier this year (yes, 2012).
@jimmy
I’ve been told that they don’t match VIP points for the retail bid purchases. They pay out the 20% but that’s it. Ive only bought in with my initial purchase and am cashing out now so I can’t test this myself.
I did ask my sponsor about it. He had someone buy $10 in retail bids and received only the 20%. He did learn that in nov 2011 they ran a promotion matching bids but it was just for that month.
They do match VIP points for retail bids. It was even confirmed on here by another affiliawho didnt think they did but verified indeed they do just a few days ago.
In Feb Zeek announced matching VIP bids would last through all of 2012.
Why don’t you call the FTC and SEC and ask them to look into it? What better way to prove that it’s not a ponzi scheme than to have government agencies regulating such things saying they see absolutely no problems with the business?
Oh and one more thing… Bernie Madoff’s ponzi started in the early 1990’s and didn’t get shut down until 2008, even though the warning signs were there and the SEC was contacted in 1999.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Madoff#Investment_scandal
You’ve probably heard the saying, “The wheels of justice turn slowly.” This is one reason people say that.
I have been wondering how on earth could ZR provides such lucrative income stream to affiliates and having seen this blog, the answer becomes apparent (a giant, growing Ponzi).
Had I read this before my upline showed me her weekly income statement, I wouldn’t have joined.
Now the question is on whether we still have sufficient time to cash out and recoup our ‘invested’ money when problems to get the pay checks have already surfaced?
I presume there’ll be a wave of affiliate cashing out enmass when it becomes more and more apparent that ZR is failing. Some affiliates who didn’t cash out quickly enough will suffer loss, especially the late comers, but the later this happens, the wider the pain will be spreading.
ZR claims that their banking issue is resolved (zeekrewardsnews.com/2012/06/banking-issues-resolved/) but I have yet to create the eWallets because I read that there are also scams on them. Have anyone managed to get your money back on using these eWallets?
I do wonder the same and also wonder how much profit do Zeekler actually make on the daily basis. I have to say Zeekler / Zeekrewards do generate a lot of web traffic. They are not perfect but so far it seems they are dealing with the company’s growing pain one by one.
I have received paper checks in the past but last month May 2012, they stopped sending out paper checks in order to go paperless with online payment system. Here are my experiences or reports I got from other members on the 3 payment systems.
Solid Trust – this one has daily limits on how much you can transfer to your bank. So you end up paying more fees since you can’t take out one big lump sum.
Alertpay / Payza – Terrible service, my bank wire sat in pending status for over 15 days, no answer on the phone, email respond is slow to none at all. I finally requested my bank to cancel the wire to get money back, still waiting.
NxPay – Best of the 3, It takes 2-3 days to transfer money in and out but so far so good.
To generate profit, there has to be some monetary transactions involved. So you’ll have to look at the combination of Zeekler and ZeekRewards together.
The “profit” YOU have generated for them is
* the money you paid initially
* any additional money you have paid/”invested”, NOT including reinvesting points
* money paid by any retail customers you have, the ones where you get 20% commission
* membership fees
* any other expenses you have paid to them
So if 100 affiliates have 20 regular retail customers each, spending $130 (200 bids) on retail bids each week, they will generate $260,000 minus $52,000 (commission) = $208,000 in gross revenue each week.
When these 100 customers use their 200 bids in auctions, they will raise the price for the item by $0.01 per bid = $200 in additional gross revenue per week. So selling bids is much more profitable than running the auctions.
I used regular customers in the example because it made it easier to calculate, but lots of random customers will work too.
You can use your own 20% commission to see how profitable Zeekler + ZeekRewards are? NOT counting 10% or 5% commissions, only counting the 20% that derives from paying customers.
The above model could work if the penny auction itself was competitive.
In the Zeek world, they also pay 260,000 matching VIP points for the $260,000 in bids purchased, thus making them a full blown ponzi on BOTH the retail side and the affiliate side (which we already know about – members paying members).
@FK
Sorry, I forgot something in my calculations, the revenue generated through Free Store Club and Shopping Daisy.
So if you have lots of customers using your your online shop you’ll generate additional revenue for them.
Hello everyone!
I just heard about Zeekler and came across with this thread. Thease argument about real customers make me cautious. There is one factor I dont get – how could Zeekler sheme last for 13 years if there is no new customers for auctions?
That is realy big money to pay to affilates only from new affilates and affilates monthly fees! Any comments on this, please…
1. Zeekler’s auctions haven’t been around for 13 years. Under different company names I believe the auction engine has existed since April 2010?
2. Zeekler doesn’t have a scheme, Zeek Rewards does. It started in January 2011 putting the investment scheme at roughly 1.5 years of age.
Zeekler only existed as of June 2010. Before then it was known as FSC Auctions, which is like March of 2010.
Paul Burks’ various ventures, including Free Store Club and such may have been around for 13 years, as he closes one and open another, but counts it all as part of his Rex Venture Group LLC, that’s how he got his “13 years”. In reality it’s a couple different venture through the years. Call it… creative accounting.
As for “big money”, if all new affiliates are encouraged to purchase THOUSANDS in bids, and leave the money in for at least 60 days if not longer, and only take out money in dribbles, then it’s perhaps NOT as surprising as you seem to think it is.
Remember, only people who had been there in the VERY beginning (i.e. those who started early, before the changes in marketing, and accumulated a TON of VIP points, possibly over a million) will cash out big. The rest of you… are just feeding them, unless you actually brought in bid-buying customers (wait, you’re buying bids! Aha!)
So, how long until this scheme blows up and leaves the bottom of the pyramid with the loss? Seems like it is still grOwing very rapidly and there is still money to be made
wow, I was wondering about zeekler. the site in general seems very shady, especially when you have to signup to see anything else.
recently i have seen zeek affiliates promoting “500 free bids” to signup. i play a lot of penny auctions at bidcandy.com and quibids.com so i jumped at this “opportunity” at zeekler..and like your article says, i found out how bad of a place it is.
I truly feel sorry for the people who play at zeekler instead of more honest venues. this is a great article to shed light on zeekler thanks a lot!
@ames
I’m not 100% sure, but I believe you are the first REAL customer posting a comment about Zeekler here. The others have been affiliates in ZeekRewards.
We have 20 articles, mostly about ZeekRewards but also about Zeekler, since September 2011. They have over 3,000 comments total, and your comment was number 3,027 if I counted the numbers correctly.
So the problem in Zeekler isn’t the competition from other customers. The competition from all the affiliates is a much worse problem. 🙂
@Drew — I predicted somewhere else that I’d be mildly surprised if Zeek lasts to the end of the year. So I’ll stick with that. 🙂
@Ames — as you only have 500 free bids, you’re technically not a “customer” yet, as you haven’t spent any money on Zeekler buying bids. On the other hand, I’m sure Zeekler would be the first to tell you that you just get the cheap stuff with the free bids. You need retail bids to get the “good” stuff.
I doubt you’d be putting in any money now. Would you consider the “free bids” to be somewhat misleading? Or was that written in the ad somewhere that the free bids are limited to only a few of the auctions?
Here’s a recent account from a Zeek Rewards affiliate looking to quit the scheme:
Not a single retail customer despite publishing ads for a year, that’s how useless spamming free classified websites is. Yet Zeek Rewards would have you believe they have a bajillion legit retail customers and non-affiliate auction revenue out the wazoo.
I think spam in general is a pretty useless way to advertise, because:
1. I’m offended if I come across it in my email inbox or on one of the message forums I visit, especially if the same message is plastered all over numerous times.
2. Unless it’s something I’m actually interested in, I’ll probably just ignore it.
3. Even if it is something I’m interested in, I’m very wary of spam advertisements because I’m naturally suspicious that most online spam ads are ripoffs or scams in some way. So if I really am interested in penny auctions, for instance, I’d google them to find one.
Furthermore, when you see ad after ad after ad for zeekler.com on these classifieds websites, you’re more likely to ignore them.
Take a look at classifiedsgiant.com. It’s nothing but one big website full of Zeekler ads to the point of being totally useless for anything else. Try looking for an ad for a car, for example. I bet you can’t find one through all the zeek spam.
For fun, look at the “origin” of Zeekler: March 15 2010, launch of FSC Auctions.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:tNdYJYFTBE4J:www.pennyauctionwatch.com/forum/showthread.php%3Ft%3D2262&hl=en&gl=us&prmd=imvns&strip=1
First was posted by adebrant, then cheered on by HippieDiva (i.e. Dawn) herself.
Clearly adebrant is Alex deBrantes, i.e. Dawn’s fiancee.
Many subsequent posts by adebrant was nuked by spam links.
Then there’s a complaint that they charged like $15 to mail a giftcard.
Finally they had enough and changed name to Zeekler in June 2010.
Hey. How long did Ads Daily until operate until they were shut down in (date?)??
If you mean Ad Surf Daily, September 2006 was the documented start in the indictment, and August 2008 was when the US Attorney’s office moved in to seize all of its assets. So… 2 years.
Has anyone ever thought that this “Ponzi Scheme” is cheating everyone. Maybe they are doing what every one else thinks someone else is doing.
Be smart. If it sounds to good to be true……
This ought to be common sense, but not everyone follows it. After a Zeek Rewards recruitment meeting, I even heard some of the participants mention that it sounded too good to be true. They signed up anyway.
First – Right out of the gate — this site has TOLD ON ITSELF.
Zeek Rewards eWallet SolidTrust Pay is like FT Knox – both in getting money in and getting money out due to all the precautions &/or security locks.
1) To deposit $$$ in, by credit/debit — the 1st attempt is blocked; we wait; phone rings; bank asks various security questions & unlocks the transaction; go back – redo deposit steps.
When done – there is a pending placed on it for UP TO 24 to 48 hrs. And even then … double PW’s etc.
2) Pretty much same with AlertPay — and we’re impressed with support on SolidTrust – not so much on Payza.
3) Cheats are in every business — but we can vouch for all those close to us – and how they have maintained consistent recruiting; buying bids to increase their biz; and/or working to help their Affiliates build their own biz.
So while the cheats end up chancing losing in the end… it’s been a wonderful company to help those, like us, that were hitting very hard times during this bad economy — and we feel good others were brought up, too — with little or even NO MONEY — just working the free 100 bonus points by placing ads, becoming Silver and waiting for their little kitty to grow & become VIP pts in 2 mths.
They also recruited self-motivated friends, family, etc — and are now prosperous.
Averaging 1.43% (varies) daily to place ads and help others — doth not a ponzi making feeling. SCAMMERS IN ALL ASPECTS OF LIFE! GET OVER IT!
I have a co-worker who is a “affiliate.” He is the one who first turned me onto Zeekler. After I heard his little speech about what the company was, I immediately thought scam.
He truly believes that soon, he will be able to start taking money out of his account. He just needs to get to 50,000 points. He puts money into the program each month to “buy bids” that he can give away for free.
I asked him if he has any real customers? Ones that actually buy the bids from him, and he has not sold any real bids. So I wonder why he would expect to make money on this venture if he is the only one buying bids. It just sounds crazy to me.
So far this guy has dumped $5000 into this venture. How can I convince him that it is a ponzi scheme, or is it too late and he will have to learn this lesson the hard way.
He is not a young person either. Truly sad how people fall for the get rich quick schemes.
If you did not bring in actual customers (i.e. those who buy bids and more bids but NOT an affiliate) then you are just transfer money to each other through the company, which would be a Ponzi scheme.
I am NOT talking about cheaters who make up free customers as those don’t buy bids any way. I am talking about you NON-cheaters… who has recruited “customers” who bought bids and continued to buy bids but are NOT sharing in the profits?
WHERE in the back office do you give ZeekRewards your NxPay Account information? I haven’t been able to figure that out yet!
@Falcon
The difference between Zeek and some other schemes is that Zeek doesn’t FEEL like a scam. It feels like a real investment, where you have to add a little work each day to get paid. A minor difference is that you cannot use investment terms when you’re talking about it.
The points they are paying FEELS like real money, so the participant have the feeling of seeing their money grow rapidly.
Start with that description if you want to “be on the same wavelength” as your friend. You’ll have to see things from the same viewpoint as the other person to be able to move him in any direction.
Compare it to him being on the other side of a river than you are. To be able to get him over to your side, you’ll have to start from his side building a bridge over to your side. And you can’t FORCE HIM to use that bridge either, it has to be voluntarily. So you can’t tell him it’s a scam, but you can make him find it out by himself (if he want to find it out).
This is appr. the same method I use as a salesman, if a customer is important enough. Other than that, I won’t waste my time trying to convince a customer about anything if there’s too far distance between our viewpoints.
A FASTER METHOD
The one thing you can ask him to look at is the article from the local North Carolina TV-station WFMY “News 2”.
First they published a news story about Zeek and penny auctions, claiming “It is legal” in the newscast at 11:00 in the evening, combined with an article telling the same story.
Then they received a complaint from the Attorney General’s Office in North Carolina, ordering them to make changes in parts of the article. They pulled the video offline immediately, and corrected the article in two steps:
* They changed “However, it is legal” to “A court has not yet ruled whether this operation is legal or illegal.”
* Then they added an extra line a little later, linking to a pyramid scheme warning. “If you are unsure about buying merchandise from a retailer or operation, the NC Department of Justice recommends this website.”
The changes they have made can act as an eyeopener for some people, if they’re not blinded by their own viewpoints.
So, if he had been a friend of mine, I would have tried the fast method. I would also have recommended him to do a 100% withdrwal for 2 weeks or more, starting immediately. If he’s in doubt about the withdrawal percentage, tell him that “an 80/20 plan will be far too slow”, and that he can SEE that in a spreadsheet.
Just to make you able to use the correct expressions, “talking the same language” as him.
So, what you’re saying in effect is, two wrongs DO make a right?
I really do question the integrity of anyone who says, “I’m making money on it, so who cares if it’s a scam?” You’re just as bad as any ripoff artist, taking money from people under false pretenses.
I am a zeek affiliate. I am a silver who purchased only 100 bids and my points are up to over 1200 VIP/dollars in less than 5 months. My account has reached the retirement of points but I generate more points and the number is up and surpasses the next day.
I will have a larger retirement in a few days but I will regain that in about 5-7 days. The biggest news though is that my daughter and her husband purchased the 10,000 bids and in 4 months took out $5,000 of their dollars that they did receive.
They will take out the other in a few more months. They are averaging 700 VIP points a day and are over 40,000 VIP points which equates to dollars. I am conscienctious about scams and the harm it can cause others so I will have to look out as to what transpires in the next few months.
The one thing I do not understand is all the complaints about what Zeek makes on auctions. All the other auctions also sell bids and by the time the auction is over the .65 to a $1.00 per bid calculates the same. They all make 100 of dollars more than item cost.
However if I bid just 3 bids at $1 each and have to pay the other $150 bids/ dollars on an IPad, I don’t care if they made the $1,500 dollars if the bids cost me 3 dollars, I’m happy to win.
As to those who bid over the retail cost listed for item I think they are mostly beginners coming on to bid, or those with free bids who just start bidding without looking at the retail cost listed.
Zeek I can say has theirs listed plainly on each auctions where others do not. Zeek I do feel is growing at such a rate thsy are having problems getting everything figured out to run smoothly.
I don’t understand them either, if we’re talking about the same issue, like the “WFMY News 2” story from North Carolina.
Zeek doesn’t make much money on the auctions. 100 bids spent in an auction will raise the price for an item with $1.00 (and that’s all). Other than that, bids are NOT money, so spending bids in an auction won’t generate revenue or profit.
So if you buy 100 bids, the revenue is generated when you PAY for the bids (with money, not points), not when you’re spending the bids in an auction. In Zeek, this will make a huge difference, making ZeekRewards the most profitable part of the business instead of Zeekler.
The money comes IN through ZeekRewards, mostly from new investors (not from customers). The money goes OUT through ZeekRewards, mostly to old investors. Between the new and old investors we have a “system” with commissions, VIP points, reward points and bids, a “system” that will give the FEELING of having real money involved. It will push more of the money upwards to the old investors with huge downlines.
In the middle of the “system” we have the compounding investors. They don’t put money IN (other than their membership fee). They don’t withdraw much money either, but they will generate lots of ACTIVITY.
Most of them will not have any economical activity at all, other than paying their membership fees.
Withdrawing half of their initial investment was probably a wise decision. They switched to an 80/20 plan after 90 days or something? Then they will have withdrawn their initial investment in the next 6-8 weeks or so with the 80/20 plan.
In a program like Zeek, you’ll never know how long it will last, whether it will be shut down next week or last for a couple of years. So withdrawing money is important.
Yes they do, but they are made when the bids are PURCHASED, not at the auction. And there is no proof that there are significant number of OUTSIDE CUSTOMERS buying bids. You are rewarded (with RPP) for buying bids yourself.
You are paid because you paid into the system. THAT is a sign (among many) of a Ponzi scheme
Actually, some of these people look as if they have infinite amount of bids, and have been on Zeek for months. And they’re on Premier 5 and other auctions, not just the freebies.
Some of the problems are fundamental, not operational.
For example, would you characterize the work you do for ZR as actually WORK? How much money does it involve? What’s the mix? I know the two are not comparable directly, but what does the proportion FEEL like?
In a “job”, it’s usually 99% work 1% money (need some cloths commute etc).
In ZR, it’s the other way around: 1% work (post some ads), 99% money.
They *say* they are paying you for your WORK, but… why are they paying someone who has say, 10 times more points than you do, 10 times as much, for same amount of work?
Are they paying members for amount of money put into Zeek, and left it in? instead of their work?
If so, why did they lie?
Why is this NOT an investment?
Why do they INSIST it’s not an investment, even have lawyers and “Zeek Squad” telling everybody the same thing?
Ok
So your saying that a person that has a say ameritrade account and purchases $10000 in a stock in the morning at opening bell , and trades that several times during the day or just possibly 1 time that day, he is working any harder in that 30 sec. log on time and log out to his account to buy and sell a chosen stock, than a Zeek Affiliate that posts an ad.
How funny. As for this being an investment. That statement is flawed as well.
Ok You buy Bids , Product or vehicle to drive business to Zeekler Auction Sites,those convert over to points a potential customer can use at a Zeekler Penny Auction site.
He has option to buy additional Bids and he can participate in a Live Auction where he can potentially win a Auction for item. That item is real not a electronic transaction on a brokerage account. Penny auctions are real businesses as is Zeekler.
Some get great buys, Some do dumb things and maybe give too much. Have you ever purchased something and after the fact found a better deal somewhere else? Happens. It’s part of our free capitalism system.
If you want to get on a real issue look at the Stock Market, 401’s and social Security, those are sacred cows with back room minipulators that should be serving time, but because of their size have been untouchable. Why does the SEC allow all these Penny Stocks to perpetuate for Years and still allowed to trade when the they never have made a dime as a supposed business. All they are fronts to steal your money.
Zeekler is transparant business and out there for all to see on a daily basis hour by hour. There goal is to become the # 1 Penny Auction Site.
Are they going to do it? We will See.
Not gunna work. Stay on topic.
Affiliates buy bids to earn 90 day ROI on them. Period.
Affiliates would not purchase VIP bids if the 90 day ROI scheme was abolished overnight.
That is not in dispute, however note that the item is not purchased unless the auction is one. Hundreds, if not thousands of people can participate in an auction and not purchase anything.
Furthermore according to testimony from honest Zeek Rewards affiliates over the past six months or so, to date not one has mentioned the existance of a single retail customer who has purchased retail bids with their own (non-affiliate) money.
We’re talking repeat business here from a genuine customer account that has nothing to do with the penny auction side of things (not related to the referring affiliate, isn’t just a dummy dump account etc. etc.).
Again, not going to work. Stay on topic.
Ask them how much of their daily revenue that they pump into the Zeek Rewards investment scheme is non-affiliate money…
“Oh sorry, we can’t answer that because it will put us out of compliance. HEY LOOK OVER THERE… FREE BIDS!
So in comparing ZeekRewards to an investment, are you admitting that ZeekRewards IS an investment?
No it doesn’t. The points ends up in YOUR pool.
Exactly, an OPTION, not reality. He doesn’t have to spend a single dollar. You paid, he enjoyed.
Using YOUR MONEY.
Of course it is… PAID FOR BY AFFILIATES, not customers.
Irrelevant.
Try asking the following questions:
1) How many real customers do you have? Those that PAID for their own bids for more than 2 months?
2) How was the daily profit share determined?
3) How much repurchase of bids was there daily from all affiliates?
4) Are you having problems in Montana? Details please?
5) What’s with all the credit card issues that you have? How many companies have you tried thus far?
Why do most affiliates use theoretical examples when they are talking about paying customers?
You know perfectly well how many paying customers you have, how many retail bids they’re buying, how many VIP points they generate for you and how much 20% commission you receive on their purchases.
Each time one of your customers buys a 100 bidpack, you will get 65 matching VIP points and $13 in 20%-commission.
So you can count your 20% commissions, and subtract any customers you have made yourself (family, friends, etc.). You don’t have to use theoretical examples.
Oh really?
Why does Paul Burks refuse to show how much money in Zeek Rewards is generated by the affiliates and how much is actually coming in from the auctions?
Why does Zeek refuse to give the name of the bank they’re banking with, and affiliates are basically told to STFU when asking about it?
Why did the Zeek support forum suddenly go private?
Why did Paul Burks tell a couple of lies when telling affiliates why members of 7 countries were banned?
Why doesn’t Zeek mention the reason they’re no longer doing business in Montana?
Why does Zeek delete from their facebook page negative comments or questions about problems affiliates are having?
Hmm lot of angry people here,
As for your statement that I am admitting it is an investment. If you would bother to read, I was equating the scenerio mention above as to work vs time spent. I have pasted the statement below so you can not twist my words. By the way are you a lawyer.
Some of the problems are fundamental, not operational.
For example, would you characterize the work you do for ZR as actually WORK? How much money does it involve? What’s the mix? I know the two are not comparable directly, but what does the proportion FEEL like?
In a “job”, it’s usually 99% work 1% money (need some cloths commute etc).
In ZR, it’s the other way around: 1% work (post some ads), 99% money
Then you are indeed comparing ZeekRewards to an INVESTMENT. Because any profit you made via trading with, say, Ameritrade, is INVESTMENT INCOME.
Irrelevant, but the answer is no. I am a skeptic.
How does this make sense at all? Do you really think that it makes sense for Zeekler to have thousands of people whom it pays several millions of dollars to post a spam ad on a classified ad website that nobody sees?
Why spend that much money to advertise in this way when you can simply program a bot to do the same thing for far cheaper? Why not buy some radio, TV, internet, and print ads for far cheaper to bring in lots of business?
Why pay several people thousands of dollars a day to post one ad each when you also have thousands of people out there getting paid far less to post the same ad?
And finally, why reward affiliates with a 1 to 1 point ratio for every dollar they spend on bids, when you’re just going to end up paying them $1 per point? How is that bringing in profit when you have to pay them for everything they spend?
If Zeek Rewards wasn’t a ponzi scheme, it would have shut down long ago because they’d have run themselves out of business.
No, I’m not angry. I just see so many people falling for an obvious scam while feeling powerless to clue them into what’s really going on.
They are not angry. They are pointing out problems in your statements.
If you see them as angry people, maybe you are just too emotional.
Based upon the logical explanation of the threads here, I’m convinced that ZR is a Ponzi operation. Whether or not I could get out in time without loss, I hope to see more affiliates wake up to see this reality and, with a conscience of not to spread out more pain into the future, stop recruiting more new comers.
Is there any coordinated effort to spread this message to those “unawakened” affiliates?
Btw, have anybody tried to use the Pay with “Set Aside Funds for Subscription” option to pay for your monthly subscription? I got the message “Unfortunately, you do not have enough in your set aside funds to cover the subscription. Please choose a different payment option.” even though I have sufficient available cash balance in my affiliate account to cover that.
How good is the cash balance if it can’t be easily cashed out and/or be applied to pay for the subscription itself?
Sk did you ever get you subscription paid for from your account? How long have you been in Zeeks?
Wow.. lots of info on what is and is not going on. I just used cash available to take the compliance test: $5.00 — worked for me. YES- you give away free bids to entice customers to the web site- ( called loss leaders ) they expire in 60 days.. if people want to play from day 61 on… that is their choice.
I promote theFSC site – auto cart service… Selling products is rule # 1, having fun on penny auctions is #1 1/2… recruitment is # 3… See first rule #1… If you drive 100,000 people to web site and 10,000 play on penny auctions- that’s a better conversion rate… 10% my personal website-
another business gets hit 1000 a week, I get one or two follow up’s…and I have done a million dollars in sales since 2005 with that business- selling REAL products….. So get out there and explain this correctly to your customers..
Your descriptions are not honest… The total bids might add up to more the cost of the item, but the winning bidder doesn’t pay anywhere near the value of that item.
For example, a $100 gift card might receive $450 in total bids from all bidders, but the winner might only have paid $28 for the $100 card. That’s a great deal for the winner, wouldn’t you agree?!
…Fail. The ‘total bids’ reports the amount of bids spent by the winner to win the item.
Just because you don’t understand how the auction data is presented doesn’t make it dishonest.
Zeekler stopped running their auctions for cash recently, but do they still offer the “cash out” option for won auctions?
Really, what would the difference be between auctioning cash or offering the cash value for a won auction?
Sounds so familiar… Didn’t someone posted the exact same thing?
The problem is you are rewarded for buying the bids for them, not for them actually get used (and thus, becoming a potential customer). Thus, you don’t *know* what the conversion rate is. Heck, you don’t even know what the click-thru rate is.
Yes, Zeekler still allows the “cash out” option on non-cash items. It also still auctions gift cards.
Really, I fail to see the difference between auctioning $100 in cash or offering to send cash in place of a $100 item. So basically all auctions could be considered cash auctions.
Some of these comments are just Hilarious. Obviously nobody really knows what they are talking about. All bids are bought and paid for whether someone that receives bids for free or not.
You actually have to know the business to understand the process. I have been doing this for over over a year now and it’s all good… Trust & Believe!
And all bids also attract a (non-guaranteed) >100% ROI via the 90 day investment scheme. Where’s the money coming from?
Yes, quite a few Zeekheads have been using this template recently. ALWAYS start with a ridicule, like ridiculous, laughable, hilarious, misunderstanding, untruth…
Exactly, and if that bid was paid for by someone internal in the company, which generates the profits to be shared WITH that same “internal group”, then it’s a Ponzi scheme.
Ah, the “you can only criticize it from the inside” excuse. Guess to you film critics, who don’t belong to any film studios or ever made movies, have no right to criticize movies either.
Every Ponzi victim said that… right until they realized it’s a Ponzi.
Are you sure you’re not in some religion?
If you can “buy” gift cards, you can auction gift cards. Nothing technically wrong with that.
I really like K. Chang. You’re very smart.
Why thank you. Wish it rubs off on the Zeek-heads, but that’s wishful thinking on my part.
hi. i keep trying to bid on items with the zeekler site but it seems every time i make more than 5 bids or so the site locks me out…could someone be messing with my computer to block me from bidding?
no other sites go down just zeekler
Typical Zeekhead response from Darryl. Only thing it didn’t include was an invitation to join and see what it’s really all about. And no, I’m not going to drink the “trust and believe” Kool Aid.
All the reinvestments in sample bids are paid for with reward points. So if you consider reward points to be money then your logic is correct, “all the bids have been paid for”. But then you will probably accept coins made of wood, too?
When I’m analysing whether or not bids have been paid for, I will use normal business logics where we only count MONETARY TRANSACTIONS. So if a transaction doesn’t involve money or other “cash equivalences” I won’t count it either.
All bids are paid for in cash,because daily profit share is paid out in cash.
Those of you trying to faul Zeek based on the masking of currency as virtual points are attacking it the wrong way. From an affiliate’s perspective, they are receiving daily cash awards. The cash is real and can be reinvested.
The flaw here is not in the points to cash to points mechanism, it is in the fact that Zeek will run out of cash to award without new affiliates constantly investing at a greater rate.
The daily cash payouts are as real as the cash received by Madoff’s investors.
You can’t see it from a specific perspective, what it looks like for an affiliate. You will need a neutral perspective rather than a specific one.
Zeek will PRESENT the daily RPP as “cash available”, but it’s an illusion. Your backoffice is not a bank account, so the numbers presented there are not equal to money in a bank account.
So your following statement have some flawed logics:
No, it isn’t real cash. The amount paid to your backoffice is only a number on the screen and in a database, and it is not connected to any bank account.
You will never experience problems when you’re reinvesting it, but you will sometimes experience different problems when you’re trying to withdraw it.
The RPP reward points have 2 functions:
1. Economical, they will set an upper limit for how much an affiliate can withdraw per day, preventing too high amounts from being withdrawn too fast.
2. Motivational, they will create the feeling of being paid each day, and the feeling of investing more money each day and “see your money grow”.
They will also stimulate people to invest more and to reinvest, so they gradually can get a higher daily payout. And Zeek will have to pay out some real money to keep people motivated. People would get very little motivated if they only had been paid in virtual currency.
So I can agree in that they can create a feeling of being real money, paid to you as cash. But my point wasn’t what something looks like or feels like.
To the author of this website: Dude….are you FREAKING SERIOUS!!!? You must really be dumb.
Do you honestly believe that a bidder is willing to “buy” 100$ or even $150 in exchange for $500 or even 800$??? OF COURSE NOT!!!!!
The final bidder, in your cited examples (angeliu), would have have to pay the final price that the item (in this case money) sold for ($15.12).THE BIDDER DID NOT BID 1574 times,you simpleton and did not, therefore, pay MORE MONEY THAN HE/SHE WILL EARN BY WINNING THIS AUCTION.
1574 bids is the reflection of the TOTAL and COLLECTIVE amount of times that ALL THE BIDDERS clicked on the BID button…NOT JUST “angeliu”.
YOU BEST INFORM YOURSELF OF A SYSTEM AND ITS WORKINGS BEFORE YOU MAKE IGNORANT CLAIMS THAT MAKE YOU LOOK LIKE AN IDIOT.
Oh dear, another Zeek Rewards affiliate fresh off the compliance and training boat sailing the high seas of the kool-aid ocean.
In Zeek Rewards? Yes. Affiliates purchase retail bids through fake accounts that they then funnel their own money into to purchase bids with. They get a 20% commission on the bid purchase + matching VIP point balance added to their existing balance, so they don’t care about the value of the bids.
If they win the auction, they simple opt for cash value and count the difference as a marginal recoupment of their initial investment (speeding up the process rather than simply waiting for the 90 day ROI to pay it back in increments).
Sigh. Yes, yes they did: 1574 bids spent = a final auction price of $15.74 yet the auction closed at $43.05 (4305 bids used in total by all participating members).
The 1574 bid number only displays the amount of bids the winning bidder used to win the auction.
Nice.
@Peter
Easy there now ole boy, don’t wanna blow your pacemaker.
I have one simple question for anyone in here who happens to be an affiliate.
HAVE YOU ACTUALLY SOLD ANY REAL BID PACKS TO ANYBODY THAT PAID IN CASH OR SOME EQUIVALENT FORM OF PAYMENT?
This is the part of the program I cannot understand. I asked my friend at work, if he has sold any real bid packs and he said NO. He has only bought bid packs to give away.
So I asked how he expected to make money when he is not selling anything. A car dealership owner would not continue to pay his dealers if they never sold a car. You need outside money coming in to be able to pay affiliates at a rate >100% or else the affiliate base must constantly be expanding = ponzi.
I have never heard of anyone buying these bid packs and why would anyone, if the bids are diluted with affiliate bids.
@Falcon
Count me as one affiliate who has not sold a single bid.
Nor have I ever encountered any one who has even pretended to feign the slightest interest, not even in free bids!
I am getting ready to join as a diamond member. It might not last forever but I’m gonna give it a shot anyway. Life is a gamble. Sometimes you win sometimes you lose.
I’m not doing it as a career choice but know people that are cashing out weekly and monthly with some stout figures. This day and age even a career that you think is a great choice might just let you down.
I been watching at the zeekler auction site today and so far everyone that won do save a lot of money.
You mean like this these auctions that all ended today:
Now it is possible these bids were not purchased for $1 if these are from monthly subscription ($99 per month gives you 250 VIP bids to use in the auction), but in the above case, only one of the winners was an affiliate and the other three were “customers”.
There is no reasonable explanation for why a customer would OVER PAY for these items. The ONLY explanation that fits all of the facts is that these are “customers” who purchased bids not for the retail auction itself, but for the affiliate to earn 20% commission + matching VIP points. Then the “customer” is free to spray away the bids to try and win anything regardless of how many bids are spent.
There are much more egregious examples that Oz has shown… these are just some auctions from TODAY after reading your comment.
Something else to consider regarding the auctions and the bounteous revenue they supposedly generate:
I originally wrote this article on March 30th 2012, citing recently finished auctions in the range of 22700s. The auctions Jimmy has cited are today numbered in the late 41000s. Let’s call the difference 20,000 square.
If we round March 30th up to April, today counts as just over 3 months – which we’ll round down to exactly three months for simplicity.
This means that over the last 3 months Zeekler has run 6,666 auctions a month, or 222 a day (30 day average).
To generate even a million dollars a day in payouts (remember, Zeek claim to pay out with actual funds, despite most of it being re-invested back into the scheme) each individual auction would need to generate $4504.
Retail bids sell for 0.65c each, so that’s $650 per $10 in auction price. That would mean each retail bid auction would need to pull in a final auction price of around $69.
VIP bids sell for $1 so that’s $1000 per $10 in auction price. That would mean each VIP bid auction would need to pull in a final auction price of $45.
This is of course a capped scenario at $1 million dollars a day payout, and remember you need to double it because Zeek Rewards pay out up to 50% of Zeekler earnings.
Each auction needs to thus generate $9008. Retail bid auctions = $138, VIP bid auctions = $90.
I condsider the final auction price paid as insignificant as it’s only a few thousand dollars all up with this amount of auctions when we’re talking $2 million in revenue generated.
Want to calculate a 2 million dollar daily contribution from Zeekler towards the Zeek Rewards profit-share? Double that second set of auction figures again.
Bear in mind that at 800,000 or so affiliates, a daily payout of $1 million is $1.25 a day, or enough to buy just 1 VIP point. In reality if the profit-share ROIs are to be supported by Zeekler the final price on each daily auction is set astronomically high.
The figures naturally don’t support this (we can see how many auctions run and for what prices consistently enough to get a feel), so the only other explanation is affiliate money via membership fees and mass investment in bids that are turfed onto dummy customer accounts that are never used and simply expire.
Pure Ponzi.
@Sunrise
You’re right. The end price and the number of bids spent in auctions seems to have become more “normal” in the last 3 months. I checked only 2 auctions for the end price.
I haven’t checked the auctions for 3 months or so, but last time I checked they had 50/50 retail bid auctions and free bids auctions, and maybe 1 or 2 VIP bid auctions from time to time.
Now, 3 months later, they had zero retail bid auctions, the auctions that initially was designed for external customers. VIP bid auctions was 8, free bids was 4, for the auctions currently active.
VIP bid auctions will usually be about the affiliates’ own money, what they’ll get in return for their membership fee and what they can buy themselves. Unless they have changed something? I know they have added the PRC customers.
Retail bid auctions will reflect the number of retail customers, both real and fake customers, and how much money they spend on buying bids.
Free bids auctions will reflect the quality of the “customers” affiliates can buy from third parties. It will also reflect how effective ads are, if you have ads offering free bids.
So all in all, the auctions reflects very few real customers, both free and paying retail customers. But they do also reflect the growing number of PRC customers who joined in June.
@Oz
Not to mention (as we have all done a few times here), the matching VIP points for bid purchases, and the 20% commission. Let’s assume Zeek magically decides to get rid of matching VIP points since that is too obvious a clue that this is a Ponzi,
(1) then your numbers would have to also increase to account for the 20% in affiliate commissions.
(2) In addition to that, the 20,000 or so auctions in 3 months doesn’t factor in which of those are FREE bid auctions where Zeekler makes no revenue. So you have to (3) subtract from 20,000 the number of FREE id auctions.
So your already very high average auction price would have to increase significantly to account for (1) and (2).
Note that Quibids average final auction price is $10 across all items.
Customers can also buy VIP bids. Most buy retail bids so that they don’t compete with affiliates who get VIP bids for their monthly subscription.
What the few legit customers do not realize is that they are competing against affiliates who purchased bids as a fake/friend/family customer who don’t care about the value of the bids.
@OZ
When you purchase sample bids it say clearly on the form that you’re purchasing sample bids to give away to new customer and that you’re not purchasing stock, investment or any equity. Which mean that any sample bids purchase or bids repurchase by affilates will consider company daily profit.
Doesn’t matter what it says, all that matters is what effectively happens.
You hand over money to Zeek Rewards with the intention of earning a 90 day ROI greater than the amount you put in.
Not sure what your point is. 100% of this money is still coming from affiliates, which means it’s a Ponzi (new affiliate money is used to pay out returns owed on existing investments made by affiliates).
Exactly, and you are then sharing that profit.
So you are paying yourselves. Thus, Ponzi scheme.
Hey Kchang, so what if the guy in front has a brazilion points if the company dont make money no body make money.
They said it loud and clear your vip points can only earn 50% of the company daily profit share.
So the affiliates who were sold the business on the idea of earning a rolling 90 day ROI off an allegedly stable and profitable penny auction (not new member investments) should just sod off and cop their potential $10,000 loss on the chin?
Hell you made your money so who cares… fuck ’em, right?
The guy in the end need to understand that hes purchasing $10,000 of sample bids not investment, stock, or equity.
….with the intention of earning a 90 day ROI, seeing as that’s how Zeek Rewards is marketed (let’s face it, nobody would buy sample bids without the rolling 90 day ROI scheme).
Sorry, what was your point again?
my points is theres nothing wrong with using your own money to cut some corners. Unless you wanna recruit and earn your points from there I dont see zr doing anything wrong.
To be honest with you I just joinin the company but the only thing that concern me right now is the banking and customer support isssues. Once they take care this 2 problem I’ll definety purchase $5k of they sample bids.
Hope it works out for you Sunrise. Glad to see people still putting money in.
Zeek is way late on payments to me and my downline.
Please, please, find more people to put money in so I can cash out. Please put money in using either NxPay or STP because those are the two wallets I have outstanding withdrawals on.
Most Sincerely,
Jimmy
And you are contributing to them making money… by buying bids and trade it for VIP points, hoping to SHARE in that profit.
And what is this shortcut that you speak of?
Did you read the part about “suspect Ponzi”?
So you gave them 5000, which ends up as profit, and most of that goes to the affiliates with WAY MORE POINTS than you do.
@kchang – Sunrise is viewing it as time vs. money. Instead of selling and recruiting to build his point base up to $5k, he is willing to pay for the points.
@Jimmy — ah, I see. In other words, he could put in 100K if he wants, but there’s already like a dozen with 1 million points, right? So he gets the leftovers no matter what, right?
@Sunrise
Cutting corners? Mate you’re paying yourself and other affiliates with your own money.
Why the hell do we even bother with a global economy when everyone could just be paying themselves with their own money.
Brilliant!
@kc
The max you can buy is 10k with your own money anything after that you can set your daily cash earning @100% for repurchase.
It doesn’t matter how many points the people on top has everyone will have a equal share.
@Sunrise — they have MORE SHARES THAN YOU DO.
Fail. The ROI per point is the same, but someone with 1 million points gets a much larger return than someone with 1 point.
And with affiliates contributing all the ROI money, 100% repurchase is useless if the value paid out per bid drops below the cost of the bid (people won’t be able to sustain their bid balances).
@Sunrise
What Oz & k.chang are telling you is by the time your 10k in points grows to something you deem large and significant, such as say 100k, those who are sitting at over 1 million now will have way more. The entire money scheme becomes unsustainable and collapses.
The guys at the top don’t care because they’ve made their millions already. You would care if it collapsed before you got your $10k out. Those that come after you that aren’t as lucky will file a class action lawsuit.
If you joined a year ago you’d be rich by now. But you didn’t, and those who are rich off this suck all the money out of the new affiliates coming in, that there’s no more money to redistribute.
It’s one error in your logics, you believe the points are backed up with real money?
The daily profit share is made out of thin air, so the points paid to your backoffice is close to worthless, and so are the VIP points. But they DO have a small pool of money coming in from new investors like yourself, that can be used to pay the old investors when they withdraw points as cash.
The business plan goes like this:
1. Investors pays money IN. The money can then be used to pay old investors.
2. In the middle they have a “system” where both old investors and new investors can compound daily ROI (buying bids and earning VIP points). There’s very little money involved here, other than some recycling of money used to buy retail bids and VIP bids.
3. In the other end you’ll have investors taking money OUT, if enough money has come in from new investors in point 1. The number of investors and the amount they can withdraw grows much faster than the money coming IN under point 1.
But you obviously seems to believe that point 2 is very profitable, and will be able to support payouts to you? And you believe the RPP reward points paid to the backoffice each day is real money?
Recycling of money?
Investors (mostly with a certain balance) can withdraw money, sign up family members as “customers”, buy VIP or retail bids for the money through a family member, and earn matching VIP points plus 20% commission.
So instead of reinvesting in sample bids, they can earn 20% extra commission if they buy retail or VIP bids. But this process won’t bring any fresh money into the system, they are only recycling money (money OUT, money IN).
It matters because those with the largest points can collapse the entire money redistribution plan. Why do you think they limit initial investment to $10k?
What do you think caused Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi to collapse? A large Investor wanted his money. When the top affiliates start cashing out at 100% the entire thing will collapse.
More and More Ponzi seems more popular nowadays disguising themselves as penny auction
This is just starting – and growing – in Australia. Should we become affiliates?
We are educated that there is a profit pool from legitimate online bidding. Are we ripping off the bidders? The affiliates who have cashed out – great, but what happens as this steamrolls with the greedy cash in and cash out – do the small investors lose?
My worry is that this site is short term – get in and get out – surely the fraudsters will take over and blow this out of the water??!!
@NJG, the auctions are only a cover story. I mean sure, they exist but look at the forums devoted to penny auctions and see if any of them regard Zeekler with any respect.
Even Penny Auction Watch which Zeek Rewards uses as some sort of endorsement and who were given a free ZR affiliate account in exchange for their endorsement yet no one there shows any enthusiasm for Zeekler’s auctions.
There’s a real simple reason for that, no one who isn’t a Zeek Rewards member and who reviews the recent auction results would ever pay money to bid in Zeekler auctions. The problem is bid inflation.
If I’m a paying Zeek Rewards member I can sign up a second ZR account (not in my own name of course, I’d need enough imagination to think up another name) and with that second account I could buy, let’s say 1,000 VIP bids. My real account would receive a $200 commission AND 1,000 “VIP points” which over 90 days would return to me more than $1,000 and guess what, my second account still has those 1,000 VIP bids.
Realizing that both accounts are still really just me I spent 800 bucks (after the $200 commission) and in 90 days I’ll get more than that back so those 1,000 VIP bids in my second account really cost me less than zero dollars.
So say you happen across the Zeekler auction site and being a fan of penny auctions you buy say $100 in bids. But you and I are bidding in the same auction, You payed cash money for your bids but I was actually paid to buy my bids. Who do you think will win the auction?
The Zeekler auction site is the thinnest fig leaf of an excuse to keep dim witted and greedy MLM consultants and attorneys on the payroll on the basis that yet so far, no penny auction website with an imitation of a MLM comp plan has ever been found to be illegal in this country.
The operative word being YET.
You have probably guessed right. This seems to have become VERY short term in the last few weeks. They are not ripping off bidders, they are ripping off newly recruited affiliates.
I have asked questions to affiliates about real PAYING customers since January, and there’s hardly anyone who has any real customers, other than family members and friends acting as customers. Actually, not a SINGLE affiliate have come forward saying he/she has real customers.
The legitime penny auction is real enough, but I can’t see how it can be profitable. There’s mostly the affiliates themselves that are using the auctions, through family or friends acting as “customers”.
If you had joined before May 15th, your chances for getting your money back would have been relatively fair. The chances for making a profit would have been less fair.
THE AUCTIONS
I can use the same example as GlimDropper, with some different mathematics.
* The affiliate withdraws $1,000 OUT, to buy bids
* Zeek will get $1,000 IN, as gross revenue
* the affiliate will get $200 OUT, as commission
* so Zeek’s net revenue seems to be $800, if we ignore the withdrawal of $1,000 (in the OUT-IN-OUT operation).
The 1000 matching VIP points will generate daily ROI for 90 days. It’s possible to withdraw 1000 extra points as $800 cash in 8-9 weeks (56-63 days), but most “normal” withdrawal plans will need 4 months or more before the 1000 extra points are withdrawn as $1,000 cash. The purchase of bids will gradually become a loss when people withdraws the money.
Spending bids in auctions isn’t very profitable for Zeekler. People have already paid for the bids when they bought them, and they don’t pay anything extra when they’re using the bids. So 1000 bids spent in an auction will only raise the price of an item with $10. It isn’t more profitable than that.
The business model is flawed, mostly because of the matching VIP points and the 90 day ROI. The business model worked when more people paid money IN than the people withdrawing money, but now there has been too many people with huge VIP point balances withdrawing money.
ZEEK’S BUSINESS MODEL
The business model works like this:
1. The affiliate pays money IN, after he has been recruited.
* The money can be used to pay old investors.
* His upline gets 15% commission.
2. In the middle, they have a system where the affiliate can earn VIP points based on his own investment, and earn commissions based on other people he recruits into his downline, and their investments.
They also have a penny auction website, but it’s NOT very profitable.
3. After some time(3-6 months normally), the affiliate can start to withdraw points as real money,
* IF enough new affiliates continues to join and pays money IN,
* IF the investors with huge VIP balances don’t withdraw too much money, or too many of the investors with medium balances don’t withdraw too much money,
* IF Zeek hasn’t run out of money because of other reasons,
* IF they don’t have other payment problems,
* and IF the authorities haven’t shut it down
So if affiliates could skip this point 3, the business model would have been perfectly sound, with lots of money coming IN and very little money going OUT. The problem is that most people wants to be paid in MONEY rather than “points”.
Kchang, the max sample bids you can buy is 10K per account and 2 accounts max per household.
@Sunrise — so you’ll NEVER get a million points unless you left the money in there and not get a penny out for YEARS, theoretically speaking.
So which side are you trying to prove? 🙂 Sounds like most of the profit being shared are going to the people who already have million points and leaving dregs and leftover scraps for the late joiners.
Don’t matter when you start the whole world soon will be jumping on this if they can prove 100% legal.
For the first several months you will need to do 100% repurchase to build up points and once you figure out the weekly paycheck amount that you want then you can switch to 80%/20% to get pay that way the 80% repurchasing keep your points balance.
I dont think people that gone that far would do 100% cashout to ruin their points balance.
It’s interesting you never bothered asking WHERE is the money coming from, because you already admitted to it:
You pretty much already admitted that it’s a Ponzi scheme, so there’s no chance it’ll be proven 100% legal.
You have to see it from the business structure you can make your back in 3-6 months depend on your effort after that there’s no more risk maybe that’s why they rule out ponzi?
If there’s no customer (or very few customers), where’s the money coming from? You just ignored the question AGAIN.
Money is coming from you, and whoever you recruit into it. The top affiliates have too many points so they’re NOT feeding money into the system. YOU are.
Your argument is basically “who cares if it is a Ponzi as I feel the probability of getting my money back in 3-6 months is worth the risk. Further, I feel that the probability of earning income beyond that 3-6 month breakeven period is worth the risk”.
If that’s your main position on this, that’s fine, just be up front about it rather than trying to defend that it is no an illegal investment in the US, and it is not an illegal Ponzi business model.
@sunrise
Ponzi schemes will never be declared legal due to the simple fact that they rely on a constant input of new investments from members (affiliates “buying” bids to invest in VIP points in this case).
No matter how much the marketing evolves or what the creators attach a Ponzi scheme to, it’s still a Ponzi and legal or not, a fundamentally flawed business model that just shuffles member money around existing members.
If you are an international member who wants to bid in the auctions and is given cash options, You don’t know how great that option is..
I think Zeek rewards model makes sure the money keeps coming from zeekler and goes out to the affiliates… In and out. And in both hands, the affiliates plays a major role.
And those who thinks, that zeek rewards does not have real customers.
LET ME TELL YOU THAT I AM ONE MYSELF.
And I have become an affiliate myself from a customer.
And I bought real retail bids of $260 value ( 400 retail bids) and won $ 700 in real cash. And sponsor does not even know me, I got her link from google search for 500 free bids.
And that was 4 months ago..
@Sabrina
Except that all the money coming in through Zeekler is paid via Zeek Rewards affiliates.
Case in point.
You are an affiliate, you aren’t a retail customer. Any money you pump into Zeek Rewards and Zeekler is affiliate money.
The shills are becoming more prolific.
Sabrina did say she spent $260 with the retail penny auction before becoming an affiliate. The problem is that:
1. This testimonial is the exception as Zeek Rewards needs millions of customers to generate enough revenue to pay the daily RPP to affiliates. But we have only seen a small handful show up, even when giving all hearsay the full benefit of the doubt.
2. As bad as issue #1 is, it is ireelevant anyways because what is worse than no retail customers is the fact that for Sabrina’s $260 spend, her sponsor received 20% commission AND 260 matching VIP points.
Zeek Rewards over the last 4 months since Sabrina purchased those bids has paid out significantly more than $260 to her sponsor.
Negative cash flow = Ponzi in this case.
Note that either #1 or #2 would make Zeek a Ponzi.
Not explicitly. Just said that she signed up as a customer (had bids dumped on her) and then bought retail bids and became an affiliate. She’ll need to clarify whether or not the bids were bought with her own money or her sponsors and/or if she was an affiliate when they were purchased.
That’s acceptable enough for me. I have even accepted free customers, as long as they were primarily interested in the auctions when they first tried Zeekler.
The reason why I’m asking about paying customers is because it will make the scheme a little more sustainable, because of fresh money coming in from other sources than the affiates’ own money.
400 bids is more than enough to qualify as a “regular customer, for a short period of time”.
We do, which is why we are wondering why you didn’t run away screaming when Zeek suddenly banned six countries and blamed a random US government agency, which answered what-are-you-talking-about? Clearly, you joined AFTER the hoopla went down…
As you just admitted that majority of ZR’s money came from affiliates, you AGREE that it’s a Ponzi scheme.
Why does everyone keep saying that the money is generated from new associates> The money is generated from the auction site, the profit is split in half, one half goes to zeek, the other gets split up according to the VIP points in the associates site, why is that so hard to understand.
if they have a slower day on the auction site, you might make less, but I dont see why they are worried about getting new proplr to support the ones they have, there is no guarantee how much will be made daily because it is totally based upon how much profit they made that day
…because it does.
…which is funded pretty much entirely by affiliates buying VIP bids or retail bids through dummy customer accounts.
It’s not, the problem is where the money is coming from.
A slower day in the auction site = less affiliates investing in bids for the day.
There is an inherent guarantee seeing as nobody would participate and continue to invest and re-invest in bids if they were unable to at the very least maintain their VIP point balance over a rolling 90 day period.
If affiliates wound up with less points than they started with after 90 days there would be chaos (as there would in any Ponzi scheme that pays a relatively stable daily average ROI which then dropped).
You need to watch the video more closely. This is why Zeek is considered a scam by many, because of the deception in what the videos imply, what the daily webinars imply and focus on, vs. what is reality.
The reality is up to 50% is split, not a guaranteed 50%.
The reality is the daily profit share is supposed to be the combined revenue total of penny auctions, affiliate VIP investment, and monthly subscriptions.
The problem is that there is so little retail penny auction revenue relative to affiliate investment. Another problem is Zeek Rewards pays matching VIP points + 20% commission for every Zeekler $1 purchase, thereby incurring negative points liability, since there is an inherent expectation taht each VIP point is worth >= $1).
This is disproven by the facts that penny auctions normally have vastly more traffic on weekends than on weekdays, yet the profit share % is inverted with higher amounts during the week and lower amounts on weekends.
Also, during outages, downtimes, technical problems, holidays etc the profit share remains astoundingly consistent, almost as if it has been predetermined and has no relationship to actual profits. There would be far more variation if that was the true calculation method.
Zeek includes the bids affiliates purchase to give away (initial investment) as the daily profit.
The only other income is the sale of “retail” bids….which of course are subject to fraud because they give the sponsor 20% in cash and matching VIP points.
Whats is that so hard to understand?
What about monthly subscription fees? Are they also income?
Yep, although all that is “proprietary information”.
If Zeek Rewards affiliates ask too many questions about the specific makeup of the daily profit share, Hong Kong based OFAC officials working on behalf of a US-based bank operating out of the Republic of Korea in Panama knock on your door and take you away.
Wrap your blanket capes tight, you have been warned.
Steve, a commentator on Troy’s blog, calling you blokes out and attributing theories that you did not author.
Best not to waste time getting caught up in stuff like that. Zeek Rewards might have US based banks (massive red flag that they are secret though), but all they seemingly use them for is to fund overseas e-wallets – which to date I believe has caused nothing but massive problems for the affiliate base.
Zeek Rewards protect themselves (executive money) by not having any direct contact with their banks and their affiliates (another red flag, in that this is how nearly every Ponzi under the sun is set up).
Oh and some guy gets caught presenting a fraudulent check in person… wouldn’t that happen anywhere with any transaction if you were verifing the checks as people presented them?
All, very interesting stuff. Some people are getting VERY rich and you might too, but wake up and smell the roses, this is a ponzi scam and it will collapse leaving the top and many in the middle that got in early rich, some really rich…
I have heard of some folks making $1.5 Million in one year and others $50,000 per year, but it will not last and there may be class action suits later.
Money from the bottom is paying those at the top….it is obvious, no other legit business asks for people to put money in before they start. Placing ads on small site…..and paying you thousands….come on, why would they do that….the answer is to lure you in so they can get paid.
I think it’s very comment to find people spending more money in bids than the actual item value. Obviously they don’t go into a $100 auction thinking they’ll spend $500, but once you’re $150 into an auction, it’s very tempting to believe that if you just hold out a bit longer you’ll be able to make a partial recovery.
That mindset will often continue up to several times the item’s value, or until they can’t afford to continue bidding.
Yes, that is the one response to the question of why someone is overspending to win an auction that supports how it is possible that in some cases, you might bid more than the value of the item. “I’ve gone in this far, I might as well try and recover some of my money.”
The counter-response to that is you see some cases of really egregious overspend, such as thousands of bids to win a $150 item or less.
Even the mindset of salvaging some money has an upper threshold. Someone who is spending thousands of bids to win an item worth $150 or less is likely not trying to “salvage some money” but is more likely, as the article suggests, spending bids to win any small amount of money possible because he values the bids at next-to-nothing having already received matching VIP points for them.
Another relevant consideration is that a penny auction customer who finds himself overbidding, even in a salvage operation, is very unlikely to be a repeat customer.
When that customer compares the value at Zeekler vs. any of the other top penny auctions, he will realize that he does not overbid and that other penny auctions actually do close at 80-90% off street value whereas Zeekler’s auctions often close close to street value because of all the bid inflation.
The customer could also just sour on the entire penny auction market altogether with a bad experience at Zeekler without ever comparing Zeekler to Quibids or another penny auction.
In other words, even giving the benefit of the doubt to the overbidding we are seeing as normal behavior, you are still left with the conclusion that retail penny auction customers won’t stick around. Yet the Zeek Rewards business model requires not just new penny auction customers, but residual customers because the VIP point balances only go up up up.
You people that leave negative comments need to do your home work and get the facts correct before shooting your mouth off.
For example do you really think some one with half a brain would spend $806.65 in bids to win $100.00 cash! Please you are only making fools out of yourself.
What really happened here was all bids in total was 1241 x 0.65 in total = $806.65 and could have come from 100 or more people placing a bid or 2 to try and win. It’s not that hard to work out is it when have the facts.
@Mark
Negative comments? Try a basic understanding of how the auctions work and the information displayed on screen.
1241 bids at a 0.01 increment does not equate to a final auction price of $58.77 (5,877 bids were used in total by all bidders).
Can we stop getting all the Zeek Rewards affiliates who failed maths in school jumping on this article, professing how “negative” and “lack of facts” it is and then proceeding to make themselves look like utter morons?
The “won with xxx bids” is how many bids the auction winner spent you donks.
(this is what, the fourth or fifth time this has happened now?)
Did the affiliate spend $806.65 to win the auction? Of course not! They bought the bids through a dummy customer account and earned their money back in referral commissions and matching VIP points. That’s the reason you have these ridiculous auctions where people are blowing through thousands of bids to win $100. The bids don’t hold any value to them as they’ll make back the purchase cost and more via the comp plan.
(But please continue to also insist that the penny auctions are making loads of money, that one’s always good to hear too)
A glimmer of hope from PPBlog and always a different perspective and summation:
http://www.patrickpretty.com/2012/07/16/editorial-is-alertpay-payza-finally-doing-the-right-thing-scam-friendly-payment-processor-that-is-darling-of-global-wink-nod-fraudsters-and-ponzi-forums-says-it-is-banning-programs-that-offer-a-re/
My take is Payza realizes the risk of the Ponzi game and wants to get out. Keep in mind Payza makes a killing on transaction fees, even more than STP. It would take a lot for them to leave the Ponzi market.
PPBlog also had a good piece recently about the negative impact of Ponzi’s, including how clawbacks (the proper use of the term, not Dawn’s invention which she said she invented herself) hurt churches and other organizations when member funds get confiscated.
(Ozedit: If you want to crap on about the lottery and social security go do it elsewhere)
There’s nothing new with these people. It’s the old “that’s the total number of bids” claim again, followed by the “Social Security is a ponzi scheme” non-argument.
If I were you, Oz, I’d have to get truckloads of aspirin for all the headaches.
So I have invested $500—-made that back already cash in hand….in two more months in cashing at 4k a month easy. As long as there is a World Wide Web…you will have Internet marketing.
This is a global auction. If you got an email that said you had $500 free, would you look?This company just dosnt spend 3million on a 30 second add at the superbowl. They pay the little guy.
Anyone know where the Orlando Magic play? Amway arena?
Anyone pay social security? I’m paying my neighbors mortgage every month!
If you were to invest 1000$ in 6 months you are getting about 4-5k a month. So it only has to work for 3 more. Months for me to get about 10k from my $500. I have $500 in beer money, I am making money and saving my life from less beer! God bless America
i was wondering can we acutually request a cash out of an auction item. i have won an item ,but as i follow the instruction they want me to pay for the item instead give me cash….
i am so confusing
can any body give me an hint?
I believe Jimmy explained it before: you have to pay for the item as if you are going to buy it. THEN you request cash instead of the item. They can’t do “just pay me the difference”.
Some affiliate paid $500 for those bids.
… Who paid the bids for them.
Yes, that little guy would be you. They use your money, and promise you a little extra back… DAILY.
AND they insist this is NOT an investment.
But you don’t care about that, do you?
Until the money game collapses and it turns out they stole money from the little guy and redistributed it to the people like you who got in early.
The $3M advertising spend you mention is based on the presumption that the spend will generate more revenue than the cost of the ad. With Zeek Rewards it is the opposite. Zeek Rewards pays out more than 10x the incoming revenue of Zeekler. Only Ponzi schemes have that revenue model…
That is correct. You used to be able to email customer support or open a ticket and request “just pay me the difference” but beginning in Jan 2012 you no longer received email responses form support and tickets were left open for months. So the only hope of getting paid was to pay for the item, which triggers Zeek’s internal supply chain workflow semi-automation process. Waiting on manual customer support process has never worked for anyone I know since Jan 2012 for getting paid “just the difference”.
I’m guessing they need that money to pay some affiliates. It is stupid, though, that if you win an auction for a $100 item for $50 and choose the cash value option, you have to send them $50 before they’ll send you the $100.
If I were a penny auction customer I’d be annoyed at this enough to leave Zeekler for a better auction site.
Thanks for all of your investigative work on Zeek Rewards. My friend tried to get me to join and my first thought was that this was too good to be true. Who in their right mind would pay people thousands or even hundreds of dollars a day just to copy and paste one simple ad per day?
To confirm my fears, I typed the obvious “Zeek Scam” into my browser was surprised to see all glowing reviews.
Luckily, I searched further down past the first couple of pages of results and stumbled upon your page. To be honest, after seeing how everyone claimed to be receiving checks and my belief that the Zeekler arm was making a boatload of money on their end, I was ready to plop down four or five thousand.
I can see now that Zeek Rewards is nothing more than your typical ponzi scheme. I have never invested in a MLM before and this would have been my first. Thanks again.
Just a side note. Unfortunately, after seeing some of the rebuttals from some of the Zeekler pumpers, it’s pretty obvious Zeek is successful in targeting the indolent and uneducated segments of society.
This was probably one of the biggest red flags that popped up when I heard about Zeek’s business model. It doesn’t make sense that any company would do this and be able to stay in business, when you could hire a couple of IT guys to do the same thing.
Or, if you really wanted to bring in business to your penny auction, you could buy some real advertising. You wouldn’t have to spend 50% of your daily profit and pay millions to a bunch of people.
I think they do this to derail any potential investors from finding any information which might show it to be a scam. I first discovered this phenomenon when researching a different MLM company my sister got involved with and was instantly suspicious of it at that point.
The fact that they think they have to convince people that it’s not a scam and is legitimate is very suspicious to me. I run a business and never once felt the need to post a bunch of websites or youtube videos convincing people that it’s legitimate while making the search results look like I’m exposing it as a scam.
They’re targeting all kinds of people, anyone who has the right set of motives and are willing to believe in the opportunity.
Zeek doesn’t FEEL like a scam when you’re in it. The daily RPP and the growing VIP balance gives an illusion of being real money. You can see other people being able to withdraw money, and you’re able to withdraw money yourself, so all look like a real income source.
One of the comments here was “My boss tries to recruit us”. The boss had been in Zeek since March, and now he felt it safe to recruit his employees. People fail like they do with the optical illusions like “2 in 1 picture”, when they first have seen the working income opportunity then it’s difficult to see the Ponzi scheme.
How about you guys ask the affiliates how they like the company. Why would you attack something that is blessing so many lives?
By the way Zeekler has a strong rep of being debt free also they were here for 15 years. This Affiliate program was just barley started!
@Anon
Many Zeek Rewards affiliates comment here. Additionally comments from Zeek’s closed affiliate support forums are also published here from time to time.
At the end of the day though whether or not affiliates like the company or not is irrelevant, the business model is what’s being analysed here.
That is, a daily ROI paid out mostly from new affiliate investments and re-investment by existing affiliates.
Zeekler was started in 2010 and does not pay out commissions. Zeek Rewards was started in January 2011 and has only been paying out commissions since then. Neither company is remotely close to 15 years of age.
I’m an affiliate and I think the whole thing is despicable.
They’re probably debt free because no bank will lend to them.
Debt free…who cares? Every homeless person in America is debt free.
Irrelevant. That’d be like asking an addict how they like their dealer.
So, I have been an affiliate for about 5 months and the hardest challenge is setting up the methods to get paid!…
Ewallets and asking for checks seems to be a deliberately slow and ridiculous process. Still have not received a check from some BS company called “Solid Pay Trust”. The whole process of getting paid from Zeekler is indication enough that this is one big scam!!!
If Zeekler is making as much money per day as they give affiliates, then why can’t they afford a modern system to issue checks immediately via wire transfer, express mail, etc…
A SCAM ARTIST NEVER WILL PART WITH THE MONEY! SO THEY DELAY, MAKE IT INCONVENIENT,CONFUSING,WON’T OFFER CUSTOMER SERVICE OR ANSWER THE PHONE OR EMAILS!!!! WHY CAN’T ZEEKLER HIRE REPS TO ANSWER THE PHONE?????
THIS IS A FKN SCAM PEOPLE!!!!!! WAKE UP!!!!!!
Well, if their bank didn’t kick them out, they’d likely still be issuing checks today.
As for ZR being debt-free, if they intend to pay out $1 per VIP point I’m betting they’re drowning in debt. Ponzi schemes never have enough money to pay everyone everything they’re promised.
As it is, though, if Zeek wanted to they could just say “Everyone’s points are now worthless” and walk away. Since it’s not an investment scheme (wink wink), the points are not considered dollars (except when you listen to Zeekhead recruitment pitches) so that’s the only way I could see Zeek as being debt free.
This is the standard structure i was shown for being an affiliate. The model they showed was for $5k and $10k starting in your bid bank.
Both models say to keep the money in your account for the first 7 or 8 months before pulling out 20% of the gain each month. Which at the $5k level would be about $2.9k, month 9 is $3k+, 10th $3k+, 11th$4k, to almost $5k in 1 year. A return of around $21k. Sounds great right. Twice that at the $10k level.
But most aren’t going to drop $5k or $10k. More like $500 or $1000. I ran some figures for the $1k amount and if you follow their play and don’t make any money/take any out of your account till month 8 and take out 20% of your gain/profit/increase you make roughtly $400, 9th $415, 10th 440, 11th 452, and 1 year later 443. Thats around 2150.
Double your money in 1 year. So considering you had to pay $1k that means you really earned a little over a thousand dollars.
I don’t think getting a loan from a salesman and waiting to pay him back on about month 10 and giving him an extra $1k for the year to place adds and recruit other salesman/investors is going to bankrupt the system. Meanwhile you get a little coin in your pocket. Thats for someone not recruiting or doing anything with $1k until month 8 when you tell them to start sending you some money.
It looks like you keep making a good return but at the cost of your money eventually evaporating. 13th month $414, 14th $364, 15th $291, 16th $195. As far as i went but you see the trend.
Thats another $1,200 return. Thats assuming the current 1.52% daily return and they keep on ticking for another year and a half…..
Your math is wrong. If you are taking out 20% then as long as the average rate is 1.39% or higher you point balance never decreases.
The problem with your statement here:
Is that you have to consider the net effect of all affiliates. Why would Zeek pay out tesn to hundreds of millions in “interest” when they can just get a loan, or venture capital funding? Why do they need to pay affiliates to place useless ads when they can outsource it for 1/1000th the cost, or less?
100% interest APR is NOT going to bankrupt the system? Come on…. Who is VOLUNTARILY paying out 100% APR interest on what is essentially a 90 day loan when they can get one from the bank for less than 10%?
Interesting post by a Zeek member over at mlmhelpdesk under the NXPay article:
My math is not 100% accurate thats why i said roughly. Your amount increases each day and i just calculated a base figure on the low side. I’m glad to here your figure of 1.39 percent before your amount starts the down slide.
I agree, the only reason is because you need the affiliate capital coming in. The next question is when do they change the system again or close down the store. It sounds like people originally could recieve 20% vs what i’ve been shown of 10% and the daily average has been higher in the past vs the 1.52%.
100% interest APR is NOT going to bankrupt the system? Come on…. Who is VOLUNTARILY paying out 100% APR interest on what is essentially a 90 day loan when they can get one from the bank for less than 10%?
First, i’m new to the site and i apologize for the quote error. Still trying to figure it out. I’m not an affiliate but am considering it like i guess alot are.
It is not 100% interest. You don’t get a return, based on what they want you to do, till month 7. Then you don’t get your original investment back till around month 9 at any level. So from the company stand point you have worked for your own money back and for free for the first 9 months.
During that time you are placing ads which we agree is a minor but necessary part of advertising and you have been hopefully trying to recruit new members for more capital. Its not until month 9 or 10 that a return is then payed back. Thats the companies first loss/expense at this point.
You say 100% APR, i say as an advertising/sales rep. im finally making a pay check.
I will agree the affiliate program will not last forever. It has been on the seen for a year. The question is how much longer and in what form will it appear in 3 months, 6 months, 1 year.
Most like my self are asking the same question. Can it last at least another 12 months to make the kind of money they are saying you can make. If it only lasts another 6 to 8 months or less then it will waste alot of peoples time and money.
Just use blockquote HTML tags around the stuff you want to quote, add them manually.
Depends on your cashout strategy, you can start with 100% repurcahse, then switching to 20% cashout at day 60 so you get most of initial purchase back by day 90, but your points won’t grow as fast. If you want to wait longer, you’ll cash out a lot more. So the APR “varies”.
But frankly, if you just put in 10K, and do 100% cashout, you’ll get 13500 over 90 days assuming average RPP of 1.5%. That’s 35% interest in 90 days. That’d leave you with NO points (all of which expired on day 90).
If you want points left over, you’ll have to do repurchase which means over longer terms, and you’ll get even HIGHER APR, well beyond 100%.
Which goes back to original question: what company would borrow money at greater than 100% interest rate? And tell people who lend it money it’s a JOB, not an investment?
Hey, I been with zr for about a month and so far requesting money out through nxpay been successful. Maybe there’s some issues with your verify process??
Firstly, I’ve been reading all the rubbish going on from both sides of the debate and I think its ALL crap.
The facts are:
1. Yes its an MLM, what heirachial organisation isnt (look at AMWAY for example);
2. Yes its backed by a legitimate profit sharing arrangement;
3. Yes, some dumb bidders over-pay for items – their fault;
4. Yes K Chang, a few isolated transactions have occurred where bidders have paid more than what the value of the product is (gee…ever heard of that happening in the Real Estate market???)..I can show you plenty of bidders that HAVE purchased products at a bargain;
5. If Zeekrewards stopped the MLM portion of their operations, the model wouldn’t collapse, the return to existing subscribers would probably just be reduced;
6. Its not an investment – an investment gives the investor at least some possibility of having their original contribution returned BUT provides very little reward in the way of income generation to compensate for the lower risk;
7. The maximum subscription in the Zeekrewards program is capped at $10K. You are not forced to contribute $10K. You can start with $500 or less.
The fact is if you can’t afford to lose anything, don’t get involved. If you can’t afford to lose anything, don’t invest in shares. If you can’t afford to lose anything, delete the Nigerian Scam emails that promise you a share of $1.1 trillion dollars because someone’s 4th cousin passed away.
If you can’t afford to lose anything, put you money in the bank (not even that’s 100% guaranteed), take your 5% per annum, pay your percentage of income tax on it and go backwards. Stop the bleeding heart cries. Caveat emptor and good luck.
Until it is proven to be illegal, good luck to all those that chance their money. You never know, Governments might just like programs like this to keep the bleeding hearts off the pension (imagine the pay rise Pollies would give themselves if the pension payments were reduced…now there’s a conspiracy!).
@Lassez
Uh, paying out 90 day ROIs to affiliates using affiliate money is not legitimate.
…which would cause a collapse. Nobody is participating in Zeek Rewards 90 day ROI scheme if they don’t get a high enough return to re-invest enough to at least maintain their VIP point balance.
This means affiliates would stop pumping money into the system and bing-badda-boom we’re done.
You put money in, and over 90 days earn a daily ROI equal to greater the amount you put in. Leave the compliance jargon BS at the door please.
Irrelevant.
Yeah… just like nobody is ever killed until the killer is caught and sent to court right? Until then the victim is always alive and well. It’s only after the cops catch the killer that they drop dead and a murder has been committed.
Final question: How many legitimate retail customers do you yourself have who buy retail bids with their own money on a regular basis and are not your friends and family or dummy accounts you created to buy bids with?
WOW…absolutely GREAT comeback OZ…very amusing. Taken from Wikipidia, the definition of an investment is
Where did you get your economics degree from again??
Stick to what you know (whatever that is??)..
Until next time..I’m off skiing to spend my Zeek millions..
You probably think we’re a bunch of idiots, but before you pass final judgement, perhaps you need to look up the “Howey test”. Taken from K.Chang’s hub:
Good, let’s see how you fare. 😀
Not when the profits are funded by the affiliates themselves. THAT would be a Ponzi scheme.
It adds to the suspicions. By itself, it can be explained. When added to all the OTHER signs, it points to a deeper problem.
You’re repeating yourself…
Care to elaborate, as in which “MLM portion” you are referring to?
Instead of you parsing the question, SCOTUS had created the Howey Test for this specific purpose. Why not use it?
Rather irrelevant. Come of think of it, only Ponzi schemes despearate to NOT attract attention from the SEC put in caps. ASD for example instituted a cap.
Oh, not the “caveat emptor” fallacy!
@Lassez
What’s amusing about it?
Yep, Zeek Rewards affiliates invest money and expect a return greater than the principal amount after 90 days.
Sorry, what was your point again?
Have fun.
I was recently recruited by an ex-girlfriend to attend a Zeek presentation. I came in with a neutral bias.
Affiliates I met bragged about their VIP points and probably were incited to do so. A surprising number of them started with 10K bid purchases and have grown past 50K to 100K VIP points within less than a year.
I inherently felt my greed juice starting to flow while at the same time my red flag meter also began to rise. There was a battle between greed and plain ole logic going on between my ears.
As a web developer, the major hitch that set off the alarm bells for me was when the part of the presentation mentioned the job function of the advertising scheme that was willing to pay me doubling of my initial bid purchase in a matter of a few months, just to place a free classified add every day that a a basic webbot program any high school tech kid could do.
After that I started to poke holes into the whole ZR scheme that started to panic and embarrass the presenter and his co-hort affiliates. And my ex was not too happy about it either.
They appologized for not being able to answer most of my concerns at the time and promised to get back.
It did not take me that long to figure out that it was a ponzie scheme despite the greed that oozed out of me. The presentation about legitimacy of the company, it’s compliance with the FTC, SEC and regulators regarding MLM business operations and the sort, the dropping of signficant industry people names, attorney generals, and VIP heads, talk of no debt, and running a very successful business that obviously makes money based on the amount of total bid profits made on each auction item, and many other topical points made to legitimize their business and model made for a solid presentation that seemed to be on the up & up.
As a very business minded and experienced person, I inherently studied the business model and it made no sense at all. The core problem was how the key job description of manually placed classified adds would create any sort of value as a business to generate customer bid sales leads.
Especially using the inet in this very precariously underutilized and low tech manner. And especially when I saw how the add was copied and pasted on a daily basis supposedly in the same manner for every affiliate.
As a business AND IT guy, to me this was either a true revolutionary discovery unbeknownst to the dumb knumbskull nitwits like me in my professions all around the world, OR these guys were very much targeting the naive business un-minded and techno-illiterate zombies walking the earth obviously in large droves.
That would be expected to perpetuate such a scheme and sustain it until the infamous buy in and cash out ponzie cross over threshhold.
Well on the other hand, it can be said that ignorance is truely bliss, especially to those that are now making bank on this scheme. And for those too smart to get in to such schemas will always live the straight and narrow divide of hard work and mediocre expectations? Maybe, but at least I control that destiny.
It is my belief that many come in with such naivete unaware of the ponzie. But many eventually discover that the model is broken and can be only but a scheme of sorts, especially when everyone targets and focuses mainly and only on growing their VIP points and growing their downline.
Not a one even really knew how the auction even worked or seem interested. Many get the greed bug and just turn into money hording zombies. That’s why many affiliates will argue irrationally in circles for hours about the obvious holes in the system to justify their sub-concious motives of immoral ineptitude to mankind. They feel they are getting their just due in this harsh, unfair and cruel world of competition and they end up just not caring anymore.
After discovering this, now I see that ponzies and other scams will always perpetuate over time based on such potential fuel now around the world in 170 countries. People live life to feel full. I say live life to be full filled!
ex-girlfriend …….well that gives this a lot of creditability. Talk about red flag.
I am a Diamond affiliate of this stupidity and truly believe it to be a ponzi. I was introduced to Zeek within the first two months of its launch in 2010.
Since I believed it to be unsustainable or utterly unbelievable that defied all the logic and common sense, I just disregarded it plainly. Didn’t even bother to check its business concept. Just like Zeek, I believed JSS/JBP, Wealth4All, Club Austeria, and many other such programs as ponzi’s and never went to any closer than seeing them on the internet boards.
However, and regrettably, it was introduced to me by a chemist friend, who had given up his trade quite some time ago, and who I now realize is in many different MLMs, some true, others just plain hogwash.
So, upon his introduction, I listened to two of the big gun’s presentations, ask few questions, which were not answered correctly. Even when the two different guys described the Zeek penny auctions making a killing for the company, but couldn’t answer my questions properly, I still gave up on all my education and intelligence and jumped into this sheer foolishness.
Immediately, I pumped a few thousand bucks a few months back, which I just hope to recover (obviously at the expense of some other new comers) before it goes kaput. Too bad I still have to place the ad if I want to recover my money.
However, I haven’t tried to recruit anybody except during the first few days of euphoria, barring one free affiliate, who, I am glad, didn’t do anything as to even put an ad for them. I have also deleted my link to Zeek from all the internet forums.
There was a team in a really good business forum and many of the team members had a really great chance of joining me in Zeek. When I realized, within a week or two of joining Zeek, that Zeek’s penny auction and other so called revenue sources bringing next to nothing, I requested them to forget Zeek from the possibility of being a viable business and instead told them it being a total ponzi disguised in the name of penny auction and all.
While they didn’t join Zeek, they fell for another stupidity called OneX, a great promoter of which is none other than AdSurfDaily’s convicted swindler Andy Bowdoin.
When I came to know of them joining OneX, I warned them all about OneX and send them the info back in April about federal prosecutors describing the purported OneX “program” as a “fraudulent scheme” and “pyramid” pushed by former AdSurfDaily President Andy Bowdoin, the author of the $110 million ASD Ponzi scheme.
They still joined the OneX proving that so many people don’t believe until they get fleeced themselves. The person who was coordinating all the different programs for the team to join always accused me of having some personal agenda, which I had none. So, people just want to believe what they want to believe no matter what the evidence is.
So, I request everyone to take Zeek for what it is, a real ponzi with all the mumbo-jumbo to disguise its true intentions. Don’t fall in this trap. Once you put your money in, there is no way you can get it out without being unethical.
By that I mean you still need to put ad for the Ponzi even if you do not recruit anyone. Hopefully, it won’t last long for so many others to get hoodwinked.
Finally, this blog and the other at patrickpretty.com (I am sure there are many others) are doing a wonderful job in analyzing the business model and informing people not only of Zeek but also of many other Ponzi’s. This will help at least those who are looking for information and truth before joining any HYIPs.
Hopefully, the authorities also get bumped into such blogs and compel them to ponder in more carefully into their biz model and put to rest should they not pass the sniff test.
DrK
I have to take some of what you say with a grain of salt. Some of what you say has merit, however there seems to be other agendas coming thru and negativity that sound like a disgruntle employee.
There are definite issues with Zeek as any business models.
IMO from what I have seen and experienced there issues have been mostly due to explosive growth to a somewhat small business trying to stay abreast with issues that arise from such rapid growth.
The Key for me is they are pro-active and working to stay abreast. Maybe not to your liking.
Another Issue with your post for me if you have been a member since 2 months of company launch and a Diamond, what happened?
You should be at phenom numbers now.
I have been in for 5 months at same level as you with very pleasing numbers, If I had started when you did I would be retired now.
Strange to say the least.
Anyway keep up your Crusade protecting the poor and ignorant like us.
If he didn’t recruit, he’s not getting 20% on his “downline”‘s bid purchases, which will really add up for over a year.
Your “poisoning the well” attempt by painting him as “disgruntled” is rather obvious.
I am not very familiar with Zeek. However, I have heard a lot about it. This may seem very basic to some of you but this is how I see it.
If 1000 people make 10 bids each at .65 that is 6500. If the item is auctioned off at 10 but is worth 100 then one person got a great deal at 16.50 and the rest spent 6.50 and didn’t get anything. However, 6500 is being put into the system for an item that cost 100.
It is basically gambling for the buyers and a cash cow for the ones getting that huge mark up. Is this a fair conclusion?
That doesn’t seem illegal, since everyone bidding should know they are paying .65 a bid and know their chances of winning are slim.
@dshrum
I did not join when I was introduced to it the first time, i.e. within 2 months of launch because back then I took it for what it is. I am sorry I forgot to mention that fact.
Later, when my friend the chemist introduced it to me in Mar 2012, I let myself hogwashed by the claim of penny auctions making a killing for the zeek and drawing a majority of the payments for the affiliates. So, I joined only a few months ago.
I didn’t realize fully well that a vast majority of the customers they have in their penny auctions are just the fake ones and don’t spend a so much as a buck in buying the bids.
As for a disgruntled employee, it doesn’t hold any water. I am mad as hell because I let myself join such a ponzi and ignored all my questions not being answered in any meaningful way.
I would have drawn all my money had I been able to in a day and forgotten all about Zeek. Not being able to do so, I still need to put that one ad a day thingy somewhere and be able to recover my money, which I am close now should the money Zeek has put into my Payzaa account be sent to me before it goes kaput.
Had I tried it even nominally, I would have made quite good money even this late since I have a really great network of people who could pump a few thousands without much of problem.
Even that internet forum of business owners that I talked earlier and that I introduced Zeek to, I asked them not to join because I have realized by then fully well that Zeek was a ponzi. My consciousness and ethics didn’t let me hoodwink others just because I somehow got into it mistakenly or that I have to put that stupid ad.
@Jimbo
When you consider 20% referral commissions on the amount paid for the bids, plus the 90 day ROI ZR will pay out on the bids (avg 1.4%-1.5% a day on the price paid for the bids), $6500 has gone into the system (prior to the auction, as the money is injected into the scheme when the bids are purchased), but more comes out through Zeek Rewards.
It’s very misleading the way Zeek Rewards affilitaes present the revenue generation through Zeekler, as the maths completely disregards commission payouts negating the money going in via the auctions.
@Drk
RE: @dshrum
Guys like dshrum truly know this is a ponzi but will not admit it cuz they are too deep into the rabbit hole making too good profits… at least electronically (Not cash until it’s in their hands).
This is what I’m talking about when the greed bug takes over and turns you into a money hording zombie. Believe me, I’ve seen it too many times in many other ventures. They will rationalize it beyond themselves even over their mother’s grave just to maintain the money horde they so desperately want to turn into cash before ‘do gooders’ like us try to spoil their plans.
Why do you think the Maddoff ponzi lasted so long. It was because those already profiting from it forced themselves to live the lie until they believed themselves to sleep.
People like you and I are made of a different cloth and that is just that. BTW, glad to hear there are still people with integrity out there! PROPS!
No one is saying that the penny auction side’s illegal or even potentially illegal. DANGEROUS, maybe, as there’s an FTC warning out on penny auctions, but not illegal.
The problem is on the Zeek Rewards side.
It looks like you FAILED to see the obvious slant here.
Ex-GF: Sells me down the river… (You know, a ponzi that should wouldn’t sell to her now BF!)
I’d have to admit, you’d got to be a SCUM BAG to do this to some GOOD friend that you know.
Anymore mental assistance I can do you for?
There are LEGAL definitions for fraud, Ponzi, Pyramid, and so on. Seems like YOU are the one trying to redefine them and claim Zeek’s not them.
I want businesses to be LEGAL. Whether it makes money or makes other people money is irrelevant.
Because we have something called LAWS. You can’t start up a new casino. You can’t start selling drugs. You can’t start up a new Bernie Madoff scam and not go to jail.
K. Chang is there a fallacy for this (I liked your lists of fallacies, you should write a book). “Let me do as I want with my own money” fallacy?
The other problem with this approach is that you ensnare others in the scam. How would you like it if Sandusky told everyone “just leave me alone and let me do what I want, it doesn’t affect you”.
As I look at the way that the computer displays the information on the screenshot of the winners at the top; are you sure that the winner personally placed so many Bids? Like the one you said 1241 Bids for the 100 cash? Do you think that actually reflects all bids from all of the players combined?
Don’t get me wrong here. I am neither for or against this company. But I really don’t see how anyone could stay in business, or more importantly, how they could keep ONE customer with those types of costs to win something.
It does not make any sense to me so I do not see how that information could be correct.
@Mark
It’s correct, simple reason being that if you look at the end price and calculate how many bids were used, the ‘won with xxx bids’ number always falls short of the total. Thus it’s only showing how many bids the winner used to win.
Affiliates investing money into the system and this same money being paid out daily as a ROI is what’s currently keeping it afloat.
Affiliate money =
1. VIP bids bought to give away(initial investment)
2. Monthly fees, $10 $50 $100
3. Retail bids bought by affiliates through fraudulent customers for the matching VIP points and 20% cash referral commission.
Actual retail bid sales are unknown to anyone but corporate.
Why do you keep posing theoretical questions that has nothing to do with Zeek?
Guy stop putting down zeekrewards company, they have been helpping a lot of people so please stop that.
tell me if there is other company help people not even our president
@Alex
I don’t think the argument should be if they are helping people or not, I think what is being argued is if they are a legitimate company performing legitimate business practices.
All Ponzi schemes “help people” until they collapse. All Ponzi schemes pay out until they collapse.
When they collapse, they “trail of devastation behind it” to quote Randy Schroeder. Look at every large Ponzi that has failed and the number of families, lives, churches, and communities all destroyed when those who come in late lose their investment.
Yeah, “Zeek is changing lives” I keep hearing. For now, it’s paying out and you have lots of cheerleaders. When it crashes, how many of those who made money on Zeek will give that back to the thousands of victims left for broke?
Precisely, Jimmy, ZR affiliates with a good heart and clear head who now understand that this is just a big Ponzi should now be frightful of the snow ball (exponential!) effect of recruiting more new comers, which will mean spreading deeper pain to unknowingly many people whom we may or may not know, to ones poor or rich, hopeful or hopeless in life etc.
We won’t exactly know what kind of pain it is until the whole thing collapse, but we definitely know we’ll incur less accumulative pain at the end if we stop recruiting right away and bring the bad news to ones we recruited asap to prevent further damage down the road.
Let’s forget about recouping/profiting more from the VIP points, but start spreading this news around.
Any one ever put money in a Slot Machine at any gambling mecca?
You deposit a hundred dollars and walk away with nothing but a tip of the hat from the casino but you take exception to Zeek?
@H. Melton
First of all penny auctions aren’t classified as gamlbing yet, so the formal comparison is irrelevant (unless you’re going to make the argument that Zeekler is gambling.
Secondly people play slots to willion large cash jackpots, not to win giftcards and household products. Zeekler stopped offering cash auctions a few months ago now (they did this quietly with no formal announcement as to why), so again the comparison is moot.
They still have gift cards and cash out option on items. The cash out option and gift cards were suspended for a while then came back.
My guess is Zeek was concerned of lotto/gambling statues and disabled them, then finally decided to not auction cash but bring back gift cards and allow the cash out option (which is the same as auctioning cash).
Ah yeah, and you can do the same on all the winning items, forgot about that. Even the much touted Mustang premier auction from earlier in the year just wound up being a cash auction, the guy who won didn’t want the car.
Until penny auctions are formally classified as gambling in the US though, despite the obvious similarities in the mechanics of a penny auction, trying to justify bid inflation by comparing Zeekler to gambling is irrelevant.
You aren’t going to entice new retail customers complaining about bid inflation (due to people not caring about the value of the bids they’re bidding with because of referral commissions + 90 day >100% ROI paid out), just by telling them ‘well you know how slots work right, deal with it’.
This link is now on the FB page, haha. Anyway, after reading it again, how is it that Zeek has no recourse to recover the funds paid out to these “thieves”? I mean, can’t the e-wallets simply inform them of the accounts the funds were paid to?
When you put your money in a slot machine, you expect it to be a slot machine.
You don’t expect it to be a ponzi CLAIMING to be a slot machine CLAIMING to be able to pay you regularly every day.
Casinos don’t ever try and disguise the fact they’re casinos and what goes on inside them is gambling.
To begin I would appreciate no insulting responses. I genuinely would like people to look at my logic around Zeek and provide any clarity I need.
I understand the ratios in my example of what is going in and out of Zeek are likely not accurate, but I’m trying to understand if my thought process is correct.
Let’s say today Zeek received $30,000 in new affiliate money and they also made $30,000 through the penny auctions. Let’s also say that the accumulation of total “vip points” in the program is 2 million. Based on the individuals I’ve talked to (not the biggest sample group I’m sure) I would assume the average repurchase is probably around 90%.
So they would take that $60,000 and divide it 50% company/50% affiliates (according to what I’ve read) making $30K to the company and $30K to affiliates. They take the $30K and divide by the 2 million vip points, which equals 1.5% payout. Since 90% of the distributed points is set on repurchase, 27,000 goes to the total vip points pool and $3,000 is paid out.
They could now take that money that was repurchased in vip points ($27K) and place it in an “affiliate pool” of sorts where all real money for vip point repurchases from the 1.5% payout can be stored.
Let’s assume that 20% of the 2 million vip points is real money vip point purchases by affiliates. This means that $400,000 was put in and if the company takes their 50% that means that $200,000 was kept by Zeek and $200,000 went back into the system through daily cash rewards, but all profits beyond that amount were based on the profit calculation in the first paragraph.
With this thought 90% of the 2 million vip points have an actual value of $1 per point. This also doesn’t take into account the subscription payments.
So if I put in $1,000 for 1,000 vip points (which I have) then once my account reaches 1,500 vip points (which it has after 30 days) then my account is officially break-even against the affiliate pool since the 50% of my money lost to Zeek’s profits was gained back by the real money 1.5% per day.
Even if the penny auction site stopped making money and affiliates stopped signing up (which are both unlikely) the company could pay almost every dollar back to it’s “creditors”/affiliates, which in essence is what we are. I know many highly reputable companies that couldn’t come close to saying the same.
Help me understand if I’m missing something. This is the thought process that pushed me over the edge on signing up. Thanks
@JA
Let’s not. There is no way known the Zeekler penny auctions bring in matching revenue to the affiliate money coming in.
$400,000 real money went in, $200,000 came out. That’s not enough to pay everyone.
Your first example uses rubbish numbers, in that the auctions nowhere near match invested affiliate money. That said, it’s very convenient that $30,000 is 1.5% of 2,000,000. What if the penny auctions only generated $5,000? And don’t forget, over time these figures would have to increase exponentially as the global point balance grows exponentially each day.
If the daily ROI % drops low enough such that affiliates cannot sustain point balances with 100 re-invest over 90 days, the system collapsed.
Of course all Ponzi schemes survive theoretically as long as the money coming in covers the daily ROI paid out, which is what you appear to be suggesting here. In real life however, the money coming in will eventually not always cover the daily ROI being paid out.
@JA — the problem with your scenario is your VIP points are worthless, only money in your own pocket is real. VIP points may get you paid some money, but only in dribbles. So it’s like this:
You hand over 1000
You choose when you want to get paid back, and the LONGER you want to wait (i.e. NOT get paid), the more you POTENTIALLY get paid back in the future.
But you don’t get back that 1000, EVER.
Hey K chang, so many people you know that haven’t got pay or making their initial money back?? I put in 5k about 1 month ago and so far I’m getting paid.
I’ve spend the past few hours following this thread and I want to point out a few things:
1. “Real Money” is a misnomer used here frequently. There is nothing real about any currency once the gold standard went away. It is all smoke and mirrors and completely arbitrary. The Federal Bank is a for profit organization.
2. All values attached to money ($ VIP) and/or intangible products (bids) are made up and can be plugged into any algebraic solution once anyone can establish a basis for y and x. That is, if you get others to “buy in.”
3. The entire concept of “financial “services, products or investments is to circulate (at this point “floating” funds) strategically so that everyone’s contribution is pooled into a resource from which one or some can take.
Zeek is acting no differently than the Federal Bank with a few exceptions, one being the money distribution is not entirely in the hands of long time wealth and power.
Meaning that Zeek and others such as this are simply HEDGE FUNDS accessible to “everyday” workers. There are hedge funds that require millions of minimum to qualify as investors and those funds are exempt from market turbulence, which is why you will not see any Rockefeller’s ever loosing everything.
Meaning, the problem in Zeek Rewards as in any political or economic system is that in order for circulation to be sustainable on an infinite basis, the top slots need to be rotated and/or limited. Namely, just like limiting the investment to $10K, the period during which you are allowed to withdraw and to what amount, would be controlled and could not endlessly accrue on “newer” contributions.
And to keep it attractive from a capitalist standpoint after your payout is capped, you could be incenticized on personal performance (whatever that is, recruiting aside) and company profit, which would not be married to your original investment accrual but from time and grade put into seeing “the investment” maintained and expanding. The portfolio management would be in a sense, shared.
The spoils of war would be less if “human capital” were factored into the picture besides tangible resources. I mean, America doesn’t make anything. We’re a services country.
MLM’s empower the people, but the people need to get smarter about the way it keeps going. To fight amongst ourselves, defeats the purpose. Is Paul Berke a Carnegie? Are these “top zeek executives,” establishment power mongers? Has anyone really lost their fortune to zeek? If you make a fortune on it and loose it by reinvesting, does it count? Is it ruining families?
If Zeek is say, exploiting industries like gambling, legislations are put in, largely by and for the top – not to maintain integrity and control over society but because it gives the little guy the opportunity to play with the little guy.
There will always be gambling and prostitution. The syndicate simply “regulated” (organized by terrorizing) small time crooks (i.e., betting on horses) so that few could profit over other’s enterprises. Do you think federal regulation is any different?
Let’s stop the legal/illegal discussion and not increase odds that ventures such as zeek will be declared unlawful when in fact, perhaps zeek is simply a sort of treasury that could and should be self regulated.
Keep your eyes on yourselves and the other guy, and the other guy, but don’t get your panties caught into a snit over the atrocities perpetuated and suffered from zeekers.
The dangers of bankruptcy are emotional, the recriminations and I told you sos, adding insult to injury. Think: a Ponzi scheme works until it doesn’t and if played properly, could possibly outlive the stakes, at which point it would simply cease to be profitable rather than a catastrophic “collapse.” ….
Pyramids are magical, we all know that by now. Is it not the symbol of the dollar? If it isn’t already rigged, let’s not rig it ourselves before others do.
^^ The above is some of the deepest bullshit I’ve seen from Ponzi/pyramid scheme supporters yet.
1. ZR is not a bank, so comparing it to one is invalid.
2. A Ponzi scheme works until new and existing members stop investing. This alone is why they should never be legal, because someone is always left holding the bag at the end.
3. Ditto pyramid schemes.
4. The rest of your rant is cringeworthy cute, but largely just irrelevant waffle.
Oh, yes, yet another “<insert Ponzi here> is changing lives”. Perhaps these stories give you some pause, as the victims of HYIP’s/Ponzi schemes are far greater than those “enlightened” such as yourself who know it’s all a one crap shoot:
Also good reading from the PPBlog this article from 2010:
http://www.patrickpretty.com/2010/06/13/apologists-interrupted-two-court-rulings-show-that-hyip-operators-players-setting-stage-for-painful-downfalls-foreclosures-woman-loses-home-while-new-mom-loses-everything/
Zeek is a deffinate scam! There are no consumers..they don’t exist! Ask urself the question has anyone I know win an actual item?
My mother-in-law won a couple auctions, but she’s an affiliate. She opted for the cash equivalent, don’t know if she ever received it or how long it took.
Do any of the traditional penny auctions like Quibids give a cash option to customers who win?
That’s another shady side of this whole thing, IMO.
So you consider Zeek to be gambling? They insist they are a BUSINESS. So there are three possibilities: you are wrong, they are wrong, or you are BOTH wrong.
Or are you trying to imply the “caveat emptor” fallacy, i.e. don’t play with more than you can afford to lose and don’t cry when you do lose?
Technically there is no “Federal Bank”. If you mean the Federal Reserve, they *create* money if they have to, but they are not for “profit”. Their job is to manage the economy for the government by impelmenting monetary policy, not to generate profit.
Thus, your rant about “real money” is a nit picking red herring. “Real money” here means what can actually be spent to buy things. Whether it has gold backing or free floating is irrelevant.
As we’ve been stating here, VIP has NO monetary value at all. You get them when you “buy bids then give bids away”. So they are “derived” from money, but in itself has no value, other than it determines how much RPP you get.
Financial services are for management of assets by balancing growth and risk, and is HEAVILY REGULATED by the government through ten tons of regulatory agencies like FINRA, FTC, FDIC, SEC, and bazillion other agencies. Zeek refutes any claims that it is in the financial services at all. Are its refutations valid?
Then they are operating illegal without a bank charter and regulations… or you are flat wrong.
You’re getting paid a few bucks daily.
Assuming average of 1.5% RPP and 80% repurchase, you get $3 per day. Your POINTS grow, but after 90 days you’re still net negative by about 700, NOT counting eWallet fees.
You’ll have to read it in the context it was presented, not from your own special viewpoint. I’ll guess you’re intersted in gold and silver as an “investment”?
“Real” have mostly been used to separate it from the fake ones, so you will find examples of “fake money” within the same post where the expression “real money” is used, e.g. “pay for the sample bids with real money (not RPP points)”. So the expression should be correct within the context it has been used = to separate something from each other.
I would probably have used the definition “currency” or “fiat money” if this had been a gold investor blog. 🙂
The audience here can be defined to be “normal people, without any specific profession (e.g. lawyers, accountants, coin collectors, gold investors)”, in the meaning that THEY will have to adjust to this site, they can’t expect this site to adjust to them. You can try to search for the bold text to see it has been reepeated several times in different threads.
Another point is that the audience here is international, including non-English countries. It means we’ll have to accept some simplified language and expressions, as long as the IDEA people are trying to express is understandable.
You are 100% wrong K Chang… with 5000 VIP POINTS balance I been getting paid on average of $75 per day so with 20% withdraw and 80% bids repurchase I will earn about $1350 in 90 days minus $150 the for 3 months gold supcription fee, $36 for ewallet and $29.95 for compliance courses I still net $1134.
So even when the 5000 initial points expired my points balance will always remain the same due to the 80% bids repurchase that been doing every day in that last 90 days. You will have vip points expired every day affter your first 90 days. Hope this help you understand the comp plan.
I was starting with 1000, not 5000. My mistake. Must have misread your numbers.
How did you “net” 1134 when you put in 5000 in the first place? You start with -5000, -36 -30 -150, so it’s -5216 at day 91.
5000*1.5%*0.2 is 15, not 75. Where did you get 75?
Over 90 days, you get 1350, so you net 5216-1350 or -3886.
Your points would be positive after day 91 as your points grew somewhat over 90 days.
Just checked it with a spreadsheet… Your math is WAY off. Daily cash starts at 15, and at day 91 should be about 43 or 44, and your end point balance is about 14500 or so.
Net cash accumulated for 90 days is about 2200. So I’m a bit under, but you’re nowhere NEAR positive at day 90 based on 80% repurchase. If you are, you are counting additional “commissions” based on your downlines repurchase as well.
my spreadsheet yields same result as described by K. Change above, with the approx. 14500 point accumulation prior to retirement of original 5000.
maybe sunrise put in less than $5k at some point in past, but point balance grew to this level at beginning of 90 day period in question? Only way I could see coming out ahead with that set of facts
@sunrise / @k chang –
You both did not account for increasing point growth.
You are assuming 20% cashout of 1.5% x $5000 = $15/day. Where 90 days x $15 = $1350. This is incorrect because at 80% repurchase, the 5000 point balance grows every day. There is a day 90 cliff when 5000 points expire, then incremental point expiration from day 91 on.
Sunrise’s hypothetical profits are much higher. Here is what my numbers show. I like to ‘show the math’ so others can reproduce:
So you’ll recover your initial $5k investment (not including monthly fees) on day 167, assuming rate doesn’t change and you can cash out. Your balance will keep growing.
The above is exactly why Zeek is unsustainable. Imagine hundreds of thousands of affiliates doing the above, and many run at 100% for a while before they switch to 80/20. Those at 80/20 who have a downline are also earning commissions, so they are either doing something more like 70/30 or their balances are growing much faster even at 80% repurchase.
Jimmy,
How are you withdrawing money before day 91? The first 90 days you cannot withdraw money.
Assuming your not a free member (which was 60 days I thought), why not?
Sure you can. In fact, a common strategy being used by many is to put in $10k, withdraw 100% (0% repurchase) until you get your $10k back, then switch back to 100% repurchase and “ride on house money”.
To Oz and Jimmy,
My mistake then. For some reason I thought that after 90 days your account became “unfrozen” for lack of a better word and only then could you start taking money out. I think my sponsor may have explained it to me in this way and unfortunately, I didn’t do an further primary research on the matter.
Now that Zeekler is shut down, I guess it becomes irrelevant. I’m glad I didn’t put in a large amount of money.
@Daitoryu,
Ironically, you are now correct as NO ONE can withdraw ANY money, with Zeek being shut down, all employees fired, no word from management on what’s going on.
Did I lose everything? Why was I so stupid to invest. Do you think they will still withdraw my monthly dues.
I spoke with the top guys that know the owner and he said that they only closed the doors because of employess embezzling.
any more news on what is happening
Is anybody are aware if Zeekler will stop or close the business for ever.
It’s done. O.V.E.R. ZeekRewards was a Ponzi Scheme. I feel bad for whoever has recently invested and had not gotten the chance to receive any type of payout.
Agreed. Zeek is like the Olympics. OVER. Except that it’s not going to return in 4 years.
Just to share a word with whose who have lost money in ZR…
Take a deep breath and be glad that the whole thing is over so quickly. If the pain of losing money is intense in you, try imagine how such pain in you could also happen to many other individuals/families, had ZR’s Ponzi scheme not been stopped asap.
It isn’t easy, I know, but as a good human, we shouldn’t wish to see such pain spreading to more innocent ones while the pain is hurting us.
I also want to express my personal gratitude to all who posted their true findings on ZR’s Ponzi scheme at this site. Without you, I might have suffered heavier loss beyond the $2K I initially put in.
Since I discovered this site about 2 weeks after I became an affiliate, I didn’t put in a cent further into ZR.
Despite an inner desire to try recoup some money, I didn’t take any payout even though I have learned that ZR is a Ponzi.
There have been an internal battle in me…While I wish to get back my money, I also know that any money I could recoup through VIP points isn’t really gotten from the business profit of ZR but potentially a distribution of the hard earned money of some innocent victims like myself.
Believe it or not, though the pain of losing money is in me, I feel relieved that my internal battle is now over. Life moves on.
A special note to Jimmy: I love this comment of yours a lot – “When it crashes, how many of those who made money on Zeek will give that back to the thousands of victims left for broke?”
HI FOLKS, WELL I LOST A SIZEABLE AMOUNT WITHOUT EVER TAKING ANYTHING OUT. THERE WERE OTHERS IN MY UPLINE AND UNFORTUNATLY IN MY DOWNLINE WHO LOST CONSIDERABLE AMOUNTS.
I WILL LIVE WITH IT AS WILL EVERYONE ELSE. HOPEFULLY THE AFFILIATES WHO PUT THEIR HARD MONEY INTO IT WILL BE ABLE TO RETRIEVE A PORTION AFTER ALL IS DONE AND SAID. GOOD LUCK & GOD BLESS.
Father-in-law lost $7500, brother lost $2500. I tried to tell them it seemed “too good”. I feel horrible for all that lost.
In our local paper(in North Carolina) it was stated that the CEO took millions and dumped millions into family bank accounts…
I’m surprised Troy’s resorting to adding a blog entry on unconfirmed RUMORS that flies in the face of facts and logic.
WHEN has the government moved this fast to “settle all charges”? Remember, the shutdown orders were signed on Thursday and executed on Friday.
The receiver has 30 days just to calculate all the assets from RVG. Any sort of fines and penalties and such will take several MONTHS.
Whoever’s telling Troy that bogus info is making him an even BIGGER fool of himself.
EVERYTHING is stopped. EVERYTHING Paul Burks owned, every subsidiary or whatever of Rex Venture Group, now belongs to the Feds.
Read the SEC complaint, and what Paul Burks signed. He gave up EVERYTHING, plus 4 mil in his bank account.
I don´t se what´s wrong with Zeek´s auctions. There are several similar pages on the Internet based on the same business idea.
LOL! I am sorry to say this (not really) but you been served! suckers!! Serioulsy people, who will pay you to post lame ads on lame websites. Next time buy a clue and don’t believe these “quick-money” schemes.
The only way to get rich is by “making” a product everyone will like, get an education to get a good job, or play the lottery. For most people, it will be faster to get an education to get good money.
EXACTLY! The error in Zeek is all these DISHONEST EMPLOYEES! (and some Idiotic bidders that spend more on bids than on item purchased)
@user
…and the $600M Zeek Rewards Ponzi they had going. But y’know… yeah, “auctions”.
I am a web developer. I can tell you with CONFIDENCE that 100% of penny auction websites are 100% scams. Every single one are running on the SAME software core or at least a modified version of it.
HERE IS THE DIRTY SECRET: Wanna know what my job was when developing the core OS software for some clients I will not mention here? It was to generate a system mod that would “auto bid” the last 2 to 10 seconds every time with a random set of predefined usernames with unlimited bids until the value of the item had been properly inflated with bids greater than the overhead cost.
Really simple. here is an example:
Item: $25 gift card,
Actual company overhead: $15.95 + 4.00 shipping
Auto bid set up: require at least 1500 bids before item can actually be won.
Scam: people go and think they are bidding against other customers, whats really happening is that if they bidding against an automated script, usually PHP, ASP, server side, this script simply looks to see what the overhead is, and then runs every time before the item can end, out bidding you.
We also have uploaded a ton of items that never really sold, created fake winners with fake bids and marked them as “won by…!”.
Go ahead, test it.
There was at one time only one way you could beat the system: you would have to gather up everyone in the community and get them to agree to only bid 1 cent for an item and not out bid one another, however, you will find very quickly that our scripts don’t allow this.
This is also how we launch the sites and make them “look” like they are full of users. One such site I worked on for launch had more than 300 auto bid accounts, all fake bidding. During our first week we only hooked 8 people, we all sat in the office and laughed how they were bidding against fake accounts.
We made over $5,000 from those 8 people in less than a few days. I was sick to my stomach when I realized what I helped create. I can not say who I worked for, but I can tell you, they ALL work the same way.
At the time I left the last area we were dialing in was to work the following into a business model:
1- get cheaper items in bulk, allow some of these items to perform at a loss.
2- create affiliate systems with actual product companies, selling the item for cheaper to us and allow users to buy the item “at full retail” with a kickback to us if the bidder looses and chooses to buy the item.
3- create smarter auto bid systems, for example, we had problems with the auto bid not turning off sometimes and becoming too automated. (trust me, its now very algorithmic and very smart, bordering on human intelligence).
Now, we well know and have enough data to understand that human greed soon kicks in and what shocked me the most is that after a site reaches about 500 real users, the auto bidding is almost not even necessary.
Trust me, we average 100k+ per WEEK, that’s right, 100,000 clams PROFIT not GROSS per WEEK. We also have calculated that most of our members are sporadic like gamblers, and can say with confidence that they loose money, they do not save it. They would have better luck on ebay or in a casino.
There was a time I did not sleep well at night because of this, now I am free…
Ok So I couldn’t help but make this post to simply state that the above person is most certainly and without a doubt completly off his rocker. I can confirm that he is indeed speaking out of his ugly end.
I am a member of a very popular and well known penny auction website and maybe you can explain to me how I’ve managed to win dozens, yes DOZENS of gift cards and various other auctions at far below retail cost. You can’t tell me they use auto bidding scripts if they’re going to allow an auction to end for say a $25 gift card at under $1.
The bids are available through bid for free auctions on the site for anywhere between $0.10 – $0.20 sure some auction go on depending on the time of day and activity but please don’t listen to the above post as not all penny auction sites are scams.
I’m just a normal person who lives in Canada and I’ve won thousands of $$$ worth of merchandise and gift cards at far below retail cost, so judge for yourself.
Zeek’s PRIMARY problem wasn’t the penny auction, but the Ponzi/pyramid model it used through ZeekRewards. It was shut down by SEC on August 17th 2012 as a $600 million Ponzi scheme.
The penny auctions were mostly used by the affiliates themselves. They could buy bids for “Ponzi points” and earn commissions on the purchase (20% direct commission, 100% profit sharing bonus). That may have affected the experience for other customers, i.e. inflated number of bids used in most auctions.
People’s “100% CONFIDENCE” is often based on their own experience with something, i.e. you shouldn’t interpret it too literally.
If you were “just a normal” person” I doubt you would be spending your time on this website defending something you would know and care nothing about.
This leads me to conclude that you are here to promote an agenda and for me that means your opinion is biased and not worth much.