Thread: Winster.com beware

They have changed the site so much in the past 4 months.But the most recent changes make this site #1 in greedy outside of ebay.Which what a shock jerry kaplan had a part of as well.
They ahve lowered the spins you get months.first they said one thing,but then do to people complaining,winster changed the spins to a slightly lower amount then stated they would.they made it out that come may 1st ALL changes would go into effect.Well well.As of today 4 /23/08 12pm pst,they lowered the spin value.So now it takes forever to make any points.In the past 4 months here are the changes they have made to this site OR STATED they are going to do.
1) matches in the games where worth 4k in points.They lowered them to 1k
2) matches could be made in 3 spots.NOW only one spot
3)Cost of prizes have gone up (how many points to cash in for prize)
4) prize values have gone down
5)Raised the cost of basic and silver level memberships
6) PAID ADS are shown on their pages-which slows down their servers-which they blame on our computers.
7) DAILY ALLOCATED SPINS WILL GO DOWN-Well now they have changed it to a lower amount of daily spins we lose BUT at a cost which is #7
8) point values per games have dropped by over 1/2 on some games-some as high as 3/4 of the old value WHICH they pulled in the middle of the day on 4/23/08.
9) FREE players as of may 1st will be able to claim prizes now BUT they have to view ads ever 10 mins & only get 200 free spins per day that do not rollover plus the only get 4'x lower the points value (fine with me since they are paying)

POINT BLANK.WINSTER.COM WAS A GOOD SITE WHERE YOU COULD MAKE A TON OF MONEY EVERY MONTH BUT NOW IS NOT WORTH PAYING FOR.JOIN AS A FREE PLAYER AND KILL AND HOUR,MAYBE SOME DAY YOU WILL EARN ENOUGH FOR A PRIZE,BUT FOR JOINING.JERRY KAPLAN IS ALL ABOUT MAKING MONEY FOR HIMSELF AND HAS LET DOWN THE MEMBERS THAT HAVE MADE WINSTER.COM A GR8 GAMING SITE.NOW IT'S A JOKE.A PLACE OT TOSS YOUR MONEY AWAY.YOU'RE BETTER OFF BUYING $10.00 WORTH OF LOTTERY TICKETS,YOU MIGHT MAKE IT BACK FASTER THEN YOU WILL ON WINSTER.COM ANYMORE!

Dear Winster Member,

I'm writing to tell you about some significant upcoming changes here at Winster.com.

Up until now we have been in a period of testing and development, but soon we will be formally announcing our web site and opening it more widely to the public. During this test phase, we have been collecting information on how long people like to play, how many spins they use each day, as well as which games and prizes they prefer. After reviewing the data and the many comments and suggestions we've received on recent membership plan changes, we believe that most of our players and Members would prefer a significantly different approach.

So starting in a few days, anyone will be able to play for free at Winster. Free players will get 200 spins each day, and they can claim prizes without becoming members. The free spins will not carry over to the next day if they go unused. Free players will take brief 'commercial breaks' approximately every 10 minutes to view advertisements, during which their "Be Right Back" sign will be turned on.

We can permit free play while maintaining our current prizes, but for obvious reasons, it will require considerably more play time to earn those prizes - so we will be reducing the points earned in the games.

However, we will also be enhancing the memberships. Basic Members will now get 300 spins each day that they play for $4.99 per month. Silver Members will get 500 spins each day that they play for $7.49 per month. And Gold Members will get 800 spins each day that they play, for $9.99 per month. In addition, all Members will now get the following benefits:

* Four times as many points in the games as non-members, so you can win prizes four times as fast.

* The right to create and play in Private Rooms, send Private Messages, and other benefits. (Currently, only Gold members can create Private Rooms).

* No commercial interruptions. (Free players will have to view ads from now on.)

* Daily spins awarded each day that you log in, up to ten times the daily allotment (as now).

Gold members will also be able to play even more by purchasing additional Spin Packs. Each Spin Pack adds 200 spins each day for $2.50 more per month to their membership.

We will also be taking special care of current Members like you by granting a special bonus if you stay throughout the month of May. Basic members in good standing as of May 1 will get 25,000 points in early June; Silver members will get 50,000 points; and Gold members will get 100,000 points. Note that the point awards are based on your membership level as of May 1 - so you can change levels throughout May without affecting your bonus, as long as you continuously maintain a membership.

A few of our longtime Members have special historical pricing or more spins than the new membership levels. (You know who you are!) For the next three months we will not increase your monthly charges, nor will we reduce the number of spins you are currently receiving, as long as you do not change your membership plan.

While you will be getting more play for your money, it will take considerably longer to earn prizes, since we will be reducing the points you win in the games at the same time. Note that your current points are still worth exactly as much as they ever were, so you will not lose any of the value you have earned. To make it easier for you to cash in your current points for full value without having to 'earn out' your current prize, we will temporarily add a $10 Amazon.com Gift Certificate as a prize. You can continue to earn points toward your current prize if you wish, of course.

Most other ways to earn points outside of the games will remain the same, except that we must also change the awards for using the Winster toolbar to a maximum of 500 points per day.

We hope you will like the new Winster.com, and will remain a loyal Member through this transition. On behalf of Winnie and the entire staff, I want to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt thanks for helping us build our web site and for enduring our occasional growing pains. We really do enjoy watching you play, make friends, and win prizes!

Sincerely,

Jerry
Chief Executive Officer
Winster, Inc.

REPLY THATS BEING SENT OUT WHEN THEY TOOK AWAY MOR ETHEN 1/2 THE POINTS VALUE IN ALL THE GAMES!.
Dear (I LEFT MY NAME OUTA OF THIS),

I'm sorry to hear that you are so unhappy with the changes. You've been a great member and host, everyone loves you, and I hope you will continue!

May I respectfully point out that you have collected hundreds of $ in prizes and paid a fraction of that in membership fees. No business can continue to do that indefinitely. That said, you can still earn more in prizes than it costs you.

I'm afraid we had to make these changes in order to continue to operate the site. I think it is preferable to no Winster, and I hope you will consider my comments.

Thanks for your patience,


Jerry
Winster.com Support Team

That response is insulting. In other words, "You earned too much in the past, so now you will need to pay it back by paying more for membership and earning less towards prizes."

Gee, thank you! What about the new members who just got stuck weeks after joining?

I just cashed in my points the day beofre the made the change.The $10.00 amazon.com credit woould have been a much better deal then what I cashed in for.i would ahve made an additonal $20 by doing the amazon.com deal then whaty I cash in for.Sites not worth it.Now you have the free players begging for "spare items" and older memebrs only trading for peices they need,so nobodys really helping anybody out,unlike before it was a "site where friends help out" This is posted on ALL their pages lol.Well nobodys helping anybody.We had a big enough problems beofre this change with beggers,sitters,freeloaders,now the problems gotten worst now that "free" players can claim prizes and have seen their points cut mor ehten 3/4 of what they where getting.
Yea that letter is VERY insulting.You go on the site now and its a graveyard at least 75% of the time.Top if of besides just claiming my prizes the day before they offered a better deal to cash in for.I had just be charged for my next month fee's 3 dasy before they dumped this supirze on us.Google jerry kaplan.The guys a self-made millioniar and ALOT of the atricles on him states about 1/2 to 3/4 of his sites he starts FLOPP.Wonder why?
$$$ money makes the world go round.:

May I respectfully correct some misinformation that was posted in this thread?


1) matches in the games where worth 4k in points.They lowered them to 1k
2) matches could be made in 3 spots.NOW only one spot

[True. Reason: Players found and exploited some design flaws with our web site, where they could conspire to create 'matches' much more frequently than intended, earning millions of points very quickly. Some even figured out a way to get the points for the matches by creating 'ghost' players themselves. I am not blaming the players - this of course was our responsiblity - but in surveying them they prefered that we reduced the matching points rather than turn off the feature, so that's what we did.]

3)Cost of prizes have gone up (how many points to cash in for prize)

[True. This has generally happened over a long period of time as we have gotten more experience with the rate at which players earn points and the true cost to us of the prizes.]

4) prize values have gone down

[In some cases, rather than adjust the points we reduced the value of prizes (for example how much a movie ticket coupon is 'worth'.]

5)Raised the cost of basic and silver level memberships

[False for Basic - has always been and still is $4.99. A few months ago we raised the cost of the Silver from $6.99 to $7.49, but for the time being we 'grandfathered' all the old Silver members at the old price.]

6) PAID ADS are shown on their pages-which slows down their servers-which they blame on our computers.

[Of course showing ads has a performance impact. After adding these, we did find a way to reduce the impact by transmitting them when there was less 'game' activity.]

7) DAILY ALLOCATED SPINS WILL GO DOWN-Well now they have changed it to a lower amount of daily spins we lose BUT at a cost which is #7

[False. We just increased the daily spins for all memberships in conjunction with #8, except for old 'Gold' memberships who are still grandfathered and get more spins for less $ than any other members on the site.]

8) point values per games have dropped by over 1/2 on some games-some as high as 3/4 of the old value WHICH they pulled in the middle of the day on 4/23/08.

[True. We had originally proposed to reduce Gold members spins from 1000 to 600, but received a large number of negative comments. Many said they did not want to play less for the same $, and preferred taking longer to get prizes instead. (Some do not agree with this approach.) We decided the best course of action was to increase play time and reduce the points (resulting in it taking longer to win prizes).]


9) FREE players as of may 1st will be able to claim prizes now BUT they have to view ads ever 10 mins & only get 200 free spins per day that do not rollover plus the only get 4'x lower the points value (fine with me since they are paying)

[Previously free player couldn't claim prizes at all, didn't see ads, and got a very limited (and declining) number of spins each day. We wanted to accommodate the large group of players who could not or would not want to join as members yet would like to play, so we came up with a solution that we hope is fair to members and non-members alike. Members can always cancel their membership and play for free if they wish.

In our announcement we said that the changes would occur 'in a few days', but some people were confused about this because it also said that members in good standing as of May 1 who remained members for a month would get a large point bonus. Once the changes were programmed and tested, we put them live.]

[I'd also like to apologize that some people on this forum felt insulted by our responses to their objections to changing the rate at which you could win prizes. We thought the best approach was simply to point out the facts: Players could and did collect many times the value of their membership in prizes; this was simply not sustainable at the level it was occuring; therefore we had to make a significant adjustment. After these changes it is STILL possible to earn more in prize value than it costs to be a member. We hope that other sources of revenue will permit us to continue this, but time will tell.]

[We are not able to monitor all forums like this one on a continuous basis, so please forgive us if you post responses to this and do not get a timely reply. Always feel free to email us at support@winster-inc.com with any questions or comments.]

Thank You,

Jerry
Winster.com Support

On behalf of Winnie!

I just cancel my membership there because i wasn't going there all the time and what was being said here. So thanks everyone-+

Originally Posted by The3rdeyeo

I just cashed in my points the day beofre the made the change.The $10.00 amazon.com credit woould have been a much better deal then what I cashed in for.i would ahve made an additonal $20 by doing the amazon.com deal then whaty I cash in for.Sites not worth it.Now you have the free players begging for "spare items" and older memebrs only trading for peices they need,so nobodys really helping anybody out,unlike before it was a "site where friends help out" This is posted on ALL their pages lol.Well nobodys helping anybody.We had a big enough problems beofre this change with beggers,sitters,freeloaders,now the problems gotten worst now that "free" players can claim prizes and have seen their points cut mor ehten 3/4 of what they where getting.
Yea that letter is VERY insulting.You go on the site now and its a graveyard at least 75% of the time.Top if of besides just claiming my prizes the day before they offered a better deal to cash in for.I had just be charged for my next month fee's 3 dasy before they dumped this supirze on us.Google jerry kaplan.The guys a self-made millioniar and ALOT of the atricles on him states about 1/2 to 3/4 of his sites he starts FLOPP.Wonder why?
$$$ money makes the world go round.:

I think you are very rude..I went and tired this the other day since i keep getting e-mails to try it and i see it posted over here all the time. And i do not beg for any thing. The first night i tired it a host was helping me, the second time i went to play i had members telling me to give them what i had, it made me mad because every time i tired to get a win i couldn't. So do not group all us new players in your little rant because some of you paying members do the same thing.

Excuse me I was gold member since of Jan. 2008 and I won a prize but never received it . I thought it was a mistake and waited lost all the points.
I got fed up of winster taking me for a ride

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