CashCrate: One Dangerous Company

Paid Opportunities is a site designed with YOU in mind. This site offers hundreds of ways to make money online with no investment. But from time to time I like to expose the truth about companies on the internet that offer bogus money making opportunities, are complete scams or just a waste of time in general. All of my information is 100% factual and can be easily referanced. Hope you find this information useful!



CashCrate is one of the most referred ways to make money online. However, I am here to tell you NOT to join this program! Yes, you really can earn money from this source but it is so risky and completely time consuming. In the end you will end up with way more problems than profit. CashCrate is a bad opportunity in general. People refer others to this service for one of two reasons –

1. They have no idea how to really make money online. There’s nothing wrong with not knowing how to generate income without an investment. Trust me, a little over a year ago I was doing the exact same thing! I was desperate to earn online and sites like these “seemed” like a great idea.

OR

2. They want the referral money. People who join CashCrate are given a bounty in the form of a commission for each member they refer. Plus CC offers prizes and stuff every month. Signing up for something using someone’s referral link isn’t always bad, I mean, after all, somebody SHOULD be given a small reward for referring people to a company. However, 70% of the time people online will tell you anything you want to hear just so you sign up through them, even if the opportunity is totally bogus.

With that being said, for the sake of argument, I decided to create my own Cashcrate account. This is my experience and it will be yours too:

7:30am – Join

7:32am – I have now officially entered the site. I am “immediately able to being earning money” by completing offers – my number #1 nemesis! I have a HUGE problem with “completing offers for cash” because it’s such an awful way to earn money online and I’ll explain exactly why later. But, to continue my company review, I look at the list of available offers and they’re payout rate (generally between $2.50 and $12). I decided to aim really low and see how difficult it is to earn myself $2.50. I see an offer called “Healthy Pregnancy Tips”. It says all I have to do to earn my $2.50 is sign up for a FREE trial membership and confirm my “PIN”. Sounds easy, right? I am immediately transferred to THIS SITE which asks me to enter my cell phone number and agree to “Terms of Service”!!!!

When I select the “Terms of Service” link to get more information I read the following “When you sign up for the Service, you will receive a free three-day trial. If you cancel within three days, you will not be charged for the service. If you do not cancel within three days $4.99 per month for the Service will be billed directly to your cellular phone bill.” Well I feel slightly mislead here! Nobody ever said anything about giving out my cell number! To me, that info is really personal!

7:37am – I am now attempting to try a different offer. Maybe I won’t have to give away such personal information to make $2 this time. I look back over the list and see an offer worth a whopping $12.50! Supposedly all I have to do to get this money is “Sign up for a FREE Trial at Pricestore”. After selecting this link I am brought to a much more reputable site. This one looks like it may actually be promising. It says that I have to sign up for a free 7 day trial and I will be given a $50 Red Lobster Gift Card too. As always, I immediately read the “Terms of Service”. This is what I read:

1. We Download Files onto Your Hard Drive. “Cookies are alphanumeric identifiers that we transfer to your computers hard drive through your Web browser.”

2. We Log Files. “Pricestore.com automatically receives and records information on its server logs from your Web browser, including your IP address, cookie information, and the page you requested.”

3. We SHARE Information. “We might receive information about you from other sources and add it to our account information.”

And the list goes on and on. Now is this REALLY worth $12.50 and a Red Lobster Gift Card? Not one bit!

So now it is 7:44am and I still have yet to complete an offer so I still have not earned a single penny BUT I have managed to spend almost 15 minutes accomplishing absolutely nothing. What a complete and total waste of my time! I could have spent the past 15 minutes making $10+ by

Writing an article for Associated Content, Constant Content or W4C ,

Submitting Photography to one of my sources,

Writing an advertisement,

or any other LEGIT way of actually making money online.

But let’s say your heart is completely set on giving CashCrate a try and you don’t mind allowing them to download cookies onto your hard drive, signing up for companies that will bill you in a few days if you forget to cancel your membership or giving out your personal information to all kinds of companies for a few dollars. If that sounds like a great opportunity for you then I’ll tell you what you need to do to actually make money from this.

First, you need to get a calendar and a pen. If you don’t have these items then just please skip this “opportunity” completely because you’ll find yourself owing tons of money for “free trails”. Now that you have your supplies, go ahead and sign up for all this stuff. It’s going to take a while to complete each offer because you have to verify your “free memberships” via email and so on. Before you officially complete any offer you MUST (must, must, MUST!) read ALL of the “Terms of Service/FAQ’s. This will tell you when you HAVE to cancel your membership by before you get slapped with a bill or sent products. *In addition, you need to understand that you CAN NOT just sign up for something then turn around and cancel it. You have to be a “free trail member” for X amount of days before you can even receive your “earnings” from CashCrate.
After you complete each *free offer, make note on your calendar of the exact day your “free” membership will expire. Include any password information or confirmation numbers that you will need to terminate your “free service”.

Now all you have to do is look at your calendar daily and cancel memberships when needed. You will have a 90% success rate if you do this – PROVIDING you didn’t accidentally forget to write down an offer or PROVIDING you NEVER FORGET to check your calendar. On occasion some companies will try to make it near impossible for you to quit your “Free” subscription. I ran into this problem once with a “Free Trial Membership” to a major online music download service. I tried to cancel on day #6 of my 7 day trial. I kept getting a computerized message saying that I needed to call their headquarters. Then, when I did make my call to the NOT TOLL FREE NUMBER I was directed to a pre-recorded message that explained that “call volumes were too high. Try back tomorrow”. This went on for several days. In the end I got stuck paying a $14.99 fee for a month of service that I really didn’t even want. Totally NOT worth the $8 I was given to get my “free trial”.

In the end, I will tell you that this is the furthest thing from a REAL way to make money online. You will end up spending so much time and effort to make a few dollars that you will become very aggravated. You will have millions of cookies downloaded onto your computer, some of which may even cause internal damage and give you computer errors, such as your system may begin to run slow. Plus your email will be bombarded with spam daily and you may even receive phone calls or text messages from solicitors you never even heard of. I completely DO NOT suggest signing up for this company. If you are truly looking for ways to make fast money online then please read all of my article on this site (don't forget to browse throught the Archives section!)

More about Cashcrate:

When reading “Terms of Service” or “FAQ” pages, there’s always a few things that I call “Red Flags”. Whenever I see a Red Flag I generally consider the company to be somewhat of a scam and I run in the opposite direction. There’s tons of companies that will pay you for legit “work” online, why mess around with this kind of garbage:

*Excerpts taken directly from Cash Crates Terms page!

1. “Members may complete offers provided by third-party advertisers ("Third-Parties") in return for monetary compensation provided by CashCrate. These terms are subject to change by CashCrate at anytime without notice.”

2.“you must be aware that some third-party advertisers may require payment of some variety in order to complete their offer. Members will be solely responsible for any charges incurred by participation Third-Party programs.”

3. “CashCrate makes no guarentee regarding the timeliness of payments” (*Please not the improper spelling of "guarantee" - this is THEIR ERROR in their own contract, not mine!)

4. “if for any reason, an advertiser does not pay CashCrate, CashCrate reserves the right to withhold the Members share of said revenue.”

5. “CashCrate will not be liable for lost profits or any other indirect, special, punitive, incidental or consequential damages arising out of or related to this Agreement or the CashCrate program, even if CashCrate has been advised of the possibility of such damages.”

6. “CashCrate will at no time have any commitment toward any member, past or present. CashCrate may at anytime, for any reason, without or without notice, discontinue the Program for one or all of its members.”

Now ask yourself, “Does this sound like an employer I want to work for?” – I didn’t think so!