Today I’ll write an article about iWriter and an unpleasant experience I had with them.
Make Money Online
About 7 years ago I started trying to make money online. I really started at the bottom, so the first things I ran into were freelancing sites (Freelancer, oDesk, Elance, etc), but those didn’t really work for me, here is why:
Bidding or Begging sites? (Elance, Freelancer, etc)
The next things I ran into were PTC (Paid To Click) sites, where you would click ads for fractions of cents. I also ran into transcription, and data entry (captcha solving), and link sharing (Adfly) and other mickey mouse things like that.
One of the things I ran into that had some potential was article writing, and one of the websites I registered on to give it a shot was iWriter. It was free to register, and they paid out on Paypal, so I gave it a shot.
I registered on the site, wrote 1 article, got a perfect rating of 5 stars for it, received $2.44 for it in my account balance, and I never wrote another article. I guess article writing just wasn’t for me. But I continued to login to my iWriter account once per month for 7 years just to prevent it being closed for inactivity or something.
I guess I was planning to write a few more articles at some point in order to cash out my money. Whether I would ever do it or not, I don’t know, but that was the plan anyway…
Suspended due to inactivity
Recently I went to do my monthly login real quick, only to be greeted by an error that my account has been closed/suspended for inactivity. Okay, fair enough actually, but you don’t get to keep my money (my hard earned $2.44 haha).
So I contacted support asking them to reactivate my account, or at least to send me the money they owe me.
I contacted them with the following message:
“Hello,
I’m trying to login to my account but it says that it was closed due to inactivity.
But I have $2.44 in my account, and I would like my account reopened, or at least $2.44 sent to me.
Thanks
Best,
[MY NAME]”
Their reply:
“Hello [MY NAME],
Thank you for reaching out.
I hope you are doing well!
This account is not eligible for reactivation.
We are not accepting users from your region at this time. We will update you if this changes.
There are no exceptions to this and we appreciate your understanding.
We have queued the balance on your account. You can expect to receive payment next Tuesday.
Please be reminded that we cannot change Paypal addresses. There are no exceptions to this policy.
Sincerely,”
The last sentence here is where they fuck you.
iWriter Scam or at least Unethical
In my case I didn’t even remember what Paypal email I had in my iWriter account. I had added it 7 years ago, so I wasn’t sure. So I asked the support person and she told me. Then I realized that the Paypal email I had on iWriter was attached to a Paypal account that got suspended like 2 years ago. And when Paypal suspends your account, you are not allowed to remove or add your email to a different Paypal account.
And that’s my problem with their policy. I’m pretty sure they know that people have added Paypal emails years and years ago, and fast forward to today many of those Paypal accounts are suspended or deleted, and those emails cannot be added to new/active Paypal accounts. And that’s how they scam you and steal your earnings!
Sending money to someone via Paypal is not rocket science. You login, you click to send payment, you input the email and the amount, and you send it. This policy of theirs has no reason to exist other than with the purpose of fucking over their users.
Beware guys, and stay away from iWriter.
Here is a video I made talking about this:
Conclusion
In conclusion, you may say that $2.44 is not a big amount, and you’re correct. But it’s still my money that they had no right to steal for me based on their stupid policy.
And as someone who buys articles on iWriter you may think to yourself that this doesn’t affect you as you’re not there to make money. But ask yourself, if they’re willing to screw over their writers in such ways, do you think they won’t screw over their customers? I think they would.
You see, I have many websites, and I do a lot of business online. And you know what I do when one of my users asks me for something that may go against some god forsaken privacy policy I have on my website? I do my best to break the policy and do what’s best for my users/customers.
Of course I can refuse their request, and I may even do it under certain circumstances, but I’ll give 110% of myself to not refuse them and to break my own policy in order to accommodate their request. Because a privacy policy is just that, it’s not law, it’s up to me to determine it and alter it and enforce it when and how I want. I would never change it or enforce it to harm my users, and I would totally break it to accommodate a request from a user.
I put iWriter into the Scam/Unethical companies basket, and everyone should stay away from them.