Is FreePay Making Free Stuff Harder to Get?

Digg this I've been involved with FreePay (formerly Gratis Marketing) for more than a year. They are they company responsible for the huge FreeiPods.com boom of a couple years ago. I managed to get in on that offer and obtained my required five referrals and received a free, fourth-generation, 20-GB iPod. After their huge popularity, FreePay offer other items that could be obtained by the same method—register on their site, complete a sponser's offer, and then get an appointed number of friends to register under you and each complete one sponser's offer. The offers were usually not too bad. The best were thirty-day trial memberships for $1 and gave credit instantly or within a week. FreePay offered many free items for successfully completing these programs—LCD monitors, iPods (all of the flavors), digital cameras, desktop PCs, notebook PC, handbags, DVDs, console gaming systems, and more. The only other offer that interested me was to get a free Mac Mini. When I started, the Mini offered was a G4 with only 1.25 GHz and 256 MB RAM. Through the past year, I've seen that upgraded to 512 MB RAM, OS X 10.4, and most-recently, a Intel-based Mac ("Mattel," as I call it). It has taken me nearly a year, and some appeals to FreePay, but I do finally have my required ten referrals and my order for the free Mac Mini is processing. I check my order status daily, even several times a day. This morning, I checked my status on FreeMiniMacs.com, and I was greeted with "This page cannot be found." A visit to FreePay.com revealed that they are "upgrading" some systems. Shortly after that, FreePay.com went offline, but it has since returned, albeit without some of the sister sites. This causes me to theorize. In January of this year, FreePay enforced a major change to their policy that would give registrants only ninety days to complete their own offer and get their appointed number of referrals. I managed to accomplish this, but just barely by the skin of my toe. Could this "upgrade" signal another policy change for FreePay? Ninety days is hardly enough time to get ten referrals (it took me a year). Might they be changing how many offers registrants are required to complete? I have no idea, but it is worth consideration. I am not the only "success story" with FreePay. Several of my friends have also received their free iPods or other items. But FreePay continues to make things harder to earn and decreases their mercy for appeals. This "upgrade" could be another step in the wrong direction for those who still thought that they had a chance to get something free. Whatever happens, I better still get my free Mac Mini because I've worked hard for that!