Lemoney.com Turns Sour. Community Payouts Missing With No Answers.

Editor’s Note: It appears from feedback a few readers have given me that Lemoney.com is not paying out community Cash back, and hasn’t for approximately the past 6 months.  The company has responded to a support request (from Robert) with the following:

Again, this issue has been going on for months. The idea that a Dev. team still can’t figure out how to pay hundreds/thousands of dollars due to users after that long doesn’t seem to make sense.

We’ll dig more into this worrying development in today’s post, and conclude with some cautions about the portal itself.

Background

It has been over a year since Lemoney.com launched and we’ve covered the portal twice here on the blog.  Each of these “reviews” were skeptical, noting that the payout rates were not rational, nor did they seem sustainable. Discussion of the possibility of Lemoney.com being a pyramid scheme of sorts was brought up in our initial post–and the company actually reached out to me personally to refute that skepticism. Their explanation leaned heavily on the benefits of community cash back. Here’s a reminder of their words from the email they sent me to explain how great their portal was:

Lemoney Community

The community was created to benefit our users. The bigger it gets, the more rewards its members receive. Our main strategy is to invest in the community growth, instead of wasting money in the usual media channels. Lemoney’s community strategy was created to give our customers an experience that no other cashback site offers. This unique offer allows customers to boost their earnings every time their friends shop.

Community Building

This is the process by which we encourage  customers to invite friends and get significant rewards from it. Our customers also get rewards beyond just cashback, we call this Community Cashback – it works like a member referral  program, but instead of getting paid only once, customers are paid every time their referred friends shop.
Can people get rich with it? We don’t anticipate people getting rich from this, but they can   have a better overall rewards program, in fact, the best one. We have customers earning more than $1k in monthly community rewards so far.

C-Bonus

C-Bonus means community bonus and it’s used to multiply what you earn with your community. Users earn C-bonuses when they shop and also when invite friends who shop.
Example:
A member earned $10 in community cashback and also 5 C-bonuses in the same month, this will make their total community cashback $50 (5 x $10).”

The new development of not paying out community cash back really seems to dismantle the entire community aspect of their site.  As you’ll see later in this piece Turbo Cashback is nearly gone, and the payout rates for purchases without it are now fraught with exclusions not seen on other portals.  All of this adds up to a very troubling situation that readers need be aware of.

Lemoney.com created this problem themselves by Auto-Adding people to communities.

Possible This Affects Early Adopters

This lack of payouts of community cash back seems like either a ploy to stop the bleeding, or a way to penalize those who put together very lucrative communities early on.  The amount I’ve heard readers are missing is in the $250 range on average. That’s a very significant amount of cash back just from those readers who I’ve heard from personally.

The way Lemoney was creating communities early on was to automatically add people to existing communities (of strangers) if they signed up without a referral link.  This, coupled with the unlimited turbo cash back periods of late 2017 mean that those who signed up early saw their community nearing 100 members even without any referrals.

Additionally early on every purchase earned you multiple C-Money bonuses. That group of early adopters is likely also the group who likely have a lifetime of C-Month–which means every month for the rest of humanity they’ll see 5x payouts on Community cash back.  That’s 5x the purchases of every person in their community, every month.

Seeing how the FAQ on C-Money no longer exists, I think C-Money loaded early adopters are causing 5x the headaches for Lemoney.

Something seems fishy with Lemoney.com

Lemoney Getting Squeezed? Bad News All Around

Not paying out community cash back isn’t the only problem with the portal lately. Lemoney dramatically changed how they pay turbo cash back a few months ago.  The site no longer gives you a turbo credit each month (which was basically $10-$15 in free cash back each month over normal rates).  The removal of this, along with the lack of C-Money now means Lemoney is no better than a standard portal in many respects.

That’s actually not true–they’re actually worse than standard portals in most respects.  They have excluded almost all good giftcards from the sites online that sell them with portal Cash back.  And in doing so they’ve closed the real best use for the site, while hiding all of this behind no answers, fine print, and misleading changing practices.  Take a look at this page from Lemoney.com with the T&C for giftcards.com:

Did you read the entire T&C but miss the small ovals at the bottom? They mean there’s no cash back paid out on Visa GC and MCGC.

For All These Reasons, Stay Away

To be clear–they’ve always paid me out my Cash Back due on purchases and continue to do so–including massive amounts during unlimited turbo cash back promotional periods. But Community cash back is just as important–maybe more so because it is the promise of this community cash back, along with C-money multiplying it that led so many to recommend the site in the first place.

That said, not paying on purchases like Visa/MC GC like almost every other portal does, a changing business model, and now a no notice 6 month seizure of funds due make it impossible to recommend Lemoney.com any longer.

I’ve removed my Lemoney referral link–and I strongly ask you to consider your use of their portal moving forward.  They could be making their portal better in the long term–but the way they’re going about doing it is not nearly transparent enough for my concerns.

Have you been hit by this? Is your community cash back not being paid out? Let us know below.

About the author

- Written by Sam Simon. All ideas are my own, but I encourage you to see my point of view and I promise I'll try to do the same. Connect with me on Twitter @Milenomics.

Comments

  1. I randomly got an email last week saying I received $200 in community money. Logging in it shows it all from a long time ago, finally coming through. Funny thing is, I have noooooo idea how I got anyone in my community. I don’t think I ever posted my referral anywhere. I did a Conga on flyertalk but can’t seem to find any evidence of it, so not sure it that was Lemony or what. Anyway nice $200 for me, if it ever shows up in Paypal, two days later it still says “in analysis.”

    1. Ryan: Lemoney would randomly assign people who joined *without* using a referral to communities of strangers. Why they did this, I have no idea, but it created very large communities for early adopters of Lemoney (those higher in the pyramid).

      Consider yourself lucky…if they pay it. The latest on this saga is that they’re taking up to 2 weeks to do their “analysis” before paying out.

  2. wow, glad to discover this awful report. Looks like lemoney about to go the way of theplasticmerchant, another great idea run more like an amway style ponzi scheme….

  3. I got this December 20 2018:

    “Thanks for shopping through Lemoney. We are thrilled to see you have made your redemption request and we are excited to make your cashback payment!

    Due to improvements in our redemption process and the holidays, we are experiencing some delays in concluding this procedure. Therefore, the redemption process might take more time than usual”

    1. and I (finally) got paid today. Credit to Lemoney. I hang in there with them. Hopefully
      they will improve as time goes by.

        1. My payment is still not unlocked. Lemoney needs to unlock the payment for me to get
          the money. Its been months now since payment was requested.

  4. I think I was one of those people added to a community unawares because I have high amounts of cb pending. That said, I’ve been waiting for a pending transaction confirmation for over five months. I asked Lemoney support if the delay had to do with using a gift card for a small portion of the purchase, but instead of answering, they just assured me I’d get my cash back after four months. I replied that it has been five, and haven’t heard back. Anyone else gotten the runaround or had to wait longer than four months? Paying a portion with a gift card shouldn’t void cb on the rest of the purchase, should it? Thanks.

    1. Jessie: Use of a gift card absolutely shouldn’t matter. If the cash back tracked properly then what you’re describing is just Lemoney being Lemoney. In my situation I’ve always been paid on purchases in a timely manner, but community cashback has taken 4months+6months for a total of 10 months. I should say 10 months is what it should take, but as the above post proves: Lemoney doesn’t follow their own rules. 🙁

  5. Any update on Lemoney? I am still getting CC, I got $100 in November. Jan 2019 I got $200’ish, this year nothing.

    1. Ryan:

      I cashed my last CC out and I think they’ve finally turned off the tap. I’d love to be wrong, but don’t see any on my main account either.

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