Ever since I’ve became a member of A.W. Surveys last year, I’ve read a lot of posts and forum discussions concerning some members not getting paid by the site. And when I received my first, second, and third payment last year, it left me questioning how come I get paid while some are not?

Though the question was already in my head, I did not go through the details to know the reason (lazy me! Heheh…). It was only this year when I again did not received a payment for the second time that I finally took the time to investigate any possible reason why my two payment (one in October, 2008 and one in January, 2009) requests were not granted.

To begin with, I checked on the F.A.Q. section of the site and this is what I found:

13. Why was my payment denied or Why was my account deleted?

If you have created fraudulent accounts, do not expect to be paid for them. We will deny your payment if you have created fake accounts to raise your referral count. Please do not waste your time creating fake accounts, our system will catch them, delete them, and deny your payment automatically. Your account may be deleted or flagged for fraudulent activities in the process.

No! The above is obviously not for me as I am not using a fake account. What hit me is this part:

Please follow our T.O.S. when referring friends because we do not allow some forms of referring. The two most popular sites we do not allow you to post referral links on are craigslist.com and myspace.com, please review our T.O.S. for a complete list of rules.

Now if we are going to check on the T.O.S, there is a part that says:

(K) Referral promotion: You may promote your referral code to your friends or post it on your web site if it follows our guidelines. Please make sure your web site is approved with us before posting it. Posting your referral code on a web site you do not own is not allowed. This includes posting on such sites as but not limited to craigslist.com, myspace.com, facebook.com, youtube.com, etc. You may not post your link of job related web sites such as but not limited to monster.com, careerbuilder.com, etc. You may not pay users to sign up or view our web site (These web sites are generally referred to as PTC, PTR, etc., we do not allow this kind of advertising unless approved by AWSurveys). Promoting A.WSurveys using spam advertising will result in account deletion and payments forfeited. We have a 0 tolerance policy regarding spam advertising via Email or on Web sites.

As I mentioned on my previous post “My 1st Payment From A.W. Surveys“, most of my earnings came from referrals. Now if referring is the problem then how come I got payments? Very confusing isn’t it? Take note that the sites where I am promoting my referral link are not yet preapproved.

I admit I did not read the T.O.S. but if only those people from A.W. Surveys have notified me earlier that I failed to follow their guideline that’s why my latest payment requests were denied, I should have thought about it and stop what I am doing for the site. They should at least tell members the reason why their payment request cannot be processed.