Refer-A-Friend
About 6 or 7 years ago, I discovered the joys of shopping at Amazon. Just a few clicks of the mouse and a rattle on the old keys and I had DVDs winging my way in no-time, for half the price of HMV! I wanted to spread the word, stop my chump friends wasting their pocket money on the high street! Which is where the refer-a-friend scheme came in...

Now, the deal is that you refer a friend and they get a £5 voucher to spend. Once they've spent it, Amazon chuck another one your way, nicely done. So, why not stick a few of my other e-mail addresses on there and have a fiver off my next DVD?

These "vouchers" are also supposed to have some rules attached too. Minimum spend of £10, one per customer, usual stuff. Thing is, the minimum spend didn't work. You could buy anything, as long as your total didn't come to under £5. Just a bit of postage to pay, then - DVDs for £1.50!

So, I simply got myself a free domain name and referred myself under a variety of extremely clever guises. [email protected], [email protected], etc. etc. That's a lot of £5 vouchers, and a lot of dirt cheap DVDs.

I must've sold at least of the mothers at £5 a pop! Anything that crept into the "DVDs for about a fiver" section on Amazon was offered up to my esteemed peers. I remember ordering all of the Bond films for some lucky boy.

After about 6 months of abusing poor old Amazon, the "Refer-A-Friend" scheme was changed to £3 a voucher, and the rules on minimum spending fixed. I like to think I had something to do with that. Still, was a nice bit of a money for a 15 year old while it lasted!
(slotbadger, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 14:38, 1 reply)

You dont know the half of it
Before this happened, I remember a time when they were stackable and didn't have any rules over minimum. We spent many a university afternoon filling in about 40 fake yahoo accounts of [email protected] [email protected] etc.

There were people selling the vouchers for a couple of quid a pop to other students who weren't let into the click.

Stories of Durham school kids getting boxes and boxes of stuff for free.

Only bad thing was, this was back when uk Amazon was starting out and only sold CD and Books.

Still makes me laugh every time I pick up the Phats and Small album and think "Why did I buy this ?" then I remember I didn't
(bindybadgy, Fri 1 Aug 2008, 16:29, closed)