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Beware of Farmville Scams
Hello Farmville Freaks!
Several of you have contacted me and informed me of some shady Farmville scams floating around the internet. I wanted to share this information with all of you so that you may also be made aware.
Advertisers within Farmville:
One way to earn more FV$ is to complete surveys/quizzes/offers within Farmville. These surveys can be found under the “Get More Coins” tab. The problem is that many of these offers are often unfruitful. To find a reliable survey requires you to sift through tons of trash. While many of these advertisers promise FV$, they yield nothing. Some are labeled free and others require you to sign up for a service upfront such as legitimate advertisers like Netflix or Blockbuster. Most of the “free” ones are not really free at all and will not only waste your time (they will continue to loop until you select a non-free offer) they could cost you real money.
Please use your own discretion when selecting these offers. Be weary of ones that ask you for cellphone numbers or other personal details such as mailing address. Many of these surveys/quizzes prompt you to give your cellphone number so that your “pin” number may be texted to you. Giving your cellphone number may lead to monthly subscription charges that you will receive nothing fore except a bill. Many people have reported to me that after they gave their cellphone number to receive the pin, they were then billed $9.99 as a monthly charge on their cellphone statements.
The important thing to remember is that these offers are by third party vendors. Yes, these vendors are sharing their profit with game developers (Zynga) and social networking sites (Facebook), but just because they are affiliated does not mean that they are trust-worthy or even condoned.
In the past, we have done posts on using the offers/surveys to get more FV$, but again please use caution when completing these and know that many are time-consuming and pointless rip-offs.
To read more about these advertising scams look here:
To watch a video addressing the issues:
Farmville Guides:
There are several Farmville Guides that promise to make you a better Farmville Farmer, give you all the secrets, tips and so on. One guide costs a whopping $47 $27 and says it is the best-selling guide for the past year. Farmville has only been out for a few months so I’m not sure how this is even possible. Also, please be reminded that Farmville is constantly changing and being updated several times a week. Why would you spend money on an out-dated guide? Please be weary of spending real money on guides that promise you a Farmville fortune when you can come right here on FarmvilleFreak.com as well as other Farmville related websites and forums and get information for free!
We at Farmville Freak in no way endorse these Farmville guides, in-game advertisers or their offers!
Every once in a while you may see an advertisement for one of these guides on our website, it does not mean that we have personally selected this advertisement or endorse buying it. Why would we endorse this guide if we’ve made this post concerning these scams?
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Posted on November 5th, 2009 at 10:39 pm
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=60005&l=a3aea1846c&id=100000286303422
Here are some adds that gave a nice amount of FV cash, I didn’t spend any money and I didn’t spend a ton of time on surveys. I did use an “alternate e-mail” so I wouldn’t be spammed to death.
Posted on November 6th, 2009 at 12:43 am
Watch the video from Escapist — the blogger at 7:10 sums it for a second time best. Totally worth 10 minutes of your time.
Thanks FarmGoddess for posting this — us Farmville Freaks need to take a stand against the bulls*** that has infected a game we love. And for once, it’s not from some wandering Pink Cow.
Posted on November 6th, 2009 at 8:56 am
at least they’re doing something about it:
http://developers.facebook.com/news.php?blog=1&story=333
Posted on November 6th, 2009 at 9:57 am
You don’t endorse the Guide Book @ 27$ but you advertise it – what is the difference….
Posted on November 6th, 2009 at 2:24 pm
Regarding the guides, there was just an ad on this site (Farmville Freak) for a FV strategy guide. So I clicked on it just to give the website a read and because Farmville Freak gets a small kickback – everyone should click on an ad here, often… it helps them offset hosting costs and what not and it’s the nice thing to do.
I digress, anyway, I gave the Farmville strategy guide website a read and it’s without a doubt a mass marketing scam. From the way the website is laid out to it’s redundant use of buzzwords. And 27 bucks, are you kidding me?!
Besides, how hard is a game like Farmville to figure out anyway. There’s a small handful of things you need to know in order to maximize your profits and xp in this game and they are readily available within a click or two on this site – for free.
Frankly, I’m baffled.
Posted on November 6th, 2009 at 7:18 pm
@ Jason: Thanks Jason we at FVFreak appreciate your clicks
Like you said clicking adds gives us a small kickback and it does help with the cost of running this website (one that is constantly growing). The FVFreak family is not getting paid to operate this site, we are doing it for fun and for our fellow FarmvilleFreaks.
I want to re-iterate that we do not endorse this Farmville Guide and have no control over the ads that are being shown on our website (FarmvilleFreak). A representative from this same guide asked us to link their website and we declined because we feel that it is a scam.
Posted on November 6th, 2009 at 7:28 pm
@ SsSista Jue: We do not get to pick the advertisements and have no control over what ads come up.
Posted on November 8th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Another thing is that when you place a dairy farm, If you buy a cow and place it directly into your Dairy Farm it helps count for your Architect Ribbon.
Posted on November 24th, 2009 at 9:21 pm
The product advertised on your site ~ FarmVille Secrets/Strategies Guide has been forwarded to FarmVille so they can take the appropriate action against the individual/s marketing this infringement on their IP/copywrite material.
As far as the product itself, it contains nothing more than the basic information available on many web sites on the Internet for free with the exception that it is not up to date and it contains quite a few mistakes.
Furthermore, it comes with an additional guide titled ‘How to Quickly Get FarmVille Cash’ which is step-by-step selling guide for the first guide including how to set up the ‘Clickbank’ account so that you can process payments for this individual. It has absolutely nothing to do with FarmVille or earning FarmVille cash. The closest it gets to FarmVille or FV Cash is giving you the option to spend your earnings on FV cash should you chose to do so.
Then it only gets better when you try to get your guaranteed 60-day money back no questions asked refund. The auto-email assigns a support ticket which links to a support site you cannot access because of security issues.
They did not respond to emails until they received the following and then it was four days after that when I received an email with a link that was supposed to get my refund which never happened of course.
Please issue a refund immediately. I was finally able to download the information and could not believe what you are trying to sell as valuable information for FarmVille help. Your ‘How to Quickly Get FarmVille Cash’ is unbelievable. How you can even call it that is the epitome of false advertising to say the very least of what the problems are with it and I assure you if I do not have a refund within 24 hours, I will make sure it is posted on FaceBook as many places as possible exactly what your ‘product’ is all about.
I will also file complaints with FaceBook, the Internet Fraud Watch,
Internet Crime Complaint Center and the FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection so I highly advise you to take me very seriously. I will obviously also dispute the charge on my credit card if you do not issue the credit.
ADDITIONALLY, FARMVILLE IS GOING TO BE INTERESTED IN PURSUING THE LACK OF COPY WRITE DEDICATION ON YOUR PRODUCT AND WILL BE ABLE TO GET NOT ONLY GET A CEASE & DESIST ORDER BUT WILL ALSO RECEIVE SUBSTANTIAL DAMAGES FOR ALL PRODUCT ALREADY DISTRIBUTED.
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I actually am glad that I didn’t get the refund because it just further proved what type of operation it is so that I could file fraud reports against this individual along with reporting this operation to the other agencies.
Posted on November 24th, 2009 at 9:37 pm
@ TRISH:
Hello, we at FarmvilleFreak are NOT affiliated with these Farmville guides. I do not know the maker of them, nor do we endorse them on our site. Every once in awhile advertisement for their guide may pop up on our website because we are running Google AdSense. I do not handpick nor control the add content. It is obvious that we sometimes get this “farmville guide” advertisement because we are a blog about Farmville with relevant content but it does not mean that we endorse it.
Furthermore, why would we endorse a guide that you pay real cash money for when we give every cheat, tip, update, news related concerning Farmville on our website for FREE? In addition, I have also made posts on Farmville Freak warning Farmville users about these guides and other Farmville scams.
I cannot refund your money as i am not affiliated with this guide! You are
barking atthreatening the wrong person.AGAIN, FARMVILLE FREAK.COM DOES NOT ENDORSE THESE FARMVILLE GUIDES. PLEASE DO NOT PURCHASE THEM WHEN YOU CAN GET LOTS OF INFORMATION ABOUT FARMVILLE FOR FREE ON THIS SITE AND OTHERS!!!!
Posted on January 7th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
And did you know that in every strategy guide this guide maker sells has the same comments on every game guide page with different names.
For an example on the farmville guide page it might be roselia saying that ‘it is the best guide ever and i hope you take it out of market so it stays safe……’
But on his mafia wars guide it says the same thing…but with a different name……
On every guide he makes it’s the same old comments..
On restaurant city guide
mafia wars blueprint guide
farmville guide
rollercoaster guide
cafe world guide..!!
Posted on January 24th, 2010 at 6:00 am
J’ai installé farmville mais pour fonctionner on me demande un numéro de licence .
Comment obtenir ce numéro ?
Il est hors de question pour moi de payer quoique ce soit!!!!
Merci
Posted on June 4th, 2010 at 12:03 pm
I used to work for a woman whose business went under because she was playing farmville for hours every day instead of paying her bills. She was evicted from her original business location after not paying her rent for months, and she still owes me and several of her other ex-employees thousands of dollars in unpaid wages. She had tried moving to a different location, but was soon evicted from there also for the same reason. Could she have been spending hundreds, if not thousands of dollars a month on farmville, or do you think that she was using it as a crutch between times spent at an actual casino where she spent all of the money?
Posted on June 11th, 2010 at 6:29 pm
In my defense it was like 2 or 3 a.m and I was exhausted;I was earning ribbons and such….for some reason, I bought into the 66×66 scam—-\I have never before, now my farm wont load…i can’t find any help as to what to do. Do I need to just wait it out or is it a loss forever? No other computer will open it either. Friends can send gifts and visit but I can’t…this really stinks..anything I can do.
Posted on December 8th, 2010 at 11:59 pm
Is there anything that can be done to stop players from posting these scams all over fv pages? It’s becoming an epidemic!anything to stop them?