A Guide to Affiliate Programs and internet scams. Scam or Not? Want to know if something is a scam?
19 Apr

1-800-Mail is the last in the long series of request I have had to review several PTR (paid to read) e-mail programs. So far every single one has turned out to be an internet money making scam and unfortunately 1-800-Mail failed to separate itself from the internet scams crowd.
1-800-Mail does disguise itself better than other PTR internet scams. It does this by being more realistic with its promises. For example, instead of offering a $200,000 minimum payout and promising $1000 e-mails, they say that the rate advertisers pay varies and so they cannot give you specific figures.
They have a minimum payout of $125, which is (for a scam site) more reasonable; and for the careless web-user looking too join a PTR this is much more inviting. They do offer to lower the minimum payout if you pay them to upgrade, which normally would shout Internet Scam! but 1-800-Mail disguise this well too amongst other offers that makes it seem more reasonable.
“- Free Referrals - Your referral url will be randomly inserted for surfers visiting the web site without a referral url. (X2)
- 100,000 Free banner impressions
- 2 X 5 Cents solo to all one time
- 10,000 x 2 cent PTC one time
- Payout reduced to $75
Silver member fee is $50 for a Lifetime Membership.”
The detail that it is for lifetime membership leads me to make some damming conclusions:
1. 1-800-Mail know that once someone has paid the money and had such bad results (and realised it’s an internet scam) they won’t come back anyway; and so they might as well make it more inviting by calling it a ‘lifetime membership’.
2. 1-800-Mail aren’t looking for long-term profitability, they just want the cash and don’t expect to persuade people to pay them a second time.
As usual there are a few ‘clues’ on the main site (I wont dignify them with a link) that give the game away.
In the Security section, this is all they have to say!
“1-800-Mail.com has security measures in place to protect the loss, misuse and alteration of the information under our control.”
That’s it?! All legitimate programs explain in great detail about their security features. I suspect 1-800-Mail didn’t expect their victims would bother reading the Privacy Policy.

Above is the pyramid-esque referral scheme. beware!
The other leak in their nearly water tight ’scam-boat’ is their payment details:
“Once the member has reached minimum payout they may request payment. Payments will be made within 90 days or a reasonable time after.”
A respectable site would give precise information about when payment is made, who decides when a “reasonable time after” is?
In the 1-800-Mail Terms they ironically contradict their advertising policy. The say that “1-800-Mail.com will file charges for recovery of any earnings received from multiple sign-ups” and they say how they do allow referrals to be made via spamming. Nevertheless as an advertiser you can purchase referrals from 1-800-Mail that will sign up at another site of your choice. Presumably these referrals would be inactive and of little real value, not to mention buying referrals would probably be against the other sites Terms of Service.
What does everyone Else think about 1-800-Mail?
1-800-Mail is on these Internet scams lists:
Internet scams list 1
Internet scams list 2
Internet scans list 3
This forum back me up saying that 1-800-Mail is on every scam list. They are well and truly sunk.
Conclusion
Like so many PTR e-mail sites 1-800-Mail is an Internet money making scam and should be avoided. PTR e-mail sites have a fraudulent reputation so be careful when choosing one. I have found that advertising rates can be a useful indicator of a scam. For example with 1-800-Mail they charge only $5 per month for a banner rotation, yet they claim they have 94,007 members. Surely if they actually had that many members a banner rotation would be worth more than $5. I’m all out of PTR e-mail requests so keep the requests coming in!
4 Responses for "1-800-Mail - Internet Scam!"
[…] Affiliate Scam Guide reports that 1-800-Mail proves to be an internet scam. […]
I just cashed out, we will see if I ever see my money.
My current gripes with 1-800 is this pop up that attack my computer that apparently only hits me when I’m on that site or reading their mail. Long story short… my other computer is at the police station… the one that was attacked by spyware and caused havoc. Are you shocked I’m still a member after that?
Before all that, I got timely responses to all of my questions. I still do. They had a half off sale of the diamond membership, I decided to try it… having no expectations really. I got about 40 sign ups for the site I was advertising, which shocked the hell out of me. It definitely was good for advertising and outperformed other sites, even ones noted as legit.
But because I have a diamond membership, I have a stack of people under me reading mail which forces me to read the mail as well so I don’t fall inactive. I have cashed out $40 and will update you to let you know if I ever got it. If I don’t, then we got a real problem. It doesn’t sound like you’ve used the site, so thought I would chime in.
Your readers should also know that their PayPal account is not verified, which would have stopped me in my tracks if I actually saw that in the first place. And according to the amount of readers of my advertising opposed to what I paid… they paid over $4,000 to members for reading my advertising, while I only spent about $160.
I do think more investigation needs to be done with this site. I really can’t imagine this site 100% stiffing people, but what I could see is being forced to use earnings for advertising and not getting a dime sent to your PayPal account… because I too don’t see how they’d have the money they promised. It doesn’t make any sense,… UNLESS those pop ups that attack make that possible, that is. But that doesn’t make any sense. Either way, I’m optimistic, I haven’t really lost anything… they haven’t purposely done anything to harm me (I THINK!), but I’m also not too happy with them either about the spyware that they didn’t catch before sending it out… so I do expect to get my earnings in cash, as they have promised on the site, if I don’t get it… well, I don’t care if they are in India (pretending to be in Illinois)… all hell will break loose.
Stacy, thanks for all the info!
I am very surprised you kept using them even after they attacked your computer with Spyware!
I thought the minimum payout is $125 but you have cashed out $40?
I lookforward to finding out if they pay you or not!
This is exactly what I expected to find out after reading the title Internet Scams. Thanks for informative article
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