Why Jigsaw has suspended the refer a friend program

[#1]

You may have noticed that Jigsaw has decided to remove our Refer Friends area.

We recently discovered the program was being abused, so we decided to evaluate it. While we love that you were spreading the word about Jigsaw, we found that the Refer Friends program was not highly used by the overall community. So, we have decided to discontinue the program at this time and focus on building the new Jigsaw that you’ve heard so much about.

We plan to improve this program on the new Jigsaw and believe you will be delighted with the improvements!

Don’t worry; any points you were previously awarded for referring friends are yours to keep. However, any pending referrals can no longer be processed.

We hope you understand our decision to discontinue this program until we can evaluate new options for the new Jigsaw. We can’t wait to show you what we come up with!

[#2]

stvnsnjf - I feel for you...a scant 18 away from an even 2,000. If nothing else, you will always be King of Referrals!

[#3]

Good to hear it will be reworked, refined, hopefully with better measures implemented to thwart abuse....be a win for all.

[#4]

Tough announcement to make, but under the circumstances, the only option.   

This is a classic case of a few bad apples, spoiling it for the rest of us.   My heart goes out to all those who specialized in referrals.

stvnsnjf   -   Tough break man.   

Perhaps by placing the referral privileges a couple levels up the food chain, say Rainmaker level and above only, would cut down on the abuse.   Again, giving just anyone access to the entire system without having to earn their stripes first, just isn't fair to the rest of us.   Those of us who use the system fairly and have been for some time.   In this case, stvnsnjf seems to be taking a one for the team here.   A more restrictive entrance policy for new users would have protected us all from this abuse and would have kept all aspects of the service in tact!

I would like at this time to appeal to all users that have not yet voted for an idea raised earlier in the Members Idea Exchange area that called for "Probationary Limitations on New Users."

If this incident has you upset too....  please vote for this proposal now:

http://community.jigsaw.com/t5/Member-Idea-Exchange-MIX/Probationary-Limitations-on-New-Users/idi-p/...

My only question,  what's next?

Looks like we just been handed an excellent topic of conversation for Vegas this year!!!  

[#5]

I would not be surprised if spamming to win contests was also a factor...

[#6]

Will the refer friends program come back with the new Jigsaw?

[#7]

Seems like there are other ways to fix the problem.

What about these ideas?

Stop the Abusers Dead

[#8]

What about the May contest?

You should likely go ahead and pay up now for May.

[#9]

Thanks for all of your comments, everyone. Yes, fortunately this will stop the abuse we have been seeing, but it will also allow us to look into better ways to let you guys spread the word about Jigsaw. This won't be one of the features that we have right away in the new Jigsaw because we want to take the time to do an investigation into how we can make the program better. This isn't something you'll see right away, but it is on our roadmap.

May will be the last month for our referrals contest, so we'll be settling the contest and paying the winners over the next couple of weeks. You won't see the winners announced on the contest boards until the end of the month, but we will be announcing those folks.

I also want to remind our users who have referral badges on their LinkedIn profiles or email signatures to remove those so none of our new users are confused. Thanks!

[#10]

Appreciate the straightforward response, JS_C; remember everyone, let's not shoot the messenger...

[#11]

jigsaw reserves the right to cancel the Refer-a-Friend Program or to change these terms

***link removed***

[#12]

For those of us who use it to gain trust with our contacts, I am disheartened to learn of this.  I use jigsaw not only to find fresh leads, but to help my friends find new leads for their business as well.  I don't spam, instead I find new leads that I can market to here in Vegas and all around the country.

Sad to hear it is gone, but looking forward to a better alternative, and since some of us have no extra capital to purchase with cash, It will be that more difficult to market.