Shock the money - don't bother! (treeloot.com)

Member Name: Retron

Product:	treeloot.com
Date:	30/07/01 (93 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: You can earn extra bucks due to a bug

Disadvantages: Time waster, Unexciting rewards, Annoying pop-ups

Last year, I started to see banner adverts on lots of sites advertising Treeloot; all you had to do was punch the monkey. Since then, they've toned down the adverts (pah) - you now have to 'shock' the monkey instead. If you look closely, you'll see the advert says 'Shock the Monkey (tm) and win $20*'. Well, that * seems to mean 'and then waste time clicking on an imagemap and viewing adverts'. Funnily enough, the ad *doesn't* explain the meaning of the *.

The $20 isn't real, of course - it's 20 bananabucks, a sort of virtual currency that you can use to get such thrilling rewards as a 'free' cell phone and discounts at the casino which seems to supply all of their banner adverts. The top rewards are a toy monkey for 1800 bananabucks and a cheap looking digital watch for 2100 bananabucks. You collect bananabucks by clicking on the imagemap of a tree - every few hundred clicks, you'll actually win some more (while having numerous pop-ups appearing). In theory, you can win real money by clicking in the right spot - however, the odds of this are vanishingly small. There is a nice bug in all this, though - if you fill in their survey form (which pops up every 50 clicks or so) you can collect 350 bucks each time. After 1/2 an hour or so, you'll have enough for both of the top prizes - not that I'm expecting to receive them. If you play normally - well, you might have enough points for one of those monkey bean bag toys after a couple of weeks.

Overall, Treeloot will waste as much of your time as you are willing to give - just don't expect to win anything.

Summary: