IMPORTANT UPDATE AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS OPINION!
I signed up for Mailround around a year ago whilst endeavouring to find and join every "make money" scheme on the net. If I remember rightly, an added incentive was a stash of beenz after registration (oh those were the days).
Goodness knows how many junk emails I have received from other "pay for email" programs but I was pleasantly surprised to find Mailround works in a completely different way. Instead of being regularly spammed with unwanted junk, a simple advert is placed on email you already send and receive.
HOW IT WORKS
On completing the simple registration process you download a small “mailman” program which sits happily on your task bar. When you either send or receive email the mailman leaps into action and starts stamping all the mail. The “stamps” are actually small adverts that sit alongside the text of the email. You can choose which kinds of ad you receive according to your interests such as shopping,
toys, sport, books etc. Whenever you send email to someone the mailman will ask you if you wish to stamp that email and this information is saved. This is useful for mailing lists as sometimes the list does not accept ads/graphics.
Clicking on the mailman in the task bar will reveal several options
Help
Spending my money
Stamps I receive
Stamps I send
www.mailaround.com
This means you have easy access to all the information about the program. You can customise the types of adverts people receive, so if Aunt May loves books for example, then she can receive the book stamps.
THE REWARDS
Rewards are split into 4
categories according to the amount of emails you send and receive. No actual figures are given as to how many email equate to the Platinum (Heaviest user), Gold (heavy), Silver (regular), and bronze (occasional) categories. The awards on an annual basis are shown as £500, £100, £70, £50 respectively according to the amount of revenue generated by Mailround.
These awards can be excanged for vouchers of £10, £20, £30 or £50 with the following places :-
Amazon.co.uk
Pizza Hut
Marriott Hotels
Marks and Spencer
Tesco
David Lloyd (whoever that is)
Children’s Aid direct (if you wish to donate to charity)
If you want a cheque from Mailround you need to save up £50 or £100
So – that’s all the details, what about my experience.
Well, unlike some users, I have never had trouble with the Mailman significantly slowing down my computer or crashing. Even reinstalling on a new computer proved no problem. However, I have always been very curious as to how many emails I need to send and receive to be classed as a “heavy” user. In all the months I have been with Mailround I have never received anything other than the obligatory £4 per month bronze award. This I find rather strange as I receive on average around 80 emails a day and sent around 20 a day. Er…I’m thinking that’s quite a lot of emails!
Despite this however it really is money for nothing so I thought perhaps I shouldn’t complain.
In June I finally discovered I’d passed the £10 goal so happily sent off for my Amazon voucher.
I received it a week later by email so was very pleased. However – my happiness turned to annoyance when I received the usual Mailround “Pay Day” email at the end of the month to be told that due to lack of
funds they hadn’t got enough money to pay Mailround users. I was a bit disgruntled but part of me knew that like so many
Internetreward programs, this could only last so long.
I carried on using the mailman through July but I have received an email today saying the following: -
“We regret that this month you will not be receiving a reward as the amount available for
rewards has once again not been sufficient to allocate a reward to all our users.
We understand if you now wish to unsubscribe from the service and uninstall your Mailman. To do this please follow these instructions…”
So, as usual all good things must come to an end. It is a shame really as this was an easy way of making a few pounds. At least I have got one book out of it. Receiving money for nothing really I cannot complain but one thing really does annoy me. If you go to the Mailman users site there is absolutely no indication that they are in financial trouble. They are still accepting people
signing up and the rates of pay remain the same. On visiting the Mailround company site (www.mailround.com) and clicking the news section, all you find is lots of press releases about new directors being appointed and general other glowing reports. Hmmmm…
Before this I would have definately given Mailround a high rating but now that payouts seem to have stopped I have rated it very poor.
Ah well – it was good whilst it lasted. I’m giving it one more month then I’ll be following the uninstall instructions!
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*UPDATE* I emailed Mailround after hearing some of you had received funds. They replied today saying I'm registered as a US user! How that happened I don't know because I registered as a UK user originally and the money I did receive was in British pounds! From what people are saying though, the funds
in the UK have gone down as £4 used to be the Bronze award rather than Silver. They have suggested I uninstall and unsubscribe although looking all over the site I cannot for the life of me see an unsubscribe/de-register button. Can I be bothered re-installing it?
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IMPORTANT UPDATE
I received the following email from Mailround this morning after someone from their company read my review here.
Hi,
As part of our on-going review of the Mailround service, we regularly read users
reviews on sites such as Ciao.com and Doyoo and I read with interest your reviews on both these sites.
It appears that there has been a mix-up with your country of registration as our records show that you are registered as a US user, although from your reviews this is incorrect and that you are in fact a UK user.
Our main business and community of Mailrounders is in the UK. Since we launched the service in mid 2000, every month our active UK users have received a reward.
We are continuing to attract new users and advertisers to this UK Mailround service, and are fully committed to growing this business and maintaining payouts with our user rewards programme.
In the US we have a community of Mailrounders which we treat totally separately from the UK Mailrounders. Unfortunately, as you are aware from the emails you've received (intended for US and Canadian residents!), the total amount of US$ available to allocate to US users was not sufficient to reward all US users. To try and rectify this, we are not accepting US registrations on our site at present.
We will change your records to reflect that you are a UK and not a US user and therefore should receive rewards again going forward.
We'd also be grateful if you could either withdraw or amend the incorrect elements of your review on Ciao.com and Dooyoo to reflect the UK Mailround service is very much alive and well. The success of this service is in no small part due to the continued support of our users and therefore, as I'm sure you can understand, it does not help to have inaccurate reviews on popular review services.
We do hope you continue to use the service. In the coming months, a number of new advertisers are lined up for the service and some great offers will be made available to all our users. And of course, monthly rewards will continue to be paid to UK users!
Many thanks
Bill Prew
Mailround
www.mailround.com
Stamped Out IMPORTANT UPDATE PLEASE READ 
