We get this question asked a lot in the chat so I wrote up a textwall that puts together the arguments made by us at Lockerz-Scam. This wall will likely be updated every time a new argument pops up.
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Firstly, why is the word scam used? Scam is defined as profit from deceit; a deceitful or fraudulent act. Lockerz profits off of the users by advertisement views, profit margins from SHOP, and selling your opinions from Dailies to companies and marketing groups. By watching the advertisement prior to a Lockerz video, the advertisement company logs the watch and for every thousand or ten thousand views, Lockerz gets paid. By selling items like a PS3 from SHOP, Lockerz makes a profit because they do NOT pay $300 to SONY for the PS3 to resell. They make a profit off you just like normal stores like Best Buy or Walmart. The Dailies are sold to companies, most likely in bulk, to get an idea what will be the new fashion, what is Hot and Not, so they know how to market directly to teens. The teenage population is huge at this point and if advertisement companies know what items to promote, the larger the profits will be for the company they represent. We do the dailies, we watch the videos and Lockerz gets the payment. This covers the profit part of the definition. Deception comes next.
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When you first joined, you most likely heard or read about Lockerz’s easy redemption and they used the phrase “turn around and redeem your PTZ for incredible merchandise, unique experiences and exclusive deals and sales” to hook you into joining. Never did it mention anything about what a redemption was, how it was only monthly, and how you had a near 0% chance of redeeming a prize. Lockerz made themselves sound like a company that had a redemption system similar to the way SHOP works now. The majority of users on Lockerz thought it was just simply point and click on the prize you wanted and could be done at your leisure. No one was expecting to be forced into competition against every Lockerz user just to get a CHANCE at a prize. Lockerz made themselves out to be an easy redeeming site where things could be easily yours at a chance of 100%. It’s not until you join and spend 2 or 4 weeks where you learn how awful redemptions are and how your chances dropped from 100% to near 0%. However, in the span of the 2 or 4 weeks, chances are all the videos have been watched and dailies been answered. Since your chance of getting a prize is already exponentially low, they don’t have to worry about losing money because there’s a good chance you already quit by the time you endured 2 redemptions. They already profited off you so now they could care less. Thereby profit from deceit. Furthermore, PTZ expire 1 year after they are issued on a monthly basis. It’s very likely that unless you cave and buy from SHOP, your PTZ will disappear before you redeem. Also notice how no other site that offers prizes for doing services has expirations. Lockerz is the only site that has expiry dates on earned site currency.
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Going on about how they could care less about you, try sending e-mails to customer service. 3 of them came back as generic computer generated e-mails and 2 went unanswered. I e-mailed Kathy questions on Lockerz’s work ethic and views on users and I have not gotten a response. I resent it twice and still nothing. I think she blocked me. There are many cases so far about how people are getting shafted at Lockerz. Many people are saying they were accused of cheating when they bought from SHOP or their SHOP bought item went Out Of Stock so they will get refunds on both PTZ and money. So far, I have no reports on any refunds, all still pending.
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One thing in SHOP that seems to be happening a lot are You Cheated e-mails. Almost every person who has attempted to buy a game using PTZ alone that comes onto this site has told me about getting their PTZ removed and getting a You Cheated letter. Of course this has a bias due to people getting prizes would not come here. However, the point remains that there is an unnatural amount of You Cheated letters going around.
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Continuing on about cheating, if you read the Terms Of Service, they can deem any suspicious behaviour as cheating. They do not need any hard evidence about it. If they even suspect you have done anything wrong, regardless of it’s true or not, you can get your prize revoked and punished. Basically, Lockerz can say everyone at this redemption cheated and everyone loses their PTZ and their prize. They make the rules and they can do anything they want.
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When they do redemptions, very few people redeem. Otherwise redemptions would last longer than 1 minute. Starting from March of 2010, they declined in the amount of users, from an average of 600,000 to 370,000. Lockerz is losing its members due to poor business habits and terrible customer (user) relations. In fact, the Better Business Bureau (BBB), gave Lockerz an F. For those that do not know, BBB is an organization that rates the customer-business relations and every large chain company is listed. Anyone who does well by the BBB is generally a company that takes care of customer problems and listens. Now back to losing members. Lockerz has effectively lost over 200,000 active users yet they still have 1 minute redemptions. Anyone see the problem? You have fewer members than before yet all prizes are still gone at the same rate? That just means that there were far less prizes than we expected. If you decrease one variable and the result is the same, that means that either
1. You have not reached the equilibrium point where prizes last longer than 5 minutes.
2. Lockerz is decreasing the amounts of prizes as they lose members.
3. Lockerz has less than the expected thousands of prizes we were all led to believe.
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Even after they redeem, people must pray they don’t get the infamous “We Sold Out” e-mail where they say, “Yea you were fast, but you still weren’t fast enough so we sold out before you finished. You got the confirmation but now we revoke it from you. Have a nice day.” That is complimentary to their cheater rule and is justified by their Terms of Service. The fact that they can even do this, even if they are legally covered, shows poor business relations.
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A Z-list shirt? Wow congrats for falling for a marketing ploy. By them sending you a shirt, you will now go parading around in it and saying “Lockerz is legit. I got a shirt.” They could be completely a scam and people would fall for it now that there are people going around saying “No, it’s completely real because I got a shirt”. Not only does it prove a false legitimacy, it is an advertising ploy because now people who never would have joined or heard about Lockerz would now join because of you, allowing Lockerz to gain more profits. They even removed the Z-list shirt now because they probably do not want to set up a budget to allow Lockerz members to get more $2 shirts. They already peaked back in ‘09 so they have no need to promote Lockerz further. Most people who wanted to join already have and those who refuse to will not change their minds after all this negative criticism. They’re now being cheaper by not even offering a tangible item. From what I hear, Z-listers get an E-Survival Pack with a Lockerz Desktop. Just what we wanted, an ugly purple background.
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There are arguments that Lockerz is still in beta and how it will get better. Newsflash guys. Lockerz has been up for 1 year and 3 months now. Every month since the launch of PLAY, they have been seeing profits from your video views. You’d think that since now videos are helping fund Lockerz, that the prize budgets would increase and that redemption time would last longer. Well, obviously it hasn’t otherwise redemptions would last longer than a minute. Prizes that were less top tier like NDS or WII games would last longer than 1 minute. For 15 straight months, they have NOT had a redemption where top prizes have lasted longer than the normal 1 minute. I know that Lockerz was nice back in the first month or two before they went mass public advertising. I heard of many good things back then. Since it gained popularity, the prize ratio seemed to slip into 1:1000000. It’s clear that Lockerz cannot give away prizes as much as they promised and that’s why we are seeing so many people getting their prizes revoked even after a successful redemption.
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Finally, I’m hitting Lockerz’s FaceBook. Notice how your negative posts get deleted? Lockerz censors constructive criticisms, complaints, and any negative feedback in general. The Labs end up answering air because of all the deletion that goes on. To liken this to real life, it’s similar to Communism or the Black Oppression except with less violence. In American history, the government (White Man) would oppress the slaves (Black Man) and refuse free speech, although it was against the first amendment. Lockerz does the same. They allow you to post but short of 3 minutes, your post will be gone and you will be banned. Zgore has posted several times, some offensive, many not, and each of them were taken down and he was banned on every account made. Lockerz works like a communist party without governmental power.
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So most of you might be thinking, “Hey quit whining, it’s free!”
I complain that Lockerz redemption sucks. If they make money off me, I think I have a damn right to come out and complain and say “Hey, why do you see profits while I do services on your site and see no tangible results of my own? Why am I forced to go in competition on a blind date to even get a shot at seeing the results of my labour?” Granted getting PTZ is like getting dust in an unclean room, it just piles and piles. The point is, we have these stacks of PTZ and nothing to spend it on. I have enough for 99% of the stuff in PTZ Place and yet I can’t even get a single game on SHOP? Lockerz continues to see profits that if invested properly, could possibly fix PTZ Place itself and allow for a smooth redemption yet after 1 year and 3 months, we are still seeing 1 minute redemptions. It is quite obvious at this point that they don’t try to fix these when they can make you buy their overpriced crap at SHOP, especially since PTZ expirations are coming up.
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Another thing I hear a lot is “STFU IDIOTS!!! MY FRIEND/PERSON ON YOUTUBE/I GOT A PRIZE FROM LOCKERZ!!!! IT’S NOT A SCAM!”
I never said that they don’t give prizes. They do but the question is how many? Lockerz has advertised themselves as a 100% chance redeem site but through experience, every user can undeniably say that it is not true. They do give out prizes. The catch is, the amount of prizes is nowhere near suitable for the amount of active users on the site. Youtube has say 350 or so un-boxing videos and another 22,000 invite videos. The amount of un-boxing videos might not be a large chunk of the population of people who got prizes but Lockerz has been open for a year and 3 months now. You’d expect the number to exceed 1000 if they truly did give away as many prizes as they lead on. People who scream out so-and-so got a prize does not help the situation. Lockerz does not give out more prizes than they need to. If they needed a minimum of 100 prizes to be given out to keep up hype, they’d do so. If it were 1 prize, they’d only give out 1 prize. By you guys spreading person X got a prize, you are spreading around the message that Lockerz is easy where it clearly is not. Redemptions aren’t done to satisfy you. They are done to keep you believing that you will get a prize. They are done to keep up word-of-mouth advertising. There is no better publicity than positive reviews from a friend. If a friend vouches for Lockerz, the person is more likely to join and therefore Lockerz earns more profits while being able to NOT increase prize totals. Lockerz will continue to be a scam until they have made their system work like they had sold it to us: An easy to earn and redeem site.
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For all of you who seem to think I or any other writers on the site get a financial gain, think again. There are no advertisements on this site, except the ones built into WordPress which are impossible to remove. Since 2010 started, no one has attempted to recruit other sites or defer you guys to a site that might be in our best interest. I have yet to see any recent articles with a referal link. We don’t make any proits nor do we try to get you off Lockerz so there will be less people. Lockerz is already doing a good job at losing users. I’m simply here to lay down what Lockerz is, what Lockerz has done, and what Lockerz doesn’t want you to know. The site offers a rebellious voice against the opressing Lockerz company and allows new members or soon-to-be new members to know what they are getting into. This site is simply a forum where people can find out what Lockerz does to its users and allows you the opportunity to speak your mind.

                          

Day: April 15, 2010
Time: 6:52 PM EDT (GMT -5:00)

So here’s my personal experience. It started at 6:52 and got in at 6:54 PM. Well, we all know what can happen in 2 minutes at a Lockerz redemption. I go in and find no electronics left except wallpapers and earphone covers. I then head over to the Brands We Love page and find only Snowboards left. Wow. 2 minutes… In 2 whole minutes, almost everything was emptied out. Needless to say, I just closed the tab and went back to Youtube.

Some people had problems with this redemption. I heard from several people that during the first 30 seconds, there was a technical error. Their ability to log in sent them to an internet connection error page. They then had to return to the log in page and re-log in. Well, that seemed to take them a few costly seconds because when they got in, they saw pretty much the same thing I saw. Junk remaining.

My good friend Zgore did redeem a Lockerz thermos. Head there to see his take on it if you’re interested. There’s a special little video waiting for you at the end of his article.
Zgore redeemed + VID
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Restock just finished.

Date: April 29, 2010
Time: 6:37 PM EDT (GMT -5:00)
Duration: 32 or 33 minutes

It’s 8 minutes in and only thing remaining is the iMac, a Ruffian Scarf, $500 PayPal and a bunch of Lockerz brand crap. We know iMac and the PayPal aren’t going anywhere. No one has the amount of PTZ needed to get them. This redemption was over when it started. 2 minutes and the only thing that was left were Baggu bags, Lockerz exclusive items, DVD’s, Wallpapers and Earphone covers.

So there are several people I’ve talked to who said they were there for the first minute. No technical issues this time.
They do say that even in the first minute, the only thing that remained were SOME games, headphones, wallpaper, Lockerz Exclusives, and Brands We Love crap. Even people in the first minute did NOT see an iTouch or other high ticket items. Hmm, makes you think how much stock they really have on the iTouch (or if they even have any at all :O).
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So here are a few things I noticed. This time around, the selection of prizes weren’t exactly the same as the Spring Fling Redemption. This time, there were no snowboards and the Brands We Love weren’t the same as last time. There also seemed to be less movies this time around. If you guys took time to notice, the PTZ Place catalogue is much larger than the redemption store. I also noticed Guarantee Your Prize has been removed. I wonder why things are missing. Could it be because they don’t have stock on that stuff anymore? If that’s true, then maybe they don’t have stock on iTouches. Maybe they just leave the picture of iTouches up just to show that, “Hey you were too slow this time. Maybe try again next month.” Sounds like one of this rigged carnivals doesn’t it? Well, that’s just speculation.

This time around, I thought the timing was pretty good. Seems I was wrong. On the East Coast of North America means you are likely to be in the GMT -5:00 or -4:00 range. The redemption would have been 6:37 or 7:37 respectively. Sounds nice to us on the Eastern end. West end however, is 3 hours behind us. That means West Coast would have been 3:37. I forgot that many schools do not end at 3:00. It seems that there are quite a few people who missed it because they leave school at 3:30. 7 minutes after school ended, redemption started. Lockerz still has work to do on timing redemptions but accepting Canada and US as a pair was the right start. Now maybe if they can fix time issues and stock issues, Lockerz will be good to go.
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This is a new section I thought might be fun. I was in the chatroom and PerryJoe posted a funny Lockerz Facebook Quote. I lost it in the posting wave but it gave me the idea to make a story/quotes from users section. The following are quotes taken directly from Lockerz’s Facebook page right after redemption and a few from the users in the chatroom. There have been no altercations to the quotes (Which explains the lack of correct grammar, punctuation, spelling, etc.). You also probably won’t find these anymore on their Facebook wall. They are notorious for taking down comments that badmouth Lockerz in any way, even constructive criticism. So enjoy:
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“I spent all last night and all tonight on the computer and i get up for 2 mins to eat and i miss it… FML!”
“o man you serious why is it gone I LIVE IN CANADA when i go to ptz it say prize redemption soon !!!! BUT I LIVE IN CANADA MAN CANADA !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! plz can anyone tell me what happend”
“I would advise everyone to wait for the shop instead of losing sleep over a redemption that lasts 10 seconds.”
“Lockerz, quit dicking around and launch the fucking site already so there’s 24/7 redeeming.”
“They need to make this redemption “LONGER” And have more “STOCK”"
“for the majority of the redemptions you’ve made it impossible for people attending school on the west coast to attend, it’s honestly really annoying.”
“I missed it WTF?! and im even more pissed off because i was w8ing from 5pm to 6:30pm when i signed off. Now i come on and see the message saying the redemption is over!”
“what if im at school that time?:S”
“i’m with you dude, i would gladly quit Lockerz if SHOP is a fail. Which means everything else is a fail too.”
“well i missed it when i took a shower”
“Same here. Lockerz is nothing but excuses. And lockerz deleting comments? WTF”
“I WATESED MY WHOLE TIME LOOKING FOR THE FLIP THAT THEY PROMISED ME WAS GONNA BE THERE CUZ IT WAS ” BACK BY POPUALR DEMAND”. FIRST I WENT TO ELECTORNICS LOOKED THERE, ITS WASNT THERE SO I WENT TO FAVORITE BANDS AND IT WASNT THREREE AND BY THE TIME I WAS DONE EVERYTHING WAS FRESH OUT.”
“WTF lockerz you said you would do it at a convienient time… did you forget about west coast???? omfg u started it at 3:30 thats when i get out of school. If you had done it an hour after even it would have fit everyone’s time. now i have to wait ANOTHER month.”
“ughh i tried logging in during the US redemption and it didnt let me log in i had the US as my country and everything UGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH”
“wth i tried to freakin reedem a freakin game but lockerz didn’t let me nd ma friend filled up a form nd when he click “reedem” nothin happens.”
“yeah its pretty bad how either stuff goes fast in redemption or your not really stocking everything you claim to stock i was quite literally on lockerz 40 hours since monday and now this occurs i receivevd a phone call 60 seconds after redemption occured one min after you posted ur update to the lockerz page and i dont believe the prizes went the … See More fast your company is making plenty of money off of advertisements till a point where we want to puke but you cannot even reply to us on facebook to allieviate some rumors but instead you sit and dow hatever it is you do LOCKERZ is making it impossible for the average person who has a life to enjoy the fruits of watching videos which in fact pay for at least some of your bills its disapointing but im not going to get all wound up over prizes ill just get a job and buy it with my own real money”
Dsi2play: “I refreshed lockerz for two days and was lucky enough to get into the redeemption but after selecting my prize (mario olypics) i enter my info and clicked redeem and geuss what nothing my points didnt go down or anything i as booted back to the main menu”

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The International Redemption has been delayed to the 30th due to technical issues. They failed on the 29th so they did promise a rerun the next day. Since I can’t be there, I won’t be reporting it. If you have an experience in the international redemption, please feel free to write post your experience.

                          

Well reading over Lockerz Terms of Service I just happened to notice there last term. This term is in a set of several other terms that apply to redeeming PTZ. The very last term is in a Larger font then all the other terms in that set. It reads, “LOCKERZ SHALL NOT BE LIABLE FOR ANY LOSS OR DAMAGES (INCLUDING, WITHOUT LIMITATION, DIRECT, INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES) TO A MEMBER OR ANY THIRD PARTY, INCLUDING FOR PERSONAL INJURY, DEATH OR PROPERTY DAMAGE, ARISING OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH A MEMBER’S REDEMPTION OF PTZ FOR MERCHANDISE, EXPERIENCES OR OTHERWISE.” Now what this means is that if in any way you are harmed and/or killed due to the redemption that it is not Lockerz fault. Now yes they need to to have these terms to avoid getting sued, but this seems very specific to you getting killed over something like a redemption. If the most people got something in redemption then there would be no need for this term, but Lockerz knows just how hard it is to get a prize from redemption. This is why they added this term, because they make such a hype about restock and only put a few items in the restock. They know it is so hard that people might even be killing each other in order to redeem, or camping out for hours or even days, which people have done, and die of lack of sleep. Looking at other prize sites, none have a rule like this that is so specifically directed to getting a harmed and/or killed trying to redeem a prize.

                          

This is the proof

Lockerz has been officially proven as a scam.

                          

We all thought we could get nice stuff like iPods, PSPs, and games consoles, just to name a few. All that was needed to be done is to go to www.lockerz.com, login and answer a very simple question to get 4 points, 8 if you are on the Z-List. Do that each day and in about a month you have enough points that can be redeemed for these cool gadgets. All for free. No fees whatsoever.

Doesn’t this sound great?

Sure it does, but apparently this does not work out as well as people would have hoped. I have tried endlessly to redeem my points for many months. I could not get anything from their site. Any item that I wanted to redeem become unavailable at the moment when I click the redeem button, however if you go to the previous page, the item is still available to redeem. This is very shady. I have heard from people that they had the same experience in the previous restocks. If I find out they’re legit, fine, but they definitely are ignorant, if they can’t get their act together after the 6th restock.

Please post your comments and share your experiences with lockerz.com.

                          

Wikipedia has deleted the Lockerz article, and I got a screenshot, and the URL.

More fingers are being pointed, and for the right reasons. I think they’re starting to get cornered. Help get the word out, because they are still growing, don’t let them!