Sole Society
Complaint 167217 Details

I was sent an email on 9/24 as part of Sole Society's member club that announced a contest of theirs called "Connect with your sole sisters." It promised a credit worth $49.95 for every twenty emails that I entered into their online form. These emails had to join the site and when they did, I would receive credit. The email said that everyone participating would receive one credit per twenty email addresses connected to, as many as we could in six days.

I connected with all the people I knew and a lot of other women that met over the Sole Society FB page and other pages that were created for the purpose of connecting with others for this promotion. Several of the women I connected with asked Sole Society reps many times over the days that we were collecting emails whether or not there was any limit to how many credits we could earn through connecting to emails as well as whether we could penalized in anyway. Each time, Sole Society employees assured us that there was no limit to the credits and we could only get penalized if we created duplicate accounts to cheat the system. We have numerous screenshots saved of these conversations.

I and others spent hours working on the email addresses and entering them into Sole Society's system one email at a time. By the end, I personally had somewhere around 350 emails total, connected to other ladies. The day of the end of the contest came (Sept 30th)and we heard nothing from Sole Society. I contacted Sole Society by phone Oct 2nd, and was told by a woman named Stephanie that they would credit our accounts by the end of the week. I received an email October 12th, 2012 that said the following:

"Unfortunately many participants in the Sole Sister Connection promotion created connections and accounts in a manner that was in violation of the promotional rules and spirit of the promotion. However, given the level of legitimate support we received from our community through the Sole Sister Connection promotion, we do not think it fair to disqualify participants affected by such connections from receiving a credit under the promotion. As such, Sole Society has added 1 credit for $49.95 to each member’s account who made connections under the Sole Sister Connection promotion. We appreciate your continued participation in the Sole Society community. Please be advised that the results of this contest are final."

I am obviously livid that Sole Society tricked thousands of women (or more, I have no idea how many women participated. I know a couple hundred myself)to work hours of promotional and marketing work for them for practically free. They lied, broke a contract with us and ripped off most of their members. By their email, terms and conditions, they owed me something like eighteen credits worth $49.95 each for a total of almost nine hundred dollars. I worked over twenty hours on their contest. At my company, where we are paid hundreds of dollars an hour to create communities like this, it would have cost Sole Society somewhere to the tune of $120,000 to hire a co. to do this, not mentioning the short turnaround (6 days). I would like to know what I can do punish this company for tricking me, my family and my friends into working for practically nothing while they received hundreds of dollars of sales from the marketing of the website as well as whatever customers we promoted bought before they received their credits.

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