Pogo.com- Is It a Scam?
By: Blake
Many people are familiar with the popular game site Pogo.com. The site gives you a chance to win cash jackpots for free on a variety of games. The jack pots can be up to 4,999 dollars, but does pogo pay out.
I have done some searching online and have found that many people that have won a jackpot on pogo have not received their prize. The only reason pogo will not send a prize is if the winner has used some sort of cheat. There are many sites that have down-loadable software that will play the games on pogo for you, but pogo can recognize this and will not send your prize if a program like this is used by our account. A lot of people that have been denied their prize claim that they have never cheated, but who knows for sure. The cheat programs are widely available and free. Anyone can be using them and if pogo sees that your account has ever used a cheat then they will never send you a prize if you win.
But does pogo pay out? Well they are still in business, so they must be paying out. I know for a fact that they do though because my friend’s mother won over $400 playing the pop-it game. I personally have never won anything, yet. If I ever do I will make a post of it prize received or not.
What do you want for free? Pogo is a fun place to waste some time and chat with different people. If you have an interesting pogo experience please comment.
April 22nd, 2009 at 2:13 pm
As you know, EA now own Pogo.com. EA have always been and will always be completely incapable of any sort of decent customer service. They don’t care about their customers once they have the money in the bank, the recent debacle with Spore is proof of this. It takes a lawsuit for them to actually give a crap. As for them detecting cheat-bots on peoples computers, I don’t believe this rubbish for one second, EA can’t even make half of their games work properly, what makes you think that they could even muster up enough brainpower to detect something like that. The simple truth is, they don’t want to pay you and will lie to you to avoid doing so. EA DON’T CARE ABOUT CUSTOMERS, THEY ONLY CARE ABOUT MONEY.
November 11th, 2009 at 4:52 pm
I do not believe that Pogo can tell if you are using a program to cheat. I have an excellent Program on my computer that checks for tracking cookies, which i assume pogo would have to use, and i have yet to catch one from pogo. I believe whatever they used to monitor the software installed on my computer my firewall would block or my spyware would pick up.
I also do not believe that if they had the capability of actually determining if you had cheated, and had proof, that they would refuse to show you the proof, which is what they supposedly do. I myself have never won. I have also never given out my password and have never cheated. Well, I have occasionally googled letters for scrabble words when in a jam, but other than that i have not.
I honestly hope to one day win and have the win denied for cheating, then i will know for sure that they are lying, and I will start a massive class action lawsuit requiring all fees be returned and the site be free only from here on out. Until then, I can only base it on what others say. I believe pogo is the cheat.
February 10th, 2010 at 12:29 am
Hi, Chana. I have been researching Pogo and I find them very, very sketchy. I refuse to pay to play games, but since they have ‘jackpots’ it can be justified, I suppose.
Everything you have said about there being no tracking cookies makes a lot of sense to me.
I am taking criminal law classes at a university and while you can file a civil lawsuit against them, you need substantial proof first. So be sure to get that. A program that proves you did not cheat but monitoring all the activity on your computer. Also, if anyone ever gets this jackpot, and does not get paid because of this ‘you cheated by using a bot program’, and you did not, you need to contact a local newspaper. Reporters eat up this sort of thing.
I really can’t wait for this website to pay back everything they should pay back to the members that have won. I highly doubt all of these people are lying about all of this that is going on……
March 5th, 2010 at 1:12 am
Do you have to be a certain age to use this?
September 10th, 2010 at 12:10 am
I HAVE BEEN PLAYING ON POGO FOR 7 YEARS AND HAVE NEVER WON A THING. AS I HAVE ABOUT 30 MILLION TOKENS I FIND IT SUSPICIOUS THEY I HAVE NEVER WON A THING EXCEPT THE WORTHLESS WALLPAPERS AND SCREENSAVERS. I THINK THEY ARE A SCAM.
September 14th, 2010 at 9:09 pm
I won a jackpot on Aug 24th of 2010 of 3278.32 and pogo gave me the same thing. I cheated. I play Trivia(JP was in Trivia) and Word Search everyday at 8 am. I was told the same day I changed my birthdate and was called a liar when I said I never changed my birthdate. I know when I was born. So now I will never go into Pogo and play because they don’t pay jackpot winners. There is another woman that won the day before me 4999.00 and she has yet to get anything from Pogo. She is still showing her JP badge. They took mine from me.
badgehelper.com is part of Pogo. It has to be because they have a cheat the day before the actual game comes out. Do I trust them. I even faxed in my W9 as instructed with my social security on it. Lots of luck to anyone who wins. Maybe oneday they will honestly pay when someone wins.
I know they didn’t pay me.
October 9th, 2010 at 12:54 pm
How can we really find out for sure? I know people who say they did get paid. Then there are those who say they never got paid. Is there a way to have POGO PROVE they are legitimate?
October 20th, 2010 at 6:44 am
As far as the game client software being able to distinguish between actual input from a mouse click or simulated through another running program (auto-clicking). I know a little Windows programming, having done some myself. There is no way the Java app you are running (the Pogo game) can distinguish between the two. Mouse input generates what are called “events” which are then handled by Windows. Any other Windows software can also send these same events to your game and simulate mouse actions. As far as the software knows an event was triggered. What caused it it could care less and has no way of knowing. So if Pogo does have a way of proving the use of auto-click software, it is not by software detection. But possibly it is by the timing of the clicks, especially if clicking within a few milliseconds of the start of the opening time the next spin or whatever is available. And this being done repeatedly. Regardless, a report showing what your computer has done to disqualify you from your winnings should be given out. At the least.
February 2nd, 2011 at 7:30 pm
Resurrecting this thread about Pogo….
The latest problem with Pogo is the “Server is busy” screen and crashes and lags , I’m assuming are from the overloaded servers. Back in the day of AOL newness, a class action suit was won requiring AOL to pay off for people who paid for the service and weren’t able to use because their systems couldn’t handle the load of all the paid memberships. I think its time Electronic Arts was bit by that same reasoning. Wake up EA, if people won suing AOL over the very same type of thing, you could be next. Are the dollars you make really that precious to you ? If they are, I’d take a good look at throwing some hardware at your problems and taking away the risk that we might take our money back.
April 12th, 2011 at 4:07 pm
Here’s a thought no one has suggested…..If pogo claims that someone cheated by using some sort of software…then THEY must have the games rigged to prevent people from winning. And when someone does win…it’s a flaw in their system. If they can’t prove the activity on your account to show cheating has occurred….then how can they possibly know…other than the games are rigged.
June 25th, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Well, for everyone who thinks Pogo is a scam just because they haven’t won yet, that doesn’t mean their a scam. There are literarly 100,000’s of people playing and think of a drawing. Just your one ticket going against a bunch of 100,000’s tickets. The odds are very strong that you will not win. But, if they do make claims that you cheated so you don’t get the prize, but you don’t cheat, then they either made a mistake or yes they are a scam.
October 19th, 2011 at 11:57 am
If you really think playing for x amount of time should guarantee you a prize you are nuts. There are people who play the lottery their entire lives and never win it…That’s life.
As far as them proving if you are cheating, I noticed no one actually has a clue about the way their site runs. Way to guess there guys/gals lol. Especially the “criminal law student”. Good luck with your career, if you think you are going to get anywhere with that logic. Maybe you grew up a bit by now though?
There are many ways that can be used to detect cheating. Are they all fool-proof? Nope, but the chances are they are going to weed out way more people stealing than innocent people. Not always fair, but again, that’s life. It happens in all aspects of life.
And stop trying to contact the winners so you can see for yourself. Companies have literally had to set up systems that block incoming contacts so that these people aren’t harassed constantly,especially by scammers.
If you don’t trust the site, then don’t play. It’s as simple as that. Perhaps more importantly though, you should be playing for fun, otherwise you are just wasting your time. The odds are so low, that you’d be better off investing your time in a business.
By the way, you aren’t paying for jackpot spins, just additional games and features.
October 26th, 2011 at 11:30 am
i think they con people on a daily basis, there support service is corrupt too, waiting for a new games site to arrive im done with pogo!
November 21st, 2011 at 8:57 pm
I too have been playing games at Pogo.com and have never won a thing - I actually checked the list of recent winners and friended them, hoping I could send them a message to see if they truly did win the cash prize as indicated - go figure - NOT A SINGLE ONE of the newly friended recent winners list show as active or currently playing - I’ve checked several days now and it shows the same status for every single player/recent winner: “Not In A Game Room”.
I honestly think it’s illegal advertising and no cash prizes are ever given… What a sham! and a Shame too…
December 3rd, 2011 at 4:48 pm
I used to be a member and decided to quit because it seems a bit shady to me. Once their prices jumped up to $40 I believe it was I didn’t renew my payment with them. I never won anything, but of course wasn’t a pogo junkie neither. I had a friend who showed me a check that he got from them once for winning $1.00. That is all I seen. I have heard so many people say they never got paid and then some that say they have. To me the ones who say you get paid are the ones working for pogo to keep you coming back and paying in. That is an assumption on my part. You even have to pay for items you want to buy!! To me it just seems pogo uses you to pay in so they can make these great games. That is one thing I can say is they do have great games, but I think its a scam to get people to come in and play so THEY can make money off us. I got suspicious and just said no ty. If I play on pogo it is as a guest. Mainly I bought myself a Playstation 3 console and play games on there. They have soooo many games of different genre. I save my computer for more development stuff and a few games you can buy at the store to play on them.
Bottom line, don’t give Pogo a dime of your money or your SSI card, which I would never do. If less and less people go on their website to play games they would be hurting. Instead of second guessing if they pay you or not, just back out and find another website, or buy a gaming console.