If this really is a free $50 -- really no catch—why is ING Direct doing it? And if they expect to profit from it, on average, why should I extend them $50 of credit for 50 days, which is what I’m doing when I donate $50 in anticipation of ING “paying me back”?
This sounds like the kind of thing where they will put up enough inconveniences to people who merely want the $50 so that enough of them will give up in trying to get it.
Reminds me of their commercials:
“Who’s that?” Oh, ING Direct is an online bank that works to minimize your costs... ”I know what ING Direct is. I mean, who’s that sucker who expects free money from a bank?”
I agree that in general these kinds of things don’t work. That’s why I wrote the extended footnote explaining that I’ve used this company for 10 years and had 20 friends sign up for it, that none of us have ever been charged any fees, etc. I wouldn’t just recommend any random online deal without knowing it worked.
Also, if you know how competitive online ad pricing for banking are, it’s easy to understand how the cost to acquire a new customer for ING via advertising is easily > $50. But they’re a smart, progressive, company so they’re fine paying you directly if you sign up without having to be advertised heavily to.
If this really is a free $50 -- really no catch—why is ING Direct doing it?
They are incentivising the creation of accounts. Probably because somewhere along the line, profit was measured by accounts. Lost purposes, Goodhart’s Law, etc.
ING has been offering permutations of this deal for close to a decade. If it was that unprofitable for them in the aggregate, they would have stopped doing it by now.
A measure affected by Goodhart’s law doesn’t lose all its value—schools measure password retention, but kids still end up educated, and so forth. “Accounts created” is a good enough measure to remain profitable giving away ~50 dollars. My comment was intended to get people to realise this isn’t a scam; this is intentionally placing yourself in the ‘acceptable losses for ING’ category.
Schools are different; they have little or no incentive to do well. Lots of people have horror stories of how comically bad their early education was, but how many of those schools went out of business later?
ING has been offering permutations of this deal for close to a decade.
Okay, this is an example of what counts as relevant evidence, and is easy to substantiate too. (Your second sentence is unnecessary and doesn’t follow, though.)
Nevertheless, TANSTAAFL. The incentive here is being paid for in other ways, and you’d need to determine the opportunity costs of that money going somewhere else instead.
There is totally such thing as a free lunch and this post is evidence of such. The incentive is being paid for with the free money ING generates in their magic vaults of fractional reserve banking.
I was being serious but with a mocking tone in the first paragraph.
The question was sincere, I wasn’t sure what opportunity cost nick was referring to and especially confused by his use of the word “need”. His response cleared that up by making it clear that he was knocking the financial system as a whole, which I agree is insane, yet it somehow continues to work in one of the very real examples of magic in everyday life.
Also, they might be taking advantage of people being unlikely to bother to delete the account, so there’s some reasonable chance that the account will actually be used.
I’m assuming that creating an account is very cheap for them.
This sounds like the kind of thing where they will put up enough inconveniences to people who merely want the $50 so that enough of them will give up in trying to get it.
And in this case, you are wrong. Sometimes a free lunch is a free lunch. And sometimes you can get paid $15/hour to work part-time from the convenience of your home with no catch. Two very real companies (one publicly traded on NASDAQ) hire for these very real positions.
Just because something pattern matches as a scam doesn’t make it a scam.
And if they expect to profit from it, on average, why should I extend them $50 of credit for 50 days, which is what I’m doing when I donate $50 in anticipation of ING “paying me back”?
Can’t you donate $47.50 to SIAI and keep the extra money to pay yourself back for interest?
Two very real companies (one publicly traded on NASDAQ) hire for these very real positions.
That is at least as hard for me to substantiate as the very claim in question, and doesn’t look like a “too good to be true” opportunity in the first place.
Can’t you donate $47.50 to SIAI and keep the extra money to pay yourself back for interest?
1) It’s not the interest I’m worried about; it’s the principle (pun intended). (The interest would be practically nothing anyway.)
2) I have donated to SIAI already, several times this amount; I just don’t mention it at every opportunity.
3) The question is whether I should donate a marginal $50 in anticipation of getting $50 from ING, under the assumption this is nearly costless to me. “Why don’t you just donate ~$50 to SIAI?” is non-responsive to that question, and makes me wonder why you got voted up, as did the praise of that suggestion.
Especially if you keep some money for yourself, it’s a good deal. Setting up the account is a minor inconvenience, so a disproportionate number of people are not going to do anything about this. Taking a cut for yourself allows you to take whatever cut you want to overcome said inconvenience: if you think it’s about 10 dollars annoying, you keep 10 dollars, and then 40 (80) goes to SIAI.
The compensation cancels out with the annoyance, and you’re left with fuzzies.
That is why I praised and upvoted it, but I don’t think it’s what User:Kevin intended. I think he intended to answer your question
why should I extend them $50 of credit for 50 days
with “you get $2.50”. I believe this intended meaning is obvious because he quoted your question and provided an answer in the form of a situation where you get $2.50.
Especially if you keep some money for yourself, it’s a good deal.
It seems to me that either it it’s better for SIAI to have the money, in which case it’s a worse deal, or it’s better for you to have it, in which case keeping all of it is the best deal. I don’t see why keeping some of it would be optimal.
There is a third case that may occur: you don’t sign up, nobody gets the money. From all perspectives this is a bad thing. If you pay yourself some money, you decrease the proportion of “no money” to add to the proportion of “SIAI gets money”. Keeping 5% means the SIAI gets 95 dollars (matched) instead of 100 - but if it makes a significant dent in the chances of the SIAI getting 0 dollars then the expected outcome is higher for paying yourself than it is for sending it all to the SIAI.
That said, you could use this justification to overcome the inconveniences, and re-evaluate at the moment of donating to the SIAI, and decide to donate the full amount.
My entire objection is that I don’t think I will get the $50, (“It’s not the interest I’m worried about; it’s the principle.”), either by ING not giving it, or by requiring me to spend $50 worth of my time.
Do you now see why arguments that assume ING acceptably comes through are therefore non-responsive? (Because it’s frankly taking a while.)
My entire objection is that I don’t think I will get the $50
Could you elaborate on why? “ING not giving it” is unlikely, “requires >$50 of my time” seems unlikely—the website in question says it will take 5 minutes to sign up, each of the three transactions will take ~5 minutes, donating will take ~5 minutes, spending or transferring the bonus $50 down the line will take ~5 minutes… that’s half an hour. So please, I would like to know why you don’t think you will get the $50.
Can we first agree that given my position, the points you were actually arguing in an attempt to change my mind were not relevant?
With that said, the evidence provided by Rain and Kevin indicate that that is a non-sleazy offer, so the only question is whether this is worth my time. And I think you’ve significantly underestimated the time this will actually take (since you can’t do all of that in a batch) and my time value/hour. Still worth considering though.
Can we first agree that given my position, the points you were actually arguing in an attempt to change my mind were not relevant?
Sure. I figured since the top level post specified in a footnote that it was genuine and not at all sleazy, and both top level posts and Louie have good track records, you must have had some other reason. Of course, if you value your time much higher than I do, you might need comparatively more evidence to be convinced of that.
ING does this all the time. I created my account years ago with another $50 promotion. I got an email from them for a different $50 promotion a few months ago. It’s consistently mentioned on sites such as Get Rich Slowly as a simple way to make some money, and has proven out time and again.
From the link:
So, neat (I’m going to apply and donate), but it’ll be too late to be matched.
ETA: *facepalm*
Isn’t it obvious to use $50 you currently have in exchange for the $50 bonus?
Isn’t it obvious that should send up a red flag?
If this really is a free $50 -- really no catch—why is ING Direct doing it? And if they expect to profit from it, on average, why should I extend them $50 of credit for 50 days, which is what I’m doing when I donate $50 in anticipation of ING “paying me back”?
This sounds like the kind of thing where they will put up enough inconveniences to people who merely want the $50 so that enough of them will give up in trying to get it.
Reminds me of their commercials:
“Who’s that?”
Oh, ING Direct is an online bank that works to minimize your costs...
”I know what ING Direct is. I mean, who’s that sucker who expects free money from a bank?”
(sorry, can’t find a link atm)
I agree that in general these kinds of things don’t work. That’s why I wrote the extended footnote explaining that I’ve used this company for 10 years and had 20 friends sign up for it, that none of us have ever been charged any fees, etc. I wouldn’t just recommend any random online deal without knowing it worked.
Also, if you know how competitive online ad pricing for banking are, it’s easy to understand how the cost to acquire a new customer for ING via advertising is easily > $50. But they’re a smart, progressive, company so they’re fine paying you directly if you sign up without having to be advertised heavily to.
They are incentivising the creation of accounts. Probably because somewhere along the line, profit was measured by accounts. Lost purposes, Goodhart’s Law, etc.
ING has been offering permutations of this deal for close to a decade. If it was that unprofitable for them in the aggregate, they would have stopped doing it by now.
A measure affected by Goodhart’s law doesn’t lose all its value—schools measure password retention, but kids still end up educated, and so forth. “Accounts created” is a good enough measure to remain profitable giving away ~50 dollars. My comment was intended to get people to realise this isn’t a scam; this is intentionally placing yourself in the ‘acceptable losses for ING’ category.
Schools are different; they have little or no incentive to do well. Lots of people have horror stories of how comically bad their early education was, but how many of those schools went out of business later?
Okay, this is an example of what counts as relevant evidence, and is easy to substantiate too. (Your second sentence is unnecessary and doesn’t follow, though.)
Nevertheless, TANSTAAFL. The incentive here is being paid for in other ways, and you’d need to determine the opportunity costs of that money going somewhere else instead.
There is totally such thing as a free lunch and this post is evidence of such. The incentive is being paid for with the free money ING generates in their magic vaults of fractional reserve banking.
What opportunity cost?
You’re confusing me; are you being sarcastic in the first paragraph and your question supposed to imply a knock-down argument against the preceding?
I was being serious but with a mocking tone in the first paragraph.
The question was sincere, I wasn’t sure what opportunity cost nick was referring to and especially confused by his use of the word “need”. His response cleared that up by making it clear that he was knocking the financial system as a whole, which I agree is insane, yet it somehow continues to work in one of the very real examples of magic in everyday life.
That of all the money devalued by the inflation caused by printing money.
Also, they might be taking advantage of people being unlikely to bother to delete the account, so there’s some reasonable chance that the account will actually be used.
I’m assuming that creating an account is very cheap for them.
And in this case, you are wrong. Sometimes a free lunch is a free lunch. And sometimes you can get paid $15/hour to work part-time from the convenience of your home with no catch. Two very real companies (one publicly traded on NASDAQ) hire for these very real positions.
http://www.lionbridge.com/lionbridge/en-US/company/web-site/internet-assessors.htm
http://www.leapforceathome.com/qrp/public/jobs/list;jsessionid=3FD3AD716E1CDBE18B1C6ECEDFB7820A.lf-prod-03-2209
Just because something pattern matches as a scam doesn’t make it a scam.
Can’t you donate $47.50 to SIAI and keep the extra money to pay yourself back for interest?
I submit that this should be added to the top level post.
That is at least as hard for me to substantiate as the very claim in question, and doesn’t look like a “too good to be true” opportunity in the first place.
1) It’s not the interest I’m worried about; it’s the principle (pun intended). (The interest would be practically nothing anyway.)
2) I have donated to SIAI already, several times this amount; I just don’t mention it at every opportunity.
3) The question is whether I should donate a marginal $50 in anticipation of getting $50 from ING, under the assumption this is nearly costless to me. “Why don’t you just donate ~$50 to SIAI?” is non-responsive to that question, and makes me wonder why you got voted up, as did the praise of that suggestion.
I upvoted and praised it because it’s a good point regardless of its irrelevance.
Then would you please elaborate on what about it is a good point? I don’t understand if your point is that
even if you keep some money for yourself, it’s a good deal; or,
you should donate ~$50 to SIAI anyway, even if this deal didn’t exist, jerk-face; or,
hey, by advancing the $50, you can take advantage of the doubling; or,
something else entirely
as well as why you believe that intended meaning was obvious.
Especially if you keep some money for yourself, it’s a good deal. Setting up the account is a minor inconvenience, so a disproportionate number of people are not going to do anything about this. Taking a cut for yourself allows you to take whatever cut you want to overcome said inconvenience: if you think it’s about 10 dollars annoying, you keep 10 dollars, and then 40 (80) goes to SIAI.
The compensation cancels out with the annoyance, and you’re left with fuzzies.
That is why I praised and upvoted it, but I don’t think it’s what User:Kevin intended. I think he intended to answer your question
with “you get $2.50”. I believe this intended meaning is obvious because he quoted your question and provided an answer in the form of a situation where you get $2.50.
It seems to me that either it it’s better for SIAI to have the money, in which case it’s a worse deal, or it’s better for you to have it, in which case keeping all of it is the best deal. I don’t see why keeping some of it would be optimal.
There is a third case that may occur: you don’t sign up, nobody gets the money. From all perspectives this is a bad thing. If you pay yourself some money, you decrease the proportion of “no money” to add to the proportion of “SIAI gets money”. Keeping 5% means the SIAI gets 95 dollars (matched) instead of 100 - but if it makes a significant dent in the chances of the SIAI getting 0 dollars then the expected outcome is higher for paying yourself than it is for sending it all to the SIAI.
That said, you could use this justification to overcome the inconveniences, and re-evaluate at the moment of donating to the SIAI, and decide to donate the full amount.
My entire objection is that I don’t think I will get the $50, (“It’s not the interest I’m worried about; it’s the principle.”), either by ING not giving it, or by requiring me to spend $50 worth of my time.
Do you now see why arguments that assume ING acceptably comes through are therefore non-responsive? (Because it’s frankly taking a while.)
Could you elaborate on why? “ING not giving it” is unlikely, “requires >$50 of my time” seems unlikely—the website in question says it will take 5 minutes to sign up, each of the three transactions will take ~5 minutes, donating will take ~5 minutes, spending or transferring the bonus $50 down the line will take ~5 minutes… that’s half an hour. So please, I would like to know why you don’t think you will get the $50.
Can we first agree that given my position, the points you were actually arguing in an attempt to change my mind were not relevant?
With that said, the evidence provided by Rain and Kevin indicate that that is a non-sleazy offer, so the only question is whether this is worth my time. And I think you’ve significantly underestimated the time this will actually take (since you can’t do all of that in a batch) and my time value/hour. Still worth considering though.
Sure. I figured since the top level post specified in a footnote that it was genuine and not at all sleazy, and both top level posts and Louie have good track records, you must have had some other reason. Of course, if you value your time much higher than I do, you might need comparatively more evidence to be convinced of that.
ING does this all the time. I created my account years ago with another $50 promotion. I got an email from them for a different $50 promotion a few months ago. It’s consistently mentioned on sites such as Get Rich Slowly as a simple way to make some money, and has proven out time and again.
Thanks for pointing out this fix.