“Imminent” Return of Big Crumbs, but Not Yet!

I just got this email from Big Crumbs – before I even analyze it, I thought I’d share it!

Hello Kat,
I hope all is well with you! I am writing with a couple of pieces of important news.

First, we’d aggressively aimed for a BigCrumbs site return on Monday, March 2, 2015. Turns out that, as is typical for software folks, that proved a little too aggressive. Our return is still imminent, but we’d shifted our focus to ensuring that member payments were sent on time yesterday, given some changes we’d made to our back-end.

We also want to ensure that we’re delivering to you the best possible experience upon our return. So, we hesitate to set another date at this point (better to surprise than disappoint), however, we are working around the clock and members will be the first to know when we’ve returned!

On the subject of payments, all were sent on time yesterday to members whose PayPal accounts were verifiable (i.e. in good standing and with PayPal account information matching their BigCrumbs information). This is our standard payment process, which means there’s always a small percentage of members who need to update their accounts to receive payment. We encourage those who require verification to do so as soon as the site is available, using our new, easier, process.

The other news is that we are changing our pay cycle. Specifically, we will continue to pay monthly, however, we’ll now be paying an additional month in arrears. This means that payments for cash back earned in January will be paid at the end of April (instead of March). Cash back earned in March will be paid at the end of June, and so on.

Why Is Our Payment Cycle Changing?

For the 9+ years that BigCrumbs has been in business, we’ve always sought to pay our members as quickly as possible, however, this has exposed us to significant loss (for instance, when returns were made after we’d paid members). Additionally, because merchants generally have a slower pay cycle to us than our payment cycle with members, it meant that we’ve been paying up to 50% of member earnings from money we’d yet to receive from merchants. In effect, we advanced members significant sums every month. That’s no small feat nor small risk for any business!

Of course, this is why no competitor of which we’re aware has ever done this and they probably would think us slightly insane for taking that risk all of these years! However, while, we’ve enjoyed offering that benefit to members, we’re now moving to a payment cycle that provides more time for returns/reversals to settle, as well as for BigCrumbs’ to receive merchant payments.

Other programs simply don’t make your earnings payable to you until they’ve been paid by the merchant. However, we believe this to be too unpredictable and/or confusing for members, because merchants pay on different schedules. So, instead, we believe it best to stay with a predictable schedule upon which members can rely for all of their earnings.

So, this change will be reflected in our Terms of Service upon our return.

It’s been a strange time for BigCrumbs. I know that many have been concerned about our viability and their pending payments for the last two months. I hope that our maintaining our on-time payment schedule in the midst of everything has helped to assuage some of those concerns. And, I want to assure you personally that your earnings are safely protected and that we are still very much in this fight!

Respectfully,

Vince Martin
Founder & CEO
BigCrumbs.com