6dgr is a Pyramid scam that may cost you bigtime

Please excuse the length of this post, but the information I discovered while researching 6dgr raised serious concerns in my mind that go way beyond whether you will be scammed out of your affiliate payments, and may venture into territory where you could seriously wreck your credit and finances. If I can save this from happening to only one person from the detail of this post, it was well worth the extra time spent researching and typing on my end, and hopefully the reading end on their part. This is not your average “I didn’t get paid” scam issue.

I was recently asked by a friend to look over and review a program I had never heard of called 6dgr, or 6 degrees of separation. 6dgr claims to be a social networking site where you get paid to be social. I went to their site, and registered for what they claim is a free account. You do not become an active member immediately; you must add payment information in order to be eligible to earn anything using this service. Due to their policies and their terrible payment plan system, I would not consider this site to be “free to join” or a good opportunity in any way.

Free to join to the average person is being able to join and use a service without any mandatory cost to them at any point. It may be free to sign up and be "inactive" at 6dgr, but that does you zero good. If you want to make money using the 6dgr service, you will have mandatory fees from someplace due to the demands of their payment system. 6dgr does NOT accept any of the common free payment systems such as Paypal or Alertpay for anyone in the US. Unless you don't mind paying fees on financial products just to be able to promote this site to someone else that will also have to pay the same fees; you may want to rethink using 6dgr. The only three options for US residents to be paid by this company *at this time* are:

* Sign up for a loan with a minimum balance of $1000
* Apply for a prepaid debit card that has a cost of $9.99 a month
* Apply for a credit card 6dgr selects, and pay the fees and interest rates on it
* (Does this seem free to you?)

Unless you are already looking to get another credit card or loan and don’t mind them choosing which one you need to have, this is not a good deal. If you really need a credit card or loan you would do much better to shop around, and pick the one that has the rates and terms you need; and not what will pay the most commission to 6dgr. Chances are that these products have much higher interest rates and worse terms than what you could get through other means.

The prepaid debit card will not only charge you $9.99 a month to remain a member; but you will also be charged a onetime fee of $5 for being issued the card, and they will further take an additional 5% of every transaction you make with the card from your balance for each purchase. This is definitely the way to go if you do use 6dgr; because it is the only option which you are not tied to long term and does not impact your credit score. If it isn’t working out, you can cancel the card and cut your losses with no long term consequences. Of course, you will also have to be recruiting a ton of people to be able offset your fees for it to be worth what the card will cost you.

Chances are very high that you will end up paying out much more on fees and interests for these financial products than you could ever hope to earn back. Like most Pyramid schemes, there may be a few people who are legitimately making a little bit of money at this time using this system simply because it is new. But this is not sustainable income over time, and that money will soon dry up and come to an end. What will not come to an end are the fees and interest you will paying on your new credit cards and loans.

Why do I say that this is not sustainable? Let’s just speculate for a minute that you have referred me to 6dgr and I have signed up, and applied for a loan or card I probably did not want or need just so I could participate too. Great, you just earned a few bucks. But how many more loans and credit cards do you think I am going to want to get down the road? You have now made all that you are going to make from me, and to make any more you will have to find another mark for this scam. That may be much harder than you think.

Most people will flat out not be interested in something like this at all. How many people do you know right now in this economy that are in the market for new loans and credit cards? And if they are, why should they get one online from 6dgr, instead of someplace else? I have all the credit cards I need; and if I want a loan I will go to my local credit union that I can visit in person, where I have a line of credit and a personal history. I do not want a loan from some online company that I have never heard of. Selling financial products like this is tough, because many people are very picky regarding their credit, and what credit products they will use. Additionally, most of the people that are interested in offers like this just won’t qualify for credit offers because they will tend to be the less informed users of credit that probably have low scores due to poor choices.

As far as those that may be taken in as marks for this scam offer, the competition to recruit them will be intense. The longer this program continues; the more reps there will be that are seeking to recruit new people for it. Because the number of those people is limited and they probably don’t get new loans and credit cards every week; there will quickly come a point where there is nobody left to recruit, and nothing left to be done but pay your new fees and interest rates.

Another huge issue for me is that if you will scroll back up you will note I marked the words *at this time* when talking about the ways to be paid with asterisks. I would like to touch on that a little bit further, as it gives me biggest reason to be very wary of this program. While doing research on 6dgr, I found that the systems that different people had stated were available for payment did not agree with each other, or with what was posted on the website currently. After reading the 6gdr FAQ, I found my answer. They can and do change what payment systems they will allow you to be paid with.

Let me repeat that just to be sure it sank in. They regularly change what systems you can be paid with. Now, if the consequences of that were not immediately apparent to you, let me fill you in on how they may be using this to scam you for money big time. I join and get a loan simply because I want to be able to be paid by 6gdr as an affiliate. 3 or 4 months go by, and they change their payment plans; and I can now no longer get paid through that company. I must now apply for credit card A or financial service B to be paid. So I sign up for financial service B. The next time they change plans, I will have to apply for cards C or service D. I attempt to sign up for the new card C, but I now have so many financial products that my debt to income ratio stinks, and I am declined. Now not only can I no longer get paid by 6dgr; I am still paying fees on these financial products that have negatively impacted my credit score, and may trash it for up to 10 years if I cannot keep up with all of my numerous new payments.

An interesting note: When I sent 6dgr a message through the contact feature about these concerns, it went to an account profile that had no visible name, personal or company information, or profile photo on their “social network”. This was evidenced by looking at my mailbox on that system, and seeing who it went to. Visit the site and try it for yourself if you like, by signing up with some garbage info and then sending them a message through the "contact" at the footer of the site. Then check your sent items on your mailbox, and you will see that you have just sent mail to a totally blank profile that is supposed to be their admin. Feel free to tell them I sent you if it amuses you and you can’t think of another message to send. I registered as me and I told them I was reviewing them as a scam and why prior to closing my inactivated account, so it won’t come as a shock to them. This lack of info on their admin account prompted me to visit whois.net and look up the company registration info for 6dgr. As I suspected, that information is also unlisted. Whoever these people are, they don't want you to know anything about them. Companies generally don’t try to hide their identities if they are reputable.

6dgr also follows the common claims that all scams of this type make, by telling me that if I can just sign up 5 people who each sign up 5 more people, I will make $20,000! Not only is that probably not realistic, it is likely not a good deal even if it were true. If I worded it the way 6dgr does it sure sounds good, but let’s think long term here. If I came up to you on the street and told you that I would put $20,000 cash in your hand right now if you allowed me to put notation items on your credit bureau that would affect your credit score and interest rates for up to the next ten years; anyone in the know would run the other direction screaming. Let me get out my mortgage calculator, and I will gladly show you why so you don’t make this terrible mistake.

We are going to use siblings Dick and Jane Smith as our examples. Let’s say that both Dick and Jane have fairly good credit with about the same track record, and are buying the exact same home on different streets in one of those cookie cutter housing complexes because it is close to mom. The houses cost $425,000 each. Each of them received an inheritance of $150,000 from their grandma which they plan to use as a down payment, and are looking to finance $275,000 on a 30 year fixed mortgage based on 12 monthly payments. Jane has a slightly higher debt to income ratio, so she has a slightly lower score than Dick does; and she gets a 7% rate instead of his 6.75%. At the end of the loan, her repayment amount is $658,649.47 with a monthly payment of $1829.58. Dick’s repayment is $642,112.12 with a monthly payment of $1783.64.

This means that Jane will pay an extra $45.94 every month for the next 30 years, and will end up spending $16,537.35 more for the exact same house. This is what even a very minor drop in your credit score could do by causing an interest rate on a single loan to be one quarter of a percent higher. If you trash your credit by getting too many cards and loans you don’t need, you can forget about a 0.25% increase. You may be looking at paying up to an 18-21% interest rate for purchases, if you can get a loan at all. Your credit is nothing to play with, and anything you do can and will follow you for a very long time.

Still want to try to collect that $20,000 by getting it $2 or $3 at a time as a 6dgr affiliate? I didn’t think so. And if you do still want that $20,000 regardless of what it may do to your credit or interest rates, come see me. I’ll be more than happy to finance it for you myself and give you the entire $20,000 all at once, and you can skip using 6dgr.

NOTE- While I strongly suspect the 6dgr program is a classic example of a Pyramid scam and may also be hazardous to a user’s long term finances due to the reasons above; I have no legal proof or evidence that it is a scam and am only stating my personal opinion on this matter. Do not base any decision to use or not use the 6gdr system strictly on this review; conduct your own research into 6gdr and arrive at your own conclusions.