Today I feel scammed and I am not happy about it. Let me give the simplest of definitions of what a scam is. A scam is anything that does not do exactly what it says on the packaging and through misinformation or disinformation (yes there is a difference between the two) it leaves the user feeling deceived and all too frequently out of pocket.

I am pleased to say that in the very least I wasn't out of pocket - in the direct sense of the word anyway.

So, this is what happened. Several months ago I found out that Freebitco.in was winding down and indeed it did disappear for a while. It has reappeared again since, so I am not sure what happened there. So, with this in mind I decided to take a look at the some of the "pick" faucets and after doing some research I concluded that the sites were legit and with a good TrustPilot rating they do appear to payout. So I opted for three of them.

• Litepick.io - free LiteCoin
• Solpick.io - free Solana
• Polpick.io - free Polygon

For first two were a bit of a non-brainer for me because it could help in my race between them to acquire an entire token for free and I couldn't exactly do one without the other. I added Polygon because it is a project that I am interested in - Polygon is Ethereum on speed - well strictly speaking it isn't but the end result is the same as it is designed to make Ethereum cheaper and more efficient.

I openly admit that the list does include affiliate links, despite the direction I am going in. The faucet works on the following basic principles

• you can claim once an hour a fixed amount depending on your level.
• you can increase your level by "gambling" the asset you hold
• from time to time, including when you go up a level, you can get bonus rolls on the faucet with defined rewards depending on your roll.
• there is a minimum withdrawal threshold, which is clearly defined on the Withdrawals page

So far so good. Unsurprisingly Polpick is lagging behind a bit because I started about two weeks later. Somehow, despite starting at the same time, Litepick has streaked ahead of Solpick and has already reached Level 3. I think it has to come down to more successful "gambling". While Solpick is closing in on achieving Level 3, it is not quite there yet. Meanwhile just this morning I hit the minimum withdrawal threshold on Litepick and so I decided to go ahead and withdraw the funds (0.005 LTC). I always do a test run when acquiring a minimal requisite just to see if it is a waste of time and effort.

So I added the address and pressed "Withdraw", which prompted a notification that read "Complete at least one survey to withdraw".

This is the first time I had come across this requirement and I was p***ed off about it. It should have been stated up front and especially when you know how these surveys work. They are worse than vampires in the way they suck the life out of you. First of all you spend 20 minutes filling in the pre-criteria only to be told you don't qualify for any of their surveys. What makes it additionally challenging in my case is that they read my IP and then everything is not in my native language - which is fair enough based on location, but it doesn't fit and work for everybody.

So, in the end, I do feel cheated. I will however persist and see how it goes, but my gut feeling is that it will go the same way as BitCoinker which turned out to be  a complete scam. The header image might be a bit strong in this case, but I had to get your attention!

And on that note my hope is that, as always, you stay safe and well my friends.