Echo just became worthless.

[Meppen]

This just went from mediocre to ugly in a hurry.

Monthly cap on hours just moved from 300 to 100 hours.

New prize costs on all Echo Rewards:

The InternetCash Reward changes to 11,400 points
The Amazon.com Gift Certificate changes to 12,000 points
The WebMiles Reward changes to 19,500 points
The Cambridge Soundworks PCworks speakers change to 40,500 points
The Cambridge Soundworks Digital Home Theater Speaker system changes to
201,000 points

[tsaotsao]

i just tried the echo redeem thing and got a gift certificate for 4000pts still!

[bigbootdady]

same here, just cashed out, 4000 points still,where did you get this info?

[Havok-]

All those point changes are effective September 28. The number of hours you are credited for a month will be dropped to 100 at that time, as well. For what it's worth, however, the referral bonus for new members will be bumped to 300 points, and there will be nominal rewards for reaching different referral tiers in a given calendar month.

[Thorin78]

Dear Echo Member:

Thanks to you our Beta period has been an enormous success! You've
rated
music, tested our service and provided us with invaluable feedback.

We are writing to let you know about some upcoming changes to our
Rewards
program. Echo is totally committed to rewarding our members for
participating in the Echo community. At the same time, we need to be
fiscally responsible in order to insure that our company is around for
years to come. To achieve these goals we are planning to experiment
regularly with different approaches to the Rewards program until we
arrive
at the system that works best for Echo and our community of listeners.
As part of this learning process, we will be introducing a series of
limited-time Promotional programs that reward Echo members in a variety
of
different ways.

As a first step, we are initiating the following changes to the Rewards
Program effective September 28, 2000:

- Echo will launch the Referral Club Promotion. The club is designed to
reward Echo members who refer a higher than average number of friends
to
our service. The way it works is simple. Refer the required number of
people to our service every month and you can attain club status. Once
your referrals register and listen for 2 hours, you earn bonus CD's.
The
club levels are:

Gold Club:
Refer 20 people to our service in a month and you earn a bonus CD
Platinum Club:
Refer 40 people to our service in a month and you earn 2 bonus CD's
Diamond Club:
Refer 60 people to our service in a month and you earn 3 bonus CD's

Club status resets every calendar month. Club CD's are earned
independent
of other Rewards and do not affect your ability to redeem points for
other
Echo Rewards.

- The cap on earning time will be changed from 300 hours to 100 hours
per
month. You can still listen to Echo non-stop but you will only earn
points
for 100 hours per listening month.

- New prize costs on all Echo Rewards:
The InternetCash Reward changes to 11,400 points
The Amazon.com Gift Certificate changes to 12,000 points
The WebMiles Reward changes to 19,500 points
The Cambridge Soundworks PCworks speakers change to 40,500 points
The Cambridge Soundworks Digital Home Theater Speaker system changes to
201,000 points

- Bonus points for referrals will increase from 75 to 300 points per
referral. This affects the one-time bonus point payout and has no
bearing
on the points you accrue per hour for referral listening time.

We hope you will recognize that even after these changes Echo Rewards
is
still one of the best incentive programs available on the Web. Refer
just
3 friends to the service and you can earn a CD in a month. Refer 10
friends and you can earn a CD in a few days. Refer 20 friends and earn
Echo Club Rewards in addition to our other great prizes. After
September
28th you can refer to the Rewards program Terms and Conditions on our
site
for details on all the changes to the Rewards program.

Your participation in the Beta program gave us a real proving ground
for
our service and we think you deserve a little bonus for your valuable
help. As a small token of appreciation we have enclosed a $5 gift
certificate off of a $10 purchase at Half.com. Echo has teamed up with
the good folks over at Half.com to bring you savings of 50-90% on CDs,
DVDs, movies, books, and video games - over 4 million items available!
Use this Half.com coupon code at Checkout: ECHO
Click here to start shopping: http://promos.half.com/ECHO


Sincerely,

Dan Hart
Chief Executive Officer
Echo Networks, Inc.

From time to time, Echo plans to make available preview Beta releases
of
new products that include extra reward incentives. If you would like
to
participate in such future Echo Beta programs, please reply to
beta@echo.com

Echo is committed to open and honest communication regarding all
aspects
of the Echo service, including the rewards program. If you would like
to
provide feedback on the above changes or if you have suggestions
related
to future promotional programs, please send your comments to
feedback@echo.com

[bicycleKICK]

I can't believe the arrogance of some people.

Do you really think that a business that is giving out that much stuff so easily has ANY chance of staying in business? Hell no.

To say you didn't see this coming is worse than arrogance, it's ignorent...cmon people.

It makes sense and in the big picture it is good this is all happening.

Deal with it...

[bigbootdady]

dood lay off, 2 of us just asked his source, im at work and i bet you when i get home i have the same email...chill out, time for some r&r...either that or too much energy from no you know what

[bicycleKICK]

hehe boot...I was really only speaking to meppen, not any of the rest of you.

Hey meppen, please explain how echo is now worthless?