Matthew and Marc's Rocky Road

We’ve had a few queries from people interested in getting hold of DVDs of Matthew and Marc's Rocky Road.

Tonight Marc Ellis and Matthew Ridge are heading to South America. I’ve already seen the series on TV 6 (it screened last year on Freeview) so I can tell you that you’ll be seeing one of the boys led through the streets in only his undies with a collar and chain around his neck, take dancing lessons and get up to the usual hi-jinks.

The episodes are not available on DVD and TVNZ have no plans to include them on TVNZ ondemand. If you’re interested in copies of the show, TVNZ suggest you contact Eyeworks Touchdown, who produced the series.

Updated 24 May 2008:
Matthew and Marc's Rocky Road repeats weeknights on TV6 at 10:30pm

Photos: Eyeworks

Streaking Against Piha Cafe

NSFW: Warning clicking images will open an uncensored version

A Piha local by the name of Adam has decided to protest against the proposed Piha Café in a manner that he thinks Café promoter Marc Ellis will understand.

He decided to exercise his "freedom of speech" - err well something was pretty free in the video - by streaking (with a fig lettuce leaf almost covering the vitals). You can see the words “Hi NZ” on his chest and “NO CAFÉ” on his back. Almost makes a gal want to run out to Piha if this is what she can expect to see. Huzzah, huzzah.

Tempers are running hot in Piha with pro and anti Piha Café campaigners actively lobbying. The mysterious Spankey McAssey of PihaNews.com (not to be confused with Piha Community News) says 500 people were polled. We thought Spankey might be Murdoch, but he says he's just one of a team and not Spankey.

• 69% are against the Café
• 19% are in favour of the Café
• The rest were either too pished or too stoned to care
  

Piha News say they're not taking sides, and instead want to promote uncensored debate while injecting a bit of levity into the situation.

Updated: What a lot of debate this news article has created! We've been in contact with one of the pollsters and can confirm the poll is real. It was conducted over a six day period including Easter 2008 at Piha beach and canvassed locals and visitors to the beach. PihaNews.com has a temporary website at Facebook and plans to transfer to PihaNews.com in the next two weeks.

They tell us they took photographs of most of the people they polled and uploaded some of the photographs here.


Warning: These videos are not safe for work…

Video 1
You can watch it here if you are a member of Facebook.

Video 2


Now for the serious stuff... According to NZ Herald the commissioners for the Waitakere City Council and Auckland Regional Council approved resource consents for the café, however opponents Protect Piha Heritage Trust have appealed to the Environment Court to have consents cancelled. The applicant company, Preserve Piha Limited, which includes Marc Ellis as a shareholder have also appealed some of the conditions of the consent.

The history of the acquisition of the land and plans to turn it into a café are chronicled here.

Photos: Spankey McAssey and PihaNews.com

Marc Ellis Sorry for Mintshot's Rangitoto Hoax

Marc Ellis has apologised for the stunt that saw him and his mates Ben Hickey and Nick Dalton launch a midnight raid on Rangitoto Island to create a fake eruption. The promotional stunt coincided with launch of website Mintshot, which promises to reward people for watching advertisements.

Ellis has issued an 'unreserved' apology and offered to pay $2,000 reparation for any damage to the island as well as a donation of $10,000 to the Motutapu Restoration Trust.

"While the likelihood of a fire being started as a result of the flares was low, we took careful and extensive precautions to ensure that there was no real risk of any accidental fire."

He sounds really sorry. Given the publicity Mintshot received from the hoax (and the extra publicity the donation will give him) it was cheap at the price.

The most expensive part of the hoax is likely to have been the advice from a QC - which they obtained prior to the stunt – in order to help keep them safe from the long arm of the law.



Mintshot hasn’t exactly been a resounding success for Mintshot and its investors. It started with a hiss and a roar, but since that time the number of visitors to the site has dropped dramatically. I lost interest when Mintshot moved from a daily ‘play the people’ game to weekly. Users have also complained about ongoing computer glitches, having their personal details passed on to advertisers and misrepresentation of prizes. I would love to know where they’re hiding the “millions of prizes".

Will this be the next apology? Will we hear Marc say, ‘Sorry, folks, mintshot was all a big hoax’?


Photos: Mintshot & Woman's Day March 24, 2008

Matthew And Marc's Rocky Road To Russia

The boys are back! Matthew Ridge and Marc Ellis continue their world tour, this time to Russia, the land of cosmonauts, comrades and vodka.

How does Marc Ellis find the time? Last year he was part of the team that launched Mintshot, as well as filming 10 episodes for new TVNZ show How the Other Half Lives, where he steps into the shoes of people from other walks of life, TV show Game of 2 Halves, directorship of Charlie's juice and more. Perhaps Charlie's be bottling Marc Ellis' essence and marketing it as an energy drink?

In Matthew And Marc's Rocky Road To Russia, the duo compete against each other in everything Russian, with the loser subjected to painful, humiliating and hilarious consequences!

From the high culture of the Bolshoi ballet to the might of the Soviet military, Marc and Matthew wreak a path of madness and mayhem through Moscow and beyond. No challenge is too great for our Kiwi comrades; as they battle tigers at the circus, go toe to toe with a prima ballerina and prepare to be blasted into space. Plus, no journey to the former Soviet Union would be complete without a high-octane ride in a MIG fighter jet, even if Matthew does get a teensy bit airsick and wants to go home!

It's an hilarious ride with all the outrageous stunts and antics that you would expect from Matthew And Marc. Whether it's taking a whipping in a bath house, or whipping up the perfect pancake, our sporting greats are as determined as ever to win. As the boys say, with the victor comes the spoils, and the chance to force the other to perform a dare as a penalty.

It was a rockier road than usual for the Producer of Matthew and Marc's latest series, Jonathan Glazier. He simply says; "Rocky Road to Russia was a trip to hell! It was a nightmare to film. Everything that could go wrong, did. But that's what makes this series so funny. The boys were often flying by the seat of their pants, and you never knew quite what was going to happen next."

"The highlight for me is the bath house story. It's just so hilarious. Two grown men, naked, being whipped with birch sticks, and the thing is they take it so seriously. Everything's a competition, and no matter how ridiculous they look, they simply have to win."

Glazier continues; "I've worked with the boys for 3 years now, on Rocky Road and Game of 2 Halves. They keep surprising me, and in the world of TV - like warfare - the surprise element wins every-time! Their relationship is the same on screen and off, and that's a real winner for the audience. People don't want performances they want people, real people. The Matthew and Mark on screen are the same as they are off screen."

Matthew And Marc's Rocky Road To Russia begins on TV2 at 7.00pm, Saturday 16 February.

Marc Ellis Man of the Year

For the second year in a row, Marc Ellis has been voted M2 Magazine's Man of the Year. The honours for Woman of the Year went to media whore Nicky Watson.

When it comes to popularity contests, Marc seems to have it sewn up. He has twice been voted Male Personality of the Year and the NZ Herald last year named him NZ's most influential celebrity. Of course, being a "likable larrikin" is hard work. You have to be prepared to fling your clothes off at every opportunity, make inappropriate or controversial remarks and be paid for fooling around.

Miss Prozac recaps the last couple of years for Mr Popularity Marc Ellis.

Streaking at a rugby match in Greymouth



Selling exclusive pictures of his wedding to Agustina Mon



Pretending to blow up Rangitoto Island as a publicity stunt



Stripping again, this time for charity (here with wife/designer Agustina)



Promoting Mintshot



Promoting other people's stuff



Getting paid to play games!

Cheeky Mintshot Streaker Angers Marc Ellis

Nude day promoter Marc Ellis was less than impressed when soccer player turned streaker Karen McKinlay hit him up for a share of her costs after streaking at the Phoenix-LA Galaxy match featuring David Beckham.

Karen had mint stencilled on one side of her butt and shot on the other cheek, spelling out the name of Marc’s latest venture, Mintshot, leading people to believe that Marc initiated the prank. Karen denies this saying Mintshot didn't know about her plans

"In the past, on Sports Cafe, Marc had said he'd help streakers out with fines,"

34-year-old McKinlay said. "With his new business and the Rangitoto eruption stunt, I thought he might enjoy the advertising - but apparently not."

Marc showing true class said she was too ugly to streak. Miss Prozac wonders which charm school he went to.

The cheek of the woman to ask us to pay her legal costs is extraordinary. She's lucky we didn't sue her.

If we were going to do that we'd get someone a damn sight better looking than her.

Miss Prozac suspects no one was looking at her face…

Check out this video from Marc’s Sportscafe days.



The video includes Marc’s infamous remark “you must have been sweating like a rapist” and also his offer to pay streakers $1,000 per security guard they beat, which he upped to $2,000 for women saying

I think it is something that should be encouraged and condoned

But, apparently only when it suits him.

Marc Ellis' Mintshot Will it Last

Marc Ellis, one of the three founders of Mintshot, has issued a press release boasting about the success of Mintshot's first month of operation

Mintshot Ranked #1 Entertainment Website - After First Month Of Operation
New online destination Mintshot.co.nz has had an exceptional first month of operation being ranked New Zealand’s number one entertainment website in terms of page impressions, according to Nielsen’s December Net-Ratings report.

The Nielsen Net-Ratings report ranks Mintshot ahead by over 300 per cent of nzherald.co.nz, stuff.co.nz and tvnz.co.nz according to the number of page impressions, in the entertainment category.

Launched on November 12, Mintshot rewards people for watching ads online, with the website’s current 57,000 registered users rewarded with ‘mintshot’ currency, which can be spent on online auctions.

This is a huge accomplishment for Mintshot. They have grown their membership base from the 40,000 quoted at the end of November to 57,000 only a couple of weeks later. Although, it’s still shy of the 100,000 member target for the first two days.

Will Mintshot’s popularity continue?
Page views or impressions count all the time that a user spends on the site. Your first page impression occurs when you land on the home page. As the system doesn’t allow auto logins (at least not with my browser set up) there is a second page impression when you log into your account.

From this page every page you mouse to counts as an extra page impression. If you Play The People then there are page impressions when you click grow it, another when you click to play the game, then the five questions, and a final page offering you the chance to submit your own question. That’s eight page impressions for a single game.

If you think you can beat the odds on the mint tick games, you could conceivably play the game several hundred times in a day. I know that on one occasion I played the mint tick game nearly 300 times (without winning anything). I’ve based that count on the reduction in my mint dollars, although at that time there was a system fault that took m$40 per game if you clicked the game twice so it’s possible the final count was closer to 200.

I would never click 300 pages on the TVNZ, New Zealand Herald or Stuff sites on a single day. It would be unusual for me to even click those sites 10 times, but it would be common for me to view 10 pages on the Mintshot site Monday to Friday; 2 clicks to log in to the site and another 8 clicks to Play the People. As a result, I’m not convinced that the page impressions are a meaningful metric. I believe that the unique visitor numbers are more critical.

Across all categories, Mintshot is ranked 5th according to the average amount of time users spend on the site and 6th according to the number of unique users visiting the site.

Mintshot ranks sixth in the entertainment category, which is impressive for a new website. There’s no doubt that the launch has been highly successful in attracting visitors to the site. The real question is whether those members will be retained, and whether new members will continue to join and play regularly.

I don’t have access to all the metrics for the different net ratings categories, so I checked out Alexa which shows that Mintshot has been trending downward in the lead up to the Christmas period. Alexa rankings are a combination of unique visitors and page views. They’re not as accurate as the Nielsen rankings, but they are indicative.



The red line on the graph indicates the end of the first month of Mintshot operation i.e. it correlates to the time frame in Marc Ellis' press release. At the time that Mintshot was ranked 6th in the entertainment sites, Alexa showed that Mintshot was ranked 41 in all New Zealand websites. That is an incredible ranking for a brand new website. However, it has dropped steadily over the last two weeks and now stands at 68.

The real test for Mintshot will be in 2008, to see whether it can pick up the momentum and regain its slot in the top 50 websites. I feel optimistic that the site can go from strength to strength, so long as there are more major website errors. Most people are happy to dismiss problems as "teething" issues, but another security breach, or problems with launches of new applications could see people abandon the website.

Why Mintshot ranking is dropping
Some of the drop in rank is easily explained. People who played the people on the last day of November, or who had mint dollars (m$) riding on auctions at the time of the monthly rollover, started with a significant advantage. Seeing that there was little chance to earn enough m$ win an auction many players shelved the game, with plans to return in the New Year. A few have already spent their m$ on auctions during December and also plan to return in the New Year.

Some don’t like the game, and have no plans to return, but there is a strong core of people who will be back in January or February.

From the Trade Me message board

I don’t bother with it now
I was enthusiastic to start with but quickly got bored. Now if I get an email from them I just tick it off as spam and ignore it.

Too many F-ups

Other reasons people are leaving the site:

• Annoyed with cheating and lack faith the site will be free of cheats
• Too many website errors, login issues, problems with bidding at auctions and other issues
• Dislike web support being outsourced to India
• Misrepresentation. The advertising says win “millions in prizes”; in November Mintshot gave away $300,000 in prizes
• Uses bandwidth
• Poor/slow/no response from customer services
• Not enough prizes
• One user said "The prizes are rubbish"
• Constantly changing rules
• Prizes too slow to arrive or problems redeeming vouchers or collecting prizes

How valuable is Mintshot to advertisers?
Or put another way, are people watching the advertisements, and is this positively influencing the way they feel about brands and their ultimate purchasing decisions?

When I watch television I mute the sound during the ad break, or fast forward if I’m watching a recording. I watch very few adverts, so that would make me an ideal target for Mintshot. Except that I discovered you don’t have to watch the adverts…

I learned early on that you could fast forward the adverts by pressing the scroll bar at the bottom. Also, if you answer incorrectly Mintshot sends you back to the drawing board without penalty, so it isn’t essential to watch the adverts. This is probably the right philosophy as there are some advertisements where you could watch the advertisement and still miss the answer to the question, or make a mistake and misclick, but it means a lot of people don’t bother watching.

The ability to fast forward adverts has since been fixed (although last I heard Mintshot were working on a fix for Opera users who didn’t have to watch the advert and went straight to the question) so I adopt the same philosophy as television watching. I simply mute the sound and do other things while the advert plays.

On the plus side, I am still being exposed to the brand when I select the brand image to play the advertisement. There is a second opportunity to anchor an advertising message at the time of the question so there is still an opportunity to influence me. Unfortunately, many advertisers do a poor job of this.

Mini get it right with their question and answer:

Q: In the commercial the young man flies through the air, this is because...?
A: because everything about the Mini cabrio is fun – even getting in.

They’ve reiterated their message (everything about the Mini is fun) and they’ve repeated their brand name.

I also see the brands again during the auctions or when I click the “spend it” tab so I am being exposed to the brands and products.

Mint Tick games
I have come to loathe these games. Personally I prefer the Play The People, despite a spate of problems with the results. Play The People is quick and there is an element of skill. You can earn lots of m$ with little effort. Director Nick Dalton says one of the goals of the website is to provide a sense of community and games, questions or forums where people who only have 10 minutes can drop by. Play the People is ideal for this.

Personally, I think Mint Tick is an exercise in frustration. It’s pure luck and mine hasn’t been running hot. On top of that there are times when the game is very slow to load or to reveal ticks (or in my cases crosses). I prefer skill based games.

For those that haven’t played the game, you click each square hoping to turn up as many ticks as possible. If you strike a cross then your run ends. The high score at the end of the “auction” or time period, wins the prize.



My other niggle is that the high score and timings are not synchronised. On one side it says the game closes in 1 hour and 17 minutes. On the right hand panel it says the game closes in 29 hours and 11 minutes. On the left hand panel the high score is 18, on the right hand panel the high score is 16.

According to Mintshot this is because the panel on the right shows the highest score in the game for all players, although in this case it is less than the score for the current game so it beats me. Little errors like this leave you wondering how reliable the website is.


Market Research applications?
When I first saw the Mintshot website I figured that the directors would be adding market research capabilities, as they have a readymade customer base, some basic demographics and incentives. Similar schemes are also on offer from Smilecity, Nielsen and Colmar Brunton. Although the other schemes are less of a gamble. The prizes are smaller but you’re guaranteed your points rewards for each survey or task you do.

“For marketers, Mintshot provides an accountable marketing solution and the success of advertising with mintshot can be monitored to the last person. Also, very importantly the advertiser can gain market intelligence without any spin through direct communication with ten’s of thousands of people,” he says.

Note: the spelling errors are from Mintshot’s press release.

I hope Mintshot isn’t using the voting from Play the People as part of their market intelligence, as a lot of people vote strategically. If they think the people are going to vote a particular way, then in addition to clicking that option in their predictions, many people also click that option for their own vote, as they reason that voting against their prediction could cost them mint dollars. In addition, the comments section allows people to influence later voters, so the Play the People results are a highly unscientific method of capturing market intelligence.

The other place that I have noticed market intelligence gathering is at the end of the Harvey Norman advertisement. The current question is:

Q: What area do you believe that Harvey Norman could improve in?
A: Choose from Service, Price, Advertising, Quality, Range

Unfortunately, Mintshot/Harvey Norman doesn't explain that all answers are correct for the purposes of earning m$.

My goal when I answer these questions is to pick the answer that will give me my mint dollars. I don’t even care what I click so long as it gives me my mint dollars. The first time I saw a Harvey Norman question it asked me to rate the customer service. I gave it a high rating because I didn’t think I would get m$ for picking the option that said the service is lousy. I’ve spoken other people who have done the same. Maybe we are in the minority but I suspect that Harvey Norman won’t be getting accurate data out of this question.

Mintshot is still worth the effort
As you can see there is a lot of room for improvement with the Mintshot website but I plan to return. The site still has lots of potential, and while I'm winning I'll keep participating.

I doubt I’ll be spending a lot of time on the Mint Tick games, but I am eagerly awaiting the launch of the share market game and will still be doing Play the People. For December my philosophy was to watch enough advertisements to give me m$ to try the Mint Tick games and get a kitty from the Play the People. In January I’ll be back to try everything and I’m hoping it will be a smooth run.

What I like about Mintshot

• The team have launched a blog and are allowing people to openly criticise the site. That sort of willingness to take on feedback deserves five stars in my books.
• Mintshot have acted to tighten security problems, although those should not have occurred in the first place. Inadequate testing was a problem in the past. So long as any future innovations are fully tested I’m happy to stick with the site.
  
• Play the People is interesting. Who knew more than 90% of the people think OJ Simpson is guilty?
  
• The blog and comments on Play the People are creating a community atmosphere.
• There are some great prizes. Nick Dalton says the overseas holidays and Speight’s beer are very popular but I have my eye on the entertainment prizes…

Future potential applications for Mintshot

• You could make a memory game with advertisers’ brands or products on each of the cards. This would offer a game that combines luck and skill, and you could keep playing until you reveal all matching pairs in the shortest number of moves
• Spot the difference – a snapshot from some of the advertisements could be used with a before and after photograph for people to pick the differences
• A page with special offers for members where they can print out vouchers and take them into stores to get discounts or other offers. Eventually there could be cardholder sales days, where all Mintshot members get a card and this card gives them special discounts or a preferential sale day e.g. come into the store and get the specials a day before they are advertised. This would give advertisers direct proof that members are influenced by visiting Mintshot
• You could have games where people have to visit advertisers’ websites to answer a simple question

Disclosure of interest
Mintshot have invited me to join a user group to help the Mintshot team improve their website. No money has changed hands but food has been offered and I will be taking Nick up on that offer when I next visit Auckland!


Related Stories:
Get all the latest Mintshot news here

Mintshot Play The People & Other Errors

Any regular player of Marc Ellis' new game, Mintshot, will know that there have been a lot of problems with Play The People, a game that asks you to predict what other people think about certain topics for a chance to win extra mint dollars.

In some of the games the problems have been widespread with every player getting jumbled results and incorrect scores. In other cases, the errors in results have affected only a small number of players. Now I know there are some people that say, what's the big deal? It's not real money so you haven't lost anything. But the issues here are of fairness and reliability. We want to be able to trust the system to work, and we want it to work the same way for everyone. After a month of operation Mintshot has had adequate time to fix "teething problems", especially ones like this that recur.

On 5th December 2007, everyone had mismatched questions and results. Mintshot advised that

Unfortunately there was an issue with the PTP results from Wednesday's game.
Our technical team have looked into this and have now resolved this issue.
We apologise for this error. This issue affected everyone that played
Wednesday's game so we are unfortunately not able to refund individual
accounts. If you notice any discrepancies, please let us know.

Kind regards
Team Mintshot

But on four days (that I know of) there have been a small number of individuals affected when everyone else has had correct results, and Team Mintshot are at a loss to explain these problems.

• On November 30th a small number of people lost all their money on Play the People when the system decided that all of their predictions were incorrect
• Last week I was one of a handful of people that lost money when the results incorrectly showed that we had predicted the people would pick Pacific Oysters as being better than Bluff Oysters. All of us predicted that the people would say Bluff Oysters are better. I was especially annoyed as I had the prediction exactly correct at 98% and played the joker, which doubles your winnings. I should have been credited with M$1,400 and instead lost M$100. We were all told (nicely) that we must have been mistaken.

  Thanks for your email.
  
  On looking at your screen shot it appears that it was scored correctly.
  
  You chose Bluff as you suggest in your email, for your own personal opinion. You don’t get M$ for that. What you state as your personal opinion goes into the pool of what “NZers” think.
  
  You used the scroll bar to choose Pacific for what NZers will think but when the results came in, NZers thought Bluff. Therefore your M$ were deducted.
  
  M$ are only given on what you predict NZ will think and what NZ actually thinks. You don’t receive any M$ for your own opinion, even if it matches the result.
  
  Does this make sense? I hope it helps.
  
  Kind regards
  Team Mintshot

  It made sense, except that I was certain that I had predicted Bluff Oysters, as were other players that contacted NZ Reality TV. Unfortunately, as only a few people were affected, Mintshot were at a loss to explain the problem
• Yesterday a player reported on the TradeMe message board that one of their Play The People (PTP) results was incorrectly displayed
• And today, I have yet another problem with Play The People, when it seems everyone else has correct results. And best of all I have proof! After so many errors in PTP I now take screenshots of the bets and the results.
  

As you can see from the screenshots, I bet in all five questions, but I only have results for 4 of the questions, and those results are completely mangled! Oddly, I am only one of a small number of people affected. If I hadn't taken screen shots I'd think that Marc Ellis' elves had been fooling with my system!

I've sent the images to my contact at Mintshot and he responded promptly to say:

Thanks for the screenshots, we're looking into what happened now. Do you have a contact number we could give you a call on if you are happy with that? Just want to have a quick chat, and possibly ask you a few questions so we can try narrow down the cause of the issues.

Of course, I'd prefer the Mini or the Bonus Bonds, but I'll settle for getting this bizarre problem sorted!

Added: I've just found out that one of the other Mintshot members affected by the incorrect result in the Pacific/Bluff oysters has also had the same problem with today's PTP results. Why we are the only ones affected, continues to be a mystery.

Other problems
There are also problems with bidding on auctions, allocating points for watching advertisements and the changeover of advertisements at the beginning of the week. I'll go into these briefly:

Auctions:
You can use your mint dollars to bid on prizes, with the prize going to the highest bidder. Unfortunately, there is a problem with the auctions not refreshing and at times not recognising bids, so that it keeps telling you that your bid must be higher than the minimum amount, without ever telling you the minimum amount. It's proving very frustrating for those of us hoping to take home some of the prizes!



Some people are finding that bids are duplicated leaving them with a negative balance in their mint dollar account. In this screenshot, the second auction has an end date one day earlier than the start date!

I've advised Mintshot about the problems and they are looking into it.

Advertisements:
There have been numerous problems with advertisements, especially on Monday's change over day, when adverts are renewed for the week and the questions are changed. Yesterday some lucky people got mint dollars for watching advertisements multiple times, others were frustrated to find that all the answers were wrong because the advertisements were being swapped out, plus some people got to watch the advertisements with both the old and new questions essentially doubling their score.

Thanks for the information, we caught a couple of them not working and have fixed those, and it looks like you caught the Virgin Blue one during a question change over. We're reviewing the update procedure for new adverts going live so this shouldn't happen in the future. We also caught the problem with people getting multiple payments after watching all the videos.

Also I spoke to the web team and the m$500 was credited to your account last week but it won't come up as a transaction because it's edited straight into the database. We're pulling a date and time though so we can clear that up.

We also went over a few of the issues that blogs/forums have brought up over the last few days and it seems like we're making good progress so look forward to some changes with the watchlist etc soon.

Today, I tested the adverts to check that they were working properly after yesterday's batch of problems at changeover time. The only advert I viewed was the Mitre 10 clip and I got told that Back to the drawing board, sorry, incorrect answer on all three of the choices!





The watchlist
You'll notice that the response also refers to issues with the Watchlist. The amount of the "Maximum Bid" bears absolutely no correlation to the current bidding on an item. Also, the way the watchlist is structured it doesn't tell you how many days, hours and minutes there are until the auction you are watching closes, making it difficult to keep track of your favourite prizes.

Mint tick games
One of the suggestions that Mintshot appear to have taken on board is to let us know how many possible ticks there are in the Mintshot game. To date the highest score I've seen is 18 ticks, however in the latest game for a chance to win a Mini the instructions say that there are 22 ticks in the game (out of a possible 30).

There have been problems with mint tick auctions disappearing before their scheduled end date. This means that some people who have been spending mint dollars on prizes that have been withdrawn without notice, however we understand that this won't be happening again.

Things going right...
On the good news front, I won an auction over the weekend and received immediate confirmation of my win. It's great to see that part of the system is working as it should be. Mintshot are also quicker to respond to emails to their help desk and have put an autoresponder in place that advises that they will try to respond within 48 hours.



Related Stories:
Click here for other Mintshot posts

Mintshot Problems and More Problems

Just when you think things are going well with Mintshot, the venture that features Marc Ellis' mug, things go wrong (again).

The good news is:

• Vouchers have started to arrive
• Some emails via the Contact Us page are being answered promptly (others fall into a black hole)
  
• Hackers and cheaters have been closed out of the system
• I've received confirmation my prize voucher is on the way (although I hear some people are still waiting)
  
• The bonus M$100 for signing up a mate is working
• One lucky punter has won a Mini for their caption "It's moments like these you need mintshot.co.nz"
• Mintshot read this website! Read down to see their response
  

The bad news is:

• In today's Play the People results (from last night's game) the questions have changed order and the percentage results and choices don't match.
• A lot of emails still go unanswered
  
• One reader said they have sent numerous queries requesting credit for the winnings from Play The People game on the last day of November without response
• Three readers have complained that mint dollars were deducted on 3rd December and no game earnings show, even though they got the questions correct (I saw a screen shot from one customer, and think the points have been added but are not correctly itemised on their statement. Either way it is confusing)
  
• I'm still awaiting a response (and my mint dollars) for a question that was used in last week's Mintshot game. I've emailed four times to date, and plan to continue emailing daily until I get a response!
• The rules keep being changing, including people finding after the Mini caption contest result was tied, that it is now possible to sit on the fence in Play the People
• Mint tick auctions were removed more than a week ago, without notification. No word yet on reinstating them.

I wonder, how do they get so many simple things wrong? Is it because there's a Kiwi "She'll be right, mate" attitude and not enough of the basics, like, checking you have the right questions on Play the People, having a decent help section and FAQs, testing the system, anticipating potential problems or queries, setting up a clear explanation of all the rules and hiring enough staff to handle the volume of queries.

Can we rely on Mintshot to get things right? Will advertisers continue to support the site? The concept has a lot of potential, and perhaps Marc Ellis and his business partners Ben Hickey and Nick Dalton aren't concerned if it takes time to bed down the system, with their eyes on the bigger prize of establishing the system overseas. I have made one purchase as a result of the advertising on Mintshot, and I am now aware of some brands I hadn't heard of before, so it has achieved that part of its goals. How about you? Have you been influenced by the advertising, or do you find ways to skip it?



Give us your feedback. Do you love the site or hate it? Will you stick it out while they sort out the problems or quit as soon as you've spent your current allocation of mint dollars?

Update:
Check the comments for feedback from Ben at Mintshot. I've also sent him an email with some other queries, and the answers are posted below.

1. The problem with Play The People on 3rd December (points deducted and winnings not credited) is being investigated now by the technical team
2. My 500 mint dollars for the question used in Play the People (Do the All Blacks need grief counselling?) is being processed and should be in my account in the next 24 hours - hooray!
3. The display problem (and errors in mint dollars awarded) in today's Play the People is being fixed
4. The mint tick auctions will be back very, very soon (Ben's words) so keep an eye out for that
5. There should be a Newsletter going out tonight that will explain a few things...

Click here for other Mintshot posts

Latest Mintshot on Prizes, Cheats & Play The People

In today's post on Mintshot

• At last! Some people are receiving communications from Mintshot
• Changes to Play the People
• Where are my vouchers?
  
• Invite your friends to earn bonus mint dollars
• Cheats and hackers suspended

Communication from Mintshot
Those of you who have been following our updates on Marc Ellis' latest venture, Mintshot, will know that we have posted about the lack of communication from Mintshot but we hear that responses are starting to trickle through. I received a response to one of my many queries, and while I'm not happy with the response it's nice to know that queries don't fall into a big black hole.

Yesterday's response was to my complaint that the Play The People winnings were not credited on 27th November 2007.

Hi, thanks for your email.
Apologies for not getting back to you sooner. Please let us know if you have
further issues so we can look into this.

Kind regards
The Mintshot Team

Unfortunately, Mintshot don't seem to realise that this was a widespread problem for a large number of users, but at least they are cleaning up their act and getting back to some people. This is a response to only one of the many queries that I sent to Mintshot via their 'Contact Us' page. I checked my balance this morning and I am still waiting on my m$500 for the question that was used in Play The People.

Mint tick auctions are still suspended.

Changes to Play The People
Play The People game results are now available by email.

This game closes on 3-Dec-07 at 23:59:00 . Please ensure you respond by this time. We will send you an email with your results!.

As we mentioned yesterday, maximum bets have been reduced from M$500 to M$100 with only 1 joker available.

There are two extra questions today, with the Mini up for grabs in the caption contest. Four lucky punters have had their slogans chosen and the public gets to vote for their favourite. The four slogans shortlisted to win the mini are:

1. Moments like these you need mintshot.co.nz [nzphantom]
2. Chur bro, now that's a hangi [bk]
3. Fun stands in triumph as political correctness goes up in smoke [bradr]
4. Just Another False Fire Alarm (JAFFA) [b_m]

Where are my vouchers?
Lucky me, mine are on the way. A lot of people are still awaiting confirmation, but I received this email today, so things are improving in Mintshot-land.

Congratulations on winning a Mintshot auction.

This email is to confirm that you are one of over 1,000 confirmed auction winners during the last week. Your voucher or prize will be with you shortly.

We have refined our business processes so that vouchers will be received within 5 days of winning the auction from now on.

The voucher will contain full redemption instructions so that you can claim your prize. In some cases, the advertiser may get in touch with you directly regarding your prize.

Great stuff
Team Mintshot

Cheats and hackers
One of our readers, who admits to hacking the Mintshot system (but wrote to the team to tell them he had been cheating and had found holes in the system) received an email telling him his account had been suspended.

Hi, your account has been picked up in a security audit and we have had to close your account. Please contact us if you have any concerns.

Kind regards,
The MIntshot Team

That's great news from those of us who are frustrated that we can't compete against Mintshot members that already have more than 100,000 mintshot dollars to their credit by hacking the system.

Invite your friends to earn bonus dollars
I'm testing this today. I've invited a friend who says she will sign up as soon as she receives the email, so I'll tell you how quickly I receive my bonus M$100. FYI this is the email that she received with the standard invite from Mintshot

Gidday - check out all the cool stuff you can win at www.mintshot.co.nz. If you sign up and earn m$1000 we both get a m$100. Mint!

I think they could do better! The invite isn't very err inviting, and the website address isn't clickable which means you have to copy and paste it into the browser.

Related Stories:
Check out all our other Mintshot stories
Click here to see the reply from Mintshot, and to vote in our Mintshot poll

How to Hack Mintshot and Win Prizes

The full list of Mintshot problems continues to grow. Here's the latest Mintshot gossip on prizes, points, play the people, cheating and hacking.

How come some people have lots of points on the first day of the month?
We’ve been getting a lot of questions and comments from readers asking how some people seem to have so many points. So here’s the short answer, they got lucky or they cheated.

Play The People
In the lucky category, anyone who won big on Friday night’s Play The People got to keep their winnings when the re