Back in October TripAlertz was all the rage, giving away a $10 credit for every person that you got to sign up for the sign. Seriously, they were buying email addresses (and that’s all someone needed to give in order to sign up) at $10 in site credit apiece. Which struck me as seriously overpaying.

Now they’re back offering $5 per new signup. You create an account, and then every friend who uses your referral link earns you $5. You can use the credit towards their ‘exclusive getaways’ hotels and with no limit, enough referrals will generate you free hotel and resort stays. No one has to buy a thing.

I don’t entirely trust the website and their practices. TripCash originally expired after two years and was reduced without notice to a year and then to six months. I figure they didn’t really expect how big a deal $10 referral credits would be, how many people would accumulate large amount of cash towards hotels, and their liability was bigger than expected so they decided to ‘manage’ it by trying to increase “breakage” (the likelihood that points would expire unused).

But folks have certainly had great success with their referrals and getting free hotels. The Points Guy gave away about $1000 in free TripAlertz credit at the Chicago frequent flyer seminar, if I recall correctly. The terms and conditions of the program do now say (if they didn’t before) that TripCash has to be used by the member who earns it, but I’m not sure that’s enforced and I’ve submitted a question to them to ask whether I might be able to give away what I earn, since the balance could be a bunch of free hotel nights for readers and good publicity for them. Here’s hoping! Because while they certainly have some nice properties, they often have tons of mid-market all-inclusives in the Caribbean and Latin America which will be of a great interest to many blog readers but I’ve got too many high-end hotel point redemptions on the horizon to make use of within the next six months!

Do the quick, easy signup for TripAlertz and then get all of your friends and family you see over the holidays to do the same using your referral link and you may be set for some free travel.

Using my link does generate a referral credit for me, though as I say if they give me permission I intend to run a giveaway.

(HT: Frugal Travel Guy)