Right now Poptent owes dozens of filmmakers tens of thousands of dollars in un-paid prize money. And that’s a big problem because Poptent isn’t going to exist much longer; the company is about to merge with Userfarm to form a brand new crowdcourced video site named Vizy. I detailed this problem in my most recent post and explained that Poptent personally still owes me $250. (A pretty measly sum considering that some members claim that poptent owes them more than $5,000) But just a few days after I published my story, a totally unrelated miracle occurred. My Poptent “payment register” went from this…
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to this…
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I’ve been waiting 107 days to get this payment but I’m sure it’s just a coincidence that a check was issued the same week that I (and a ton of other unhappy filmmakers) started publicly complaining about the delinquent payments. (Some members actually contacted the companies that sponsored their Poptent assignments and asked for help securing their prizes.) I don’t know if EVERYONE is finally getting their money but I’ve heard from some other filmmakers that have also been told that checks are in the mail. But apparently those checks aren’t actually coming from Poptent….
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I’m not really sure what this means but I guess it’s a good sign that the Poptent/Userfarm merger is official and complete. One thing I do know is that this will probably be the only check I ever get from Vizy. I’m really disappointed in the way the Poptent staff (now the Vizy staff) has been acting for the last few weeks. I can understand that maybe some payments were delayed because of the merger but it was simply unprofessional for the company to ignore their members concerns and force filmmakers to start contacting the brands for help. So I doubt I’ll ever use the new site or sign up for any of their contests.
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