The Blartly Files

Advantages: I can recommend Blartly with confidence…as a cure for insomnia.
Disadvantages: Slow, vague about their reward system, prizes obscure and outdated.

Special agents Mouldy and Scurvy have been dispatched on a mission to find instant wins on-line. At www.blartly.co.uk, the trail begins to get hot…

After staring at the screen for some time, Mouldy glanced at his watch. “I think we’re on to something” he said excitedly, “We’ve found a hole in the fabric of time!”

“Don’t be ridiculous” snapped Scurvy cynically, “It’s just an excruciatingly slow site, that’s all.” She grabbed the mouse impatiently – he’d been through the first three categories and found just one item with a “WIN” link beside it. That had only yielded the message ‘Sorry, you haven’t won this time. You can try again for this product in one hour’

“Now this is weird” she puzzled aloud, “Why are all these skin creams and other lotions and potions in the ‘gifts and flowers’ section, and not ‘health and beauty’? If it’s so difficult to win anything here, you’d think they’d make it easier for the shopper to find what they were looking for”. Spotting Elizabeth Arden’s ‘flawless finish’ foundation on special offer, she clicked on the link and was surprised to find herself on the ‘Scent Packing’ site. “So, they don’t operate alone then?” said Mouldy triumphantly, “It’s a conspiracy!”

“You’re being paranoid again Mouldy, Blartly are nothing more than the hub of an affiliate network.” Reluctantly, Scurvy returned to the site. You never knew who was watching…

“There’s always the Blartpoints we’ve collected as we’ve been round” suggested Mouldy, with a characteristic belief in the impossible, ”We could exchange them for something.”

Scurvy waited for the pages to load, and read through them with renewed eagerness. “This is crazy!” she said in exasperation “We should have been able to able to trade these points in weeks ago. Even now, there’s no indication of how much they’ll be worth when we can. The site’s slow, they’ve nothing you can’t buy by taking a quicker route to another site, and if the wins exist at all we’ve no proof. I’m calling the boss, this place is bizarre!”

She picked up her ’phone, crossed to the window and dialled. No sooner had she started to speak than a yell rang out from across the room. “I’ve won!” Scurvy stood amazed. Perhaps this was the biggest mystery of all. Just what would Mouldy do with ‘Discovering the National Parks’ on CD ROM?