In reference to the ME Bank deal…
I know Neil has acknowledged it needs a better system, and I think it really does! There's no guarantees that the referrer still has an account, so the member signing up might not even get the deal!
I refer to a comment made recently where they used a members referral details (shaun89)… problem is that the member hasn't been active on here since they signed up!
So I dont know… what if the referral system had some way of auto-pming a prompt, to see if you still had an account with the referral company? If the pm wasn't replied to or something, it auto-deleted your referral details? Or auto-deleting all referrals every 6 months or something, and you had to put them back up to show that you were still active/still had that referral account.
I can just see a lot of members missing out on that ME bank deal for using the wrong referrer :/
If I may add, there's a question of privacy as well. Everyone's ME Bank account number is open for viewing to ALL, including GUESTS (correct me if I'm wrong MODs). Remember, some members do transact with other members thru OzBargain, so it will be easy to connect the dots (OzB Account Real Name to ME Bank Account Number), though hopefully no one will exert the effort of doing something dodgy with all the info, but who knows, right?
This is why a random referral is the way - though as MODs said, it is difficult to setup and must have cooperation with the principal (in this case ME Bank).
Having said that, instead of having OzB usernames side by side with their account numbers, how about just the account numbers and the number of times it's been referred to. This way, it's anonymouns, no popularity contest, and everyone has a chance to get the benefits of the referral bonuses.
Random referrals that cycle to all members is still the best way, but as above, difficult to setup.