The Carrot Rewards App And The Perils Of Greed

There have been many occasions where there was a creation of something, which provided a considerable positive benefit to many people. With that positive benefit, there was a conception and nurturing of a community that was reaping it. Now, imagine a company that is taking advantage of an established community and squeezing it like a lemon for financial gain. You are probably thinking of companies like Electronic Arts and Amway, but I want to talk about a product on a much smaller scale that affected me personally. I want to talk about my experience using the Carrot Rewards app.

Carrot Rewards was an app that I downloaded that offered you reward points in exchange for meeting daily step goals. You would link the app to your fitness tracker (whether it would be Fitbit, Google Fit, or something else), link a rewards card (such as SCENE or Petro Points), and then have your phone in your pocket as you walk around during your day. When I started using this app, there was no asking for a financial commitment from the app. All I had to do was walk in order to meet my daily step goal of 40 Petro Points per day. The Carrot Rewards app also offered questionnaires from partnered companies such as the Heart & Stroke Foundation in order to earn more rewards points, as well as offer general health tips and pointers for gradually improving your life.

When I first heard about this app, I could not believe that I could earn what was essentially free money by just walking around a little more than I usually do. For the right financial reward, anyone can be motivated to live a healthier lifestyle, and Carrot Rewards certainly contributed to that. When I had the Carrot Rewards app, I was encouraged to go outside and walk around my neighborhood and my city so I could meet my daily step goals, greatly enriching my quality of life and helping me to feel healthier. The Carrot Rewards app felt like a great counter to a society that was increasingly sedentary, and attempted to curb the rise of unhealthiness and obesity.

Going into the summer of this year, Carrot Rewards were receiving funding from the Government of Canada and various Provincial Governments, and they had a large, strong core of users. However, the creators began to exploit their user base with the introduction of streaks. Therefore, in my case, instead of earning 40 points for each daily step goal I meet, I had to have a minimum five-day streak of meeting my daily step goal in order to receive my 40 points. A one-day streak would be 10 points, two straight days would be 15 points, three straight days would be 20 points, four straight days would be 30 points, and five or more straight days would give me my 40 daily points. Many users, including myself, did not like this change, because it drastically reduced the amount of points people were getting per day. I contemplated uninstalling the app, but decided against it because I was still earning points, which is better than earning no points at all. Overall, this decision made the Carrot Rewards app less appealing to users.

The death knell to Carrot Rewards (in my opinion) happened when the creators made two fateful decisions that truly alienated their user base in the winter of 2018. The first thing was the introduction of a paid version of the app called "Carrot Plus", where you pay a nominal monthly fee to give you the ability to earn more points by meeting your daily step goals. Shortly after this decision, the creators eliminated the ability to earn points from meeting daily step goals on their basic free tier. This means that you can only earn reward points from step goals if you pay for Carrot Plus.

This did not sit well with the user base, and if the plethora of one star reviews on the Apple App Store and the Google Play store mean anything, it looks like a large amount of people uninstalled the app. Why would the creators of the Carrot Rewards app eliminate their main selling point? If the creators were running into financial troubles, why did they not just insert ads into the app? I do not know if that would have solved their issues, but it seems like the creators acted greedily and rashly with only earning reward points behind a paywall. I also wished that the Federal and Provincial Governments could have done more with the promotion of a healthy lifestyle through the usage of this app.

Regardless, after touting the benefits of the Carrot Rewards app for months to everyone I know, I have finally uninstalled the app, as I cannot earn any more reward points. I now consider the Carrot Rewards app useless. Corporate greed has once again sullied a great idea that would benefit society. It is disappointing, and yet not surprising.

Information about the Carrot Rewards app can be found here.