Just felt the need to write about this quickly. Since I’m aware that a lot of investors are joining this app as I have. So in the end the answer is YES they did give me the free stock, but only because I asked about it specifically.
So here’s the rub. To promote membership and engagement, Robinhood and other app brokers have promoted the idea that through referrals, you earn the opportunity for getting one or more free stocks. I don’t know how much Robinhood invests (read loses) when they give out free stocks based on these referrals. In the end, we can imagine they make this all back through the interaction they create and the interest on that minimum investment of $100 for the free stock reward to kick in.
Around January of 2021 I got my girlfriend to start investing long term as well using Robinhood. She started and put in $100 and made her investments, thereby qualifying for her free stock. Months later, in March I had still not received any message about my opportunity for a free stock. So I ended up messaging them about this.
I can’t remember exactly what I said in the message I wrote them, but I did complain about not getting the free stock. I offered them my referral link, my girlfriend’s name, the amount she put in, and the stock she purchased. They responded with the following:
A couple of days later they sent another email explaining the resolution of the issue.
And with that I was able to claim my free stock. I got one share of AGEN ( a clinical-stage immuno-oncology company) at a price-point of $3.70. I wonder if this approach has been taken to reduce the amount of influencers or YouTubers who were implementing this strategy to get large amounts of free stocks. Maybe making the process a bit more involved or personal creates a bit of that wall where the person making the reference sees themselves forced to manually validate their references, thereby reducing how much Robinhood invests in this campaign because the influencer wouldn’t even know they “didn’t get their referral stock.”
That’s just my theory based on personal experience with Robinhood. Please write in the comment section if you have had any similar experience with Robinhood or any other investment app. I’m curious to see what others have experienced.
Leave a Reply