Perryville woman wins $10,000 from online trivia game for student loan debt

Picture this: The doorbell rings. At the door is a man holding a check for $10,000. It’s for you to use toward your student loan debt.

If it sounds too good to be true, a Perryville, Missouri, woman would tell you it’s not.

Jera Tuetkin lived out that scenario Tuesday night after she was picked as the random drawing winner by Givling, an app that allows users to play games, earn points and compete for loan payments.

The money is funded through advertising, sponsor offers and people who pay to play Givling.

The company’s chief marketing officer, Seth Beard, traveled from California to deliver the check in person, Tuetkin said. The journey and moment of surprise were recorded and can be viewed on the company’s YouTube channel.

“I was just really shocked, and I didn’t have much to say,” Tuetkin recalled. “I couldn’t believe my name had been picked.”

Though the check was hand-delivered, it is an entirely symbolic gesture.

“We pay the loan lender directly, so the money never touches the winner’s hand,” Beard stated in a Thursday email correspondence with the Southeast Missourian.

Tuetkin said it was a true surprise for her, but noted her husband had been contacted in advance by the company, and he knew her name had been drawn for the $10,000 loan payment.

Tuetkin, who is a critical-care pharmacist at Saint Francis Healthcare System, earned her doctorate degree in 2013 from St. Louis College of Pharmacy and said the loan payment she was awarded will not cover the total of her debt “but it will definitely help.”

Givling, which was founded in 2015, has more than 500,000 registered users and has paid out nearly $5 million in cash prizes and funding for student loans and mortgages, according to Beard.

The company doesn’t always send someone in person, Beard said, unless the random drawing is sponsored. The drawing in which Tuetkin was selected was sponsored by Blue Apron, a meal-kit service.

Givling users may purchase merchandise from sponsors to help them earn points to push them toward the top of the game’s queue where the loan payments are awarded. The top payout amount of $50,000 is awarded every seven to 10 days to the user at the top of the queue. That’s the same timeframe in which a $10,000 random drawing is selected.

“A Givling user only needs to play 10 free-play trivia games to be automatically entered into the drawing,” Beard wrote.

The “free-play” trivia games Beard mentioned refer to the free games the company offers to users that have daily and weekly monetary prizes of their own.

Tuetkin said she has played the trivia game for about two years. In that time, she has paid to play and played for free. Tuetkin said she wasn’t sure how much she’d spent with the game since she initially came across it on Facebook.

“Last year, I paid a little bit into it, but when I realized that’s not really going to work out [because] it would take way too much money, I stopped,” Tuetkin said. “This year, I’ve strictly been doing just the free trivia games.”

The company has not been without criticism. In June, a CNBC article detailed cases in which several users had claimed to have spent thousands of dollars in the app to climb to the top of the competitive queue. Specifically, the article mentions a user who reportedly spent $42,000 in the app and one who reportedly borrowed $20,000 from his 401(k). Both users eventually won the $50,000 prize, according to the article.

Asked about the likelihood of users spending money with the app who may never see a return on their “investment,” Beard pointed to a Dec. 5 Yahoo Finance article detailing the following ways to win Givling’s monetary prizes for free: “There are now four free ways for a Givling player to be awarded money from the Givling trivia game and crowdfunding platform: the new Free Queue competition for $50,000, the $10,000 random drawings for direct loan payoffs, the $500 daily random drawings, and the free trivia game that pays out four and five-figure awards every week.”

The CNBC article raises some concern over whether the awarded money is non-taxable. Beard said the company follows the same current guidelines for GoFundMe, which note donations are “usually considered to be personal gifts which, for the most part, aren’t taxed as income.”

There may be particular case-specific instances in which the income is in fact taxable, the guidelines read, and GoFundMe recommends users maintain adequate records of donations received and consult a tax professional.

The guidelines go on to note GoFundMe cannot offer tax advice to each unique situation, but it will not report donations as income at the end of the year or issue any tax documents.

As of Thursday morning, Tuetkin said she had not received confirmation her Givling-funded loan payment was received by her loan provider. Both Tuetkin and Beard acknowledged the process of getting the money to the provider can take some time. “Typically under two business weeks,” Beard wrote, noting the time frame varies from one provider to the next.

“We realize Givling does seem to good to be true,” Beard wrote. “However, with nearly $5 million paid out and thousands of lives changed, we are proving that we are good and true.”

Beard also noted the company’s “momentum” has allowed it to attract bigger and larger corporate sponsors.

“Over $3 million was paid out in 2019 alone, and we project bigger growth in 2020,” Beard stated.

Tuetkin, like many Givling users who regularly interact with social media posts on the company’s Facebook page, had only praise for the company’s mission.

“[I’m] really just grateful that I found the game,” Tuetkin said. “ ... I know student loan debt and the crisis around it is a big public discussion, especially with the elections coming up, and I just think it’s nice there’s a company out there that’s trying to find a way to help people overcome the debt.”