sorry for the late reply....
Gympact is now called "Pact" and I've been using it for almost 2 years now.
Here's the basics. You enter your credit card info and make a weekly promise to do x healthy living items (workouts, eating fruit/veg, or recording your meals) per week. Then each time you do one, you use your smart phone to "check in" with it. Check-ins are limited to one per day on workouts and recording your meals (I think), but I haven't seen a limit on the fruit/veg. At the end of the week, everyone who missed a check-in gets charged on their credit card (min is $5 per missed check-in). For the ones that completed their entire pacts, the money that was generated by charging those that missed (minus I think ~15% held for the company) is distributed to everyone else based on how many activities they had promised and completed.
It sounds complicated, but really isn't once you get used to it. I hate recording food and taking pictures of what I eat, so I only do the work-out pacts. Here's how it goes.
I have mine set so it's $5/missed check-in (the minimum) and my pact is 5 work-outs per week.
Then I use RunKeeper (which you can link with Gympact) to record all my runs and bike rides for the week. Every run or bike ride (or even walk!) over 30 minutes counts as a work-out if you record it in runkeeper. You just need to open the pact app once or twice per week to make sure the Runkeeper info is syncing properly.
There are other check-in options for workouts:
- you can physically go to a gym and check-in via GPS (less Mustachian since home gyms don't count)
- you can use the at home option that uses the accelerometer to record motion as your check-in through the Pact app.
All of the workout check-ins must be 30 minutes or more.
When I travel, sometimes I "pause" my pact or sometimes lower it depending on how much I think I'll be able to get in. And when I'm sick, walking around the neighborhood counts as a workout - anything above 2mph and 30 minutes in Runkeeper will be recorded as a workout in Pact. So if I'm not feeling well enough to run or bike much, it's usually a good incentive to get me some fresh air with a slow walk around the neighborhood in the evening.
Payouts:
They vary. Lately I've been getting between $1.20 and $1.60/week for 5 workouts. So that's ~$0.24 - $0.32 per workout. I've seen higher payouts at other times, as much as $0.50 per workout, but those days seem to be pretty rare - mostly holiday weeks or when there's a huge snowstorm up north. =)
Veggie Pact:
I tried this - basically you commit to eating fruits or vegs and have to take pictures and upload them to prove it. The pictures get voted on by other people to confirm that you get credit for it. Payout was really low (maybe $0.08 - $0.10 per picture?) but you can do more than one per day.
I thought this system was pretty glitch-prone and often had problems uploading pictures unless I was on a strong wifi signal. Even then, glitch-prone. In the end, it was a lot of hassle for <$.30 per week so I stopped it.
Charges and Reporting Problems:
I've never actually been charged for missing a workout or veggie. You do have to open the Pact app and make sure that Runkeeper is syncing if that's what you're using for your check-ins. If it's not syncing, you report a problem though the in-app reporting system and I've had a pretty good response on them correcting that within a day or two.
The most annoying thing is that it ALL requires your smartphone. So when I lost my phone there was no way for me to login online via a computer and pause my pact. I had to email their customer service directly, and they were good about pausing it. But that was annoying.
Withdrawing the $$:
You can leave the money in your gympact account and let it grow or withdraw it to paypal. I think paypal might have some fees, but I can't remember. Withdrawing it was really easy the time I tried that, but I've left it in the account for a while now and I have over $100 built up that I plan on cashing in when I feel the need to justify a fancy exercise purchase.
Hope that helps! I'll try and remember to check the thread again if anyone has any questions. Gympact (aka Pact) is one of those things that sounds totally weird, but once you get used to using it is really easy and takes virtually no effort.