I can easily smell a scam as soon as I see one on the Internet. The advanced scam spotter can differentiate between the two varieties of Free. The variety known as “Free as in Free Beer ” is true to its form and means no hidden costs are attached whatsoever. The large portion of this category refers to intangible products. In other words, you can use it but you can’t physical touch it. When you open up a web based email account at Yahoo or Gmail you get a decent amount of inbox space at no cost to you. Open source software such as Wordpress which this blog runs on and Joomla! for site content management also fall under this category. If you are looking for a web host, but don’t wish to pay a monthly fee, you can host your site at BraveNet.com for free. Such free products are either supported by ads, have a volunteer-based ground roots community, or serve as a basic package so that if people like the free product they can upgrade it to get more features.
If physical products are what you desire, free is not always limited to virtual zeros and ones. I personally stay away from most free physical products advertised online, but there are a few legitimate companies. StartSampling.com has free product samples that you can try out and is partnered with WalMart. Many of these are health and beauty related such as hair color, sunscreen , and colognes. Nothing can beat free, but you need to be even more cautious with shippable items. This is when the scam radar should be kicked up a notch. You have to pretend you are in the marketing driver’s seat of the company and question their motives: Why they are offering this free stuff? Some only want to give people a chance to try their products and hope to gain a few loyal customers along the way. Be warned though as these companies are far, few and in between. In general, larger companies like Loreal should be trusted more that XYZ Co that you have never heard of in your life.
Many of these rogue businesses attach dozens of strings to your free* product. For example, consider the now infamous Video Professor offer. If you visit their official site at VideoProfessor.com, they have a pitch just like any typical marketing campaign: “Get the computer training you’ve always wanted and needed. Try my product for free*.” Note the asterisk after free. You only have to pay $6.95 for shipping to get your software discs but if you are not paying attention you may miss that you will also be billed $389.95 for additional products if you don’t cancel your membership. It was not until recently that they made their terms more clear thanks in part to the Better Business Bureau looking after them. Previously, you had to find the terms buried inside links and legal jargon.
Another common offer is the free acai berry weight loss supplement. The sales scheme is the same only what is being sold is different.
Step 1: The pitch – It starts with pretty eye-catching fonts.
Step 2: Shipping Information and Credit Card Information – The forms look typical like any that you have seen online.
Step 3: Terms
Wait a minute. Shouldn’t you see the terms before you enter your credit card information?
The terms are displayed in tiny size 8 font. Notice that they tried to camouflage what you will be charged if you do not cancel. Instead of writing out that you will be charged $79.95 after 30 days, they spelled it out as seventy-nine dollars and ninety-five cents. Also note the spelling error. They hope you just skim the terms without taking a closer look at what it actually says. When it comes to the small shipping change they don’t mind writing the $3.98. Every scam has its bag of trickery.
If you have any doubts about whether an offer is too good to be true, it probably is (you knew that one was coming). A common business model on the web is to lure customers in on a free $10 product, collect their credit card information, and then bill them for $150 later. This model continues to survive because of the uninformed users that do not understand what they’re truly getting into.
Today I was greeted with a curious logo on my homepage. As for many holidays, Google likes to mix things up a little bit. For the uber celebration of Pi Day, Google diagramed its “O’s” with some 3.14159… For St. Patrick’s Day, Google went green for 24 hours. But Topeka? Last month, Topeka, Kansas mayor Bill Bunten decided that he wanted to rename his city to Google, you know just for the heck of it. This was a publicity stunt to change the city’s image while attracting younger people. At 79 years and admittedly not very keen of the 21st century, most would consider him gravely over the hill. Topeka may be part of a new Google initiative that surprises many cities across the U.S with incredibly fast internet connections. The U.S is lagging behind other countries in terms of internet speed so hopefully installing new broadband cables might help the problem. Unfortunately, the youth of Topeka really just aren’t feeling the city. If this YouTube comment is any indication, I bet the kids would run as fast as possible from Topeka if given a chance: