(no subject)

[miko2]

I've gotten promo e-mails in the past saying I could get a free iPod or computer or Xbox or a $500.00 gift certificate. I investigated one of them a few months ago just far enough to confirm that I would need to sign up for a bunch of other services and things before I'd ever recieve anything "free". I figured I wasn't stupid enough to ever fall for that sort of thing.

But then, maybe not.

I was wandering around "Freebie World" in Second Life, just to see if the quality of free virtual items had improved any in the last nine months. They have, to some extent. Second Life continues to attract real companies that have money to throw around and that understand that ultimately they can make all of tha money back and a good deal more via a platform like SL. Freebie Island itself is run by one of several companies that promise to "give free lindens" for filling out surveys. However, the "surveys" that they want you to fill out are essentially all made up of these promo offers like the ones I'd recieved via e-mail previously.

I decided to check it out. Then I decided to see if there was a way to "game" the system. No, I'm not stupid enough to think that I can get a $500.00 gift certificate for free, but I figured there might be a way to get it for signifigantly less than a $500.00 investment. At least, I was curious to see if it could be done. I realize that companies don't give away free items and free money for free -- they're making money overall. But if you were very careful, was it possible to meet their requirements without spending a ton of money or buying things you don't want or need?

Right off the bat I decided to use an e-mail address that runs through my own domain name, because I can kill it and make a different one any time I want. This was a good idea, because I expected I would open myself up to lots of spam and I've already recieved quite a bit. For me, 10 junk e-mails is a virtually unheard of amount of spam to get in one day. I've probably got twice that since last night.

I also decided I could live with getting junk mail or junk phone calls. I already get a fair amount of both and I screen my phone calls as a matter of course anyway.

I also chose to use my Mastercard for most of what I was doing. My current card expires in November, so that's another way to limit the trouble I can get into.

At various points while clicking through all of the "surveys" (which mostly consist of "would you like to get a bunch of junk from this company? How about this company? It's all free, until you have to pay!) I had settled on an 8-gig iPod as the big reward I would shoot for, but at another point I also settled on a $500.00 gift certificate to Macy's, and that's apparently the one I'm working on. That's not a bad choice. Macy's (still The Bon Marche as far as I'm concerned) has a wide range of stuff, not just clothing but household goods and appliances, etc. I bought my bed mattresses there. I can probably find a way to actually use a $500.00 gift certificate there.

The requirements of ResearchTrendsGroup.com for this prize is that I participate in two of their "Silver Offers", two of their "Gold Offers" and four of their "Platinum Offers". I think when I started the process I read that as 2 of each... 6 total. 8 total is a bit more, I probably wouldn't have gone for it if I'd read that correctly, but nevermind, I'm in the game now. I set about trying to find options among their "free" offers that I felt I could actually afford or that I would likely use. I tried to stay away from anything that enrolled me in any kind of club that I wasn't acutally interested in, or involved a seven-day free trial period, after which I'd be billed a gazillion bucks a month until I actually noticed my credit card statement and spent four hours trying to call their customer service line to discontinue my service. Frankly, a large number of their "free" offers fall into this cateogry, but I think I've found some that I can actually live with:

Silver Offers

Columbia House Well, this one was easy. I signed up for their dvd club. I've done Columbia House and BMG Music clubs before, and I know how to get through them without spending a ton of money needlessly. There are quite a few cds that I've been meaning to pick up one of these days, and the club only requires... eh, I think it was 5 purchases at $19.95, plus probably a stupid amount in shipping charges but what the heck, I can do this one. They even had anime.

Entertainment Book This was one of those books full of coupons, designed for the area I live in, that cost about $25.00 plus s&h. I know how these work, my family and friends have bought them before, you can save a lot of money if you shop where the coupons tell you to shop, but usually people forget to use the coupons anyway. Still, another special offer I could live with, that didn't subscribe me to anything I would later regret.

Gold Offers

MagazineBurst.com This was one of those sites that tries to get you to subscribe to a bunch of magazines. Their offer was five magazine subscriptions for $27.00, plus whatever they added for s&h or whatever. Still, it seemed like an okay deal and I found several magazines that I would actually read if I got them in the mail -- ones that I've bought before, in fact.

Discover Card I signed up for a Discover Card. I don't need a new credit card. In fact, I have credit cards that I don't use, and I mistrust any credit card that comes from a source I don't know. I have my Visa from my Credit Union, and my Mastercard that I got through Teamsters, and I can be certain that both will always charge me a reasonable interest rate, so I don't use any other credit cards of any kind. But signing up for a card fulfills one of my requirements, there's no annual fee, and if I never use it (I'm certain I won't) and I eventually cancel it, then this will actually be the cheapest requirement of all.

Platinum Offers

BMG Music Service As I've said I've done the BMG Music Service thing before. Get a bunch of "free" cds, buy one, get some more "free". Quit. That's another offer I can live with. They actually charged me $20.00 to ship my "free" cds, but eh. My only problem with this particular feature is that it's listed as both a "gold" and a "platinum" offer, and I'm afraid that they'll treat it as one of my "gold" offer requirements, and ask me to do yet another "platinum" offer. I'll have to wait and see if I can get them to list it correctly, if I'd realized the problem I would have waited until my other two gold offers were accepted as fulfilled first.

eMusic.com This is an online music service. Hmm, just what I need, right? I tried to investigate each service to make sure they had things I wanted and I understood the agreement before committing to anything. In this case, eMusic.com at first seemed to offer a much more limited selection of music than iTunes -- they only offered one Nightwish cd, for example, and it wasn't their new one either. But more research revealed that they offer things that iTunes does not offer -- they even had the Without Face cd that I had to order as an import off Amazon.com. That's good, it means they have some of the obscure music that I'm interested in, so I can find things I like.

The second thing I wanted to know was: what's my committment? Their offer was "75 free downloads!" Further investigation showed that they weren't necessarily going to bill me a ton of money a few weeks later. They have a multi-tiered membership, with the lowest tier being 10 songs or less a month for something like $5.99. That seemed quite reasonable. They also offer DRM-free MP3 downloads, which also sounded good to me. As it turned out, in order to sign up you had to pick from one of the three higher level membership tiers: 30 downloads a month for $9.99, 50 for $14.99, 75 for $19.99. Still, 30 downloads for $10.00 is reasonable, and this is one of those services that, even if I don't cancel right away and they bill me for a month or two, I can live with it as long as I remember to use it. Actually it sounds like a pretty good deal, all around. I spend more a month for less downloads with iTunes. I'm sure it's not as easy to use as iTunes, but overall not a bad option.

Vista Print Here I picked an option that cost very little but I probably didn't need. The offer was for 250 free business cards (I paid something like $5.99 s&h). This was one of those options where I had to click through a large number of pages verifying that no, I didn't want the business card holder, no, I didn't want a name stamp, no, I didn't want gummed return address labels, etc. etc. A lot of these services tried to convince me to opt-in to other services -- eMusic wanted me to subscribe to their ebook service too, for example (but they don't have Terry Pratchett, and I'm already subscribed to audible.com). In the end I got through this one with just ordering the business cards, and presumably that fulfills my commitment.

I've yet to choose a fourth option. I think I'm supposed to do so and verify my information before closing the browser, so I guess I'll see if I can find another one I can live with tonight. But I think I'll be able to fulfill their requirements and not actually sign up for anything I don't want or need. There are a couple of options for Dr. Suess books or Disney books and movies that might make good gifts for my youngest nieces for Christmas. We'll see.

However, I've already started worrying that I'm probably being too stupid. Despite being very careful, I worry that I'm going to end up spending more money than I want to or need to. Do I really need more cds and dvds? For that matter, do I really need a $500.00 gift certificate to any place that isn't Fry's, Ikea, or Costco? Whatever I do, I need to make sure I keep track of everything I've agreed to so I can make use of the service or quit the service as soon as I'm done with it. Which is probably more trouble than it's worth, but nevertheless, I'm too far in to back out now!

(edit)

Well, okay. I picked a fourth "platinum" offer -- The Disney Movie club. That one requires I buy 5 dvds over the next 2 years, but I can live with that, there's probably no shortage of Disney dvds that I wouldn't mind having or that I can't buy for my nieces.

I know what the potential problem with the BMG Music thing is: I clicked on it when I was on the "gold" page, turned it down, then later clicked on it when I was on the "platinum" page and went for it at that time. However when I click on the link to show my current status it shows stuff that I only clicked on and didn't accept the offer, because their web site can't know whether I enrolled in someone's program or not. And because I clicked on the BMG one on the earlier page, it shows it as one of my "gold" selections.

That might be a problem later if I can't convince them it was really one of my "platinum" selections. We'll see.

Another potential pitfall in their terms of service that I noted is that, once they've verified that you've subscribed to enough things to qualify for your prize, you have 15 days to claim it. After that, you lose it. So you need to be pretty vigilant about checking back with them to see if you're qualified yet -- and it takes about 30 days before they verify anything.

Time will tell how stupid I'm being. In point of fact, I'm doing everything the hard, expensive way. I'm only signing up for things I actually am interested in and avoiding all of the free trials that will roll over into expensive memberships if you don't cancel. As long as you were careful and patient, singing up for the free trial stuff and canceling within 7 days (or whatever their trial period is) would actually be the cheap way to do it.