No such thing as a free lunch — or HDTV

The cost for each purchase seems minimal, usually less than $10 for the shipping and handling. But in some cases, the lawsuit alleges, the consumer is automatically obligated to make future payments over and above shipping and handling unless he or she cancels service within a specified period of time.

For example, one of the offers is four posters for $2. It sounds like a great deal, because the $31 shipping fee isn’t mentioned. And by accepting this offer, the lawsuit says, you agree to automatically buy two more posters each month for $9.95 plus $23.10 shipping. Without knowing it, you’ve agreed to pay $44 a month until you cancel.

Make it this far and you land on the “Premium Offers” page where the purchases involve serious money.  At this level you must choose two of three offers. One set of premium offers cited in the lawsuit was a year’s worth of Web hosting for $840, a minimum $1,500 purchase of children’s furniture, and two Rail Europe passes for $1,798. To qualify for the “free” TV you’d have to spend at least $2,340 for the two least expensive premium offers.

In its news release, SubscriberBASE says, “The only money spent by consumers in our programs is the result of transactions between the consumer and third party merchants who advertise on the Company’s websites. When a consumer completes the necessary number of merchant transactions, he or she receives the advertised gift item completely free of charge.”  Can you say chutzpah?

But wait, there’s more!
If you fall for the hype and decide to claim your free TV, you must start with a page that asks for shipping information: name, address, email, phone number, and date of birth. Why ask for your birth date? That’s clearly not needed for shipping.

Because, as the lawsuit states, SubscriberBASE uses this promotion to collect personal information to add to its database of more than 32 million consumers. This information is sold to other companies that want to target their direct-marketing offers. In its marketing materials, SubscriberBASE brags that the consumers in its database are “highly-responsive individuals, which makes them ideal candidates for promotional offers, trial offers and subscriptions.”

Assistant Attorney General Selis says people who enter their personal information are “bombarded with spam.”

The bottom line
How do you avoid getting lured into something like this? You need turn down the greed and turn up the skepticism. Remember, there is no free lunch – laptop or HDTV, for that matter. No company could stay in business if they gave away such high-priced items.

“Whenever you get an offer that purports to be for something free, you should think about what they might want in return,” warns Nat Wood, a lawyer with the Federal Trade Commission. What they usually want is your money, your personal information, or both. 

Unfortunately, lots of people will supply their personal information to an unknown company in order to claim a prize or get a free gift. That’s a very risky thing to do. Are you giving this information to a company that will make money selling it? Or worse yet, are you providing it to an identity thief? There’s no way to be sure.

So don’t play this game. There are too many ways for you to lose.

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