Freebie Scams

[jeffrey]

You see them all the time. Pop-up advertisements telling you you can get a free $100 gas card, a $50 free meal certificate at a particular restaurant, a free MP3 player or the like. Because of the high price of the items being offered for free, these have most likely piqued your curiosity a bit as to whether or not they are legitimate.

Due to the increasing popularity of freebies on the Internet, you find more and more freebie offers that are anything but free. Although the advertisement screams a free, there is usually an asterisk with a lot of fine print buried at the bottom or on another page that tells you the truth that it is anything but free.

All freebies have an alternative motive other than giving you something simply for free. Usually the item is given for free so that you can test it and hopefully like it enough that you will purchase it in the future. There may be other reasons that items are given away for free (magazines sometimes give away free subscriptions to keep their subscription base at a high level so they can charge more for advertisements in the magazine), but in general the company giving away the freebie is doing so in hopes of helping itself.

Scam freebies walk a fine line in that they do offer something at no charge, but require you to fill out a number of third party offers (where they make money) or recruit others to join in order to receive the freebie being offered. Here are some points to watch out for when looking for freebies:

Third Party Sign-Ups: If you are required to sign-up for a product or service that has nothing to do with the freebie being offered, don't do it. For example, in order to get a $50 restaurant certificate, you have to sign up for a credit card that has nothing to do with that restaurant. Most legitimate freebie offers will not require you to sign-up with third party vendors.

Multiple Sign-Ups: If you are required to sign-up with multiple offers in order to get the freebie, walk away. As with third party sign-ups, having to apply to multiple offers to get the freebie is a sign that it is not a legitimate freebie.

Not Affiliated With The Free Product: If the site giving away the freebie has a disclaimer that it is not affiliated in any way with the freebie they are giving away, then move on. This most likely means that it's a profit making enterprise where they make the profit on activities you're required to complete and you get nothing - including the freebie promised.

Recruit Family & Friends: If you are required to recruit a certain number of other people to also sign-up for the "freebie," then you'll want to pass. This set up is very similar to a pyramid scheme and like a pyramid scheme, you are likely to get nothing from it.

Banners & Pop-Ups: If the freebie comes to you from a banner or pop-up while surfing the Internet, it's probably best to pass. This is especially true if the freebie advertisement takes you to a website other than homepage of the freebie product being offered.

Unsolicited Mail - SPAM: Freebies that come to you through unsolicited mail or SPAM are not even worth the time opening. You are much better off sticking to websites that find legitimate freebies that require none of the above conditions to get the freebie.

In Our Forums - Lack Of Posts: As our site is becoming more and more popular, we are also getting more and more people placing SPAM freebies on our discussion boards. While I try to eliminate them as quickly as possible, I'm not on the computer 24 hours a day (don't tell nate ). While you should look at all freebie posts with a bit of skeptism and your good judgement (if you aren't sure something looks correct, reply to the post with a question to get a better feel if it is a legitimate freebie or not), posts made by people that have just joined the forum or have less than 15 total posts (the number of posts required by us to post outside links to avoid such SPAM) should be disregarded as a scam.

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Copyright Jeffrey Strain and SavingAdvice.com 2003 - 2006, All Rights Reserved. If you find anything inaccurate in this article, please email us.

Also be sure to read our disclaimer.

thank you Jeff for this post , it makes it so much easier to say NO to the scam offers out there when you know up front what you are dealing with

[srace]

Thanks for the tips Jeff, I have seen plenty of these and no they are definately not free.

[jeffrey]

I'm glad that this has been helpful - I just added a new one at the very end regarding posts in our forums to be caeful of.

[BillsGirl]

Thanks, I have fallen victim to a couple of these, now I pass em up!

[catlover15]

Thanks for posting. I have fallen for a few of those scams, but now I will just ignore them.

[rob62521]

Thanks for the advice. One thing I do is I have a free email like from yahoo or hotmail and give that one as the email they ask for. I can still use it for legitimate freebies, but it also cuts down on the spam I get in the email addy I use for corresponding with friends and family.

[mysterybags]

This is very good information. There are way to many dishonest sites.

Thanks Jeff!!

[partsguy]

The "Third Party" and "Not Affiliated" scams were very enlightening. Thanks!

[kexpo]

Thanks for info.
I seen tooooo many sites with Multiple Sign-Ups.

[sunshine81177]

I fell victim of these sites also. Wasted many hours, but I caught on within 2 days...

[rob62521]

I, unfortunately, fell victim to a couple of these sites awhile back. Fortunately, I have a different email address than my primary one so all the spam goes to that site instead of my primary email. It was time consuming click on this and that and realizing I wasn't going to get anything for my time.

[sprtsmnded]

I have started to request the free items, however it seems that i am filling out so many questions and answers to get the free stuff. If it is to good to be true, why does it stay on the 100 best free offers?

[jeffrey]

All the freebies are listed by regular members like you who happen to come across them. You need to approach each of them with a bit of caution (as with all freebies) and determine for yourself the value of filling out the requested information. If you find one that is listed that is a scam freebie, make a comment as such. I try to monitor them as much as I can and take out ones that are scams, but I rely on the members for help spotting them since I don't fill out all the freebies. It's a self monitoring site so the more people that help out, the more freebies that get listed and the better we can weed out those that shouldn't be there.

We don't have a 100 best freebies (although creating something like that might be a good idea) - our list is the latest 100 freebies which are just the latest ones that have been posted.

[sprtsmnded]

thank you for the information.

[chrysnblue]

This site always has great information, and this is just one of the examples.

[PeggyS]

I made the mistake of clicking on one of those banner ads advertising free restaurant certificates. Wow! What a mistake. My mailbox was filled with spam almost immediately. Fortunately, I used an alternate email address and was able to discontinue the use of it.

[sprtsmnded]

Thank you for your reply

[mildreda]

Sometimes I have filled out all the info before I findout that there is numberous items to click on before you can apply for the feebie. This is when I delete. I hop that they don't get my info but don't really know.

thanks for those info.