Scam Watch

You’ve likely seen ads for sites that offer free products, ranging from game systems to ipods to cell phones. If you’re not familiar with how these sites work, it’s important to learn about the potential scam – while you don’t pay for these products directly, they are anything but free.

In order to earn a “free” gift from most of the advertised sites, you have to earn a number of points in your account. Points can be earned by completing a set of offers from advertisers on their site. These advertisers range widely, but most offer trial offers for their products. In an ideal scenario, you would be able to try out sample offers to see if you like them, and be able to cancel those that you don’t want to keep, thus allowing you to earn your free gift with only voluntary costs. The reality of the situation, however, is more complicated. In particular, it is quite difficult to cancel many of these trial offers and they require a credit card upon initial sign up, which means you’ll likely get charged for a minimum period of time. Even if you’re able to put in the effort to get your order canceled before the trial ends, you may have to spend countless hours of time communicating with these companies. Another factor to consider is that your credit history may be impaired by taking advantage of a wide range of trial offers and subsequently canceling – the cost you actually pay, under the best circumstances may be higher than you realize.

Another set of sites offers essentially the same setup, but doesn’t even deliver the free product after you’ve earned your points. This can be because of long shipping delays where you have to wait months to receive your product. Because of the business model of these companies, they have to get paid from their sponsors in order to buy the gifts, so if the advertiser is unhappy with fraudulent trial offer signups they may never pay the site in the first place. Under these circumstances, you may be out of pocket on your offers without a gift in hand. In the case that the site does actually ship, you may have to wait so long for the product that a newer model has been released in the meantime, making the reward virtually worthless to you.

Not all free sites are created equal, and there are sites that are more reputable than others. Take your time to research on forums and blogs to see what information you can find on a given free site company. While we recommend you avoid these sites altogether, there are definitely sites that should be avoided at all costs and those that deliver on their promise if you play by the rules. The nature of the user rules on the sites, often written in small print on the terms of agreement that you accept upon registration, are often filled with loopholes that allows the company to revoke your points for nearly any reason. In this case you lose your points without cause, even on the best of sites.

Overall, there are too many scam risks involved in these sites to get involved. Some sites may allow you to earn points through referring other members, but it’s never worth your reputation to refer friends to a site that may turn out to be a scam. As a smart, aware shopping you’ll want to buy the products you want at reliable merchants and use true, tested forms of savings such as coupons and specials to get the gadgets you want.