I’m sure you have undoubtedly seen plenty of ads online advertising free stuff from Ipods, Iphones, laptops, digital camera’s etc. The ads want you to click and you will get your new computer. They start by asking for your email address on their first page. Simple enough right? Then they ask you what address can they send your new computer to. Oh great, it must be on its way soon!

Here’s the catch. There is a stipulation that in order to get your new computer you must participate in some way. Ok, I can participate, how can I help? Lets take a look at the fine print.

Copied from one of these types of programs websites.

SUMMARY OF PROGRAM REQUIREMENTS. To receive the reward you must: 1) be a Canadian resident at least 18 years of age or older; 2) register with valid information; 3) complete the following reward offers: 2 Silver offers, 2 Gold offers, and 8 Platinum offers (Available reward offers will vary. Some reward offers require a purchase. Credit card offers may require you to activate the card by making a purchase, transferring a balance or taking a cash advance.  4) refer 2 unique households that also complete the program requirements; and 5) follow the redemption instructions. All program requirements must be completed within 60 days of the date of registration. Your information will be shared with our marketing partners.

Lets Evaluate what I need to do to get my “free laptop”
step 1) Canadian -Check, 18 -Check -Off to a great start
step 2) Valid information given -check -well I did set up a fresh yahoo account for all the junk email I expect to get
step 3) 2 Silver Offers; 2 Gold Offers; 8!!! Platinum Offers; Hmmm well what exactly does this mean? Here is the link to the silver offers that I will have to sign up for 2 of :

>Silver offers
Despite what the ads say all of these offers require you to put a credit card up front and even if you don’t think you are paying for anything right away it will be billed within the next 30 days, I guarantee it. Even though some of them say they are free trials, once your trial is up they will automatically bill you because they will assume you will want to continue with their service so they will charge your credit card every month after that until you cancel it. Now when you sign up with an offer they have to notify the company offering the computer that you did in fact sign up with the service. Most of the companies offering the free trial do not notify the other company until after the free trial is up and the credit card has been billed at least once.

Estimated Cost for one month of service from the silver offers:
Well I am going to estimate that it will cost me about 60 dollars for two offers (2* 10$ for each product plus 2*20$ for each of the first months of service), I feel that this is a really low estimation, as if you are not really diligent with what is being charged to your credit card and really careful with tracking what you’ve signed up with it will probably cost you more than that. As a side note on the offers, most of them sign you up into two offers when you sign up for each, not one. One of them will have give you 7-30 days to cancel the other will give you 30 -60. So be careful when reading the fine print otherwise you will get some surprises on your credit card statement a few months down the road.

Gold Offers

Notice that the gold offers look a lot like the silver ones. Good, you’re on the ball; they are all the same just a different product, some are even the exact same as the silver ones. Again I am going to estimate a cost of 60 dollars to complete the gold section as well. I should also note that although some of the offers in this section are duplicated from the silver section you cannot count it as an offer in each nor can you sign up for the same offer twice. You need to sign up to completely separate offers in order for them to count.

Platinum offers

Now this is just crazy you need to sign up for 8 of these and keep in mind that most of these offers automatically sign you up with with a second bonus offer. Continuing with my estimated cost of 30 dollars per offer I am going to say that you will need 240 dollars to meet these requirements.

So to sum it up I have estimated that you will need at least 360 dollars of non-refundable cash in order to get your “free” laptop.

I would recommend that if you are doing this that you do it all in one day so that you can get credit for signing up as quickly as possible then you can cancel all the services as quickly as possible.

Step 3) Check

Step 4) Not only do you have to spend an estimated 360 dollars to get your “free” laptop, so do 2 more of your friends and you don’t just have to get them to sign up you also have to get them to complete the same process that you have just done before you will get the credit for it. argg. It’s sort of the bigger sucker philosophy; maybe these people don’t have to be your friends you could place ads on your website or with other service to find 2 people to sign up.

Step 5) Oh did I mention this has to all be done in 60 days.  So in oder to complete it by this day here is the schedule I suggest.

Day 1: Sign up for all 12 of the required programs.

Day 2: Get two friends to sign up and pay for all 12 programs they are required to complete.

Days 3-6: You should start receiving your first products.

Day 7: Some of the products have an opt out date on this day so by this point they should have notified your laptop company to tell them you registered. Once this is done you can start canceling.

By day 14 you should have recieved most of your products, then the bills start coming in. The problem is in most peoples cases the bills don’t show up online for another couple days but thats another issue. By this time you should be starting to get credit for having signed up for all these products. After this point as soon as you get the credit for signing up start cancelling!!!!!!!!! Remeber for each product you signed up for there are likely two places you will have to physically call to and cancel (24 in total). When you are talking to them be sure to tell them how dissatisfied with their product you are and try as hard as you can to get a refund, also mention all the time you were placed on hold and how it has interfered with your day and it might get you a bit better of a return.

Step 6) Finally fill out the form and they will ship you your laptop, not before offering you some more services I’m sure.

So the total cost for this sort of endeavor almost costs more then the cost for a new laptop when you factor in the amount that your two friends would have to chip in. The way this might be feasible to someone would be if they we’re stuck on what to get a bunch of family members for Christmas and could take the chances. I might revisit this article in future if I ever have an extra thousand dollars lying around.

Hope this artical was informative to you and opened your eyes to how these systems work and to how much financial risk you are taking on when signing up for all these offers, not to mention the identity theft issue.

Vaughan