The Cynic Says……

I was browsing allmusic today out of sheer boredom and noticed an advertisement for a free 40g apple ipod. So out of sheer curiosity I decide to click the link and find out what it’s all about. Turns out, what I suspected was correct. Basically they sign you up for all kinds of bullshit spam mail and you have to complete no less than SIX offers that they send you in order to qualify for the free ipod. Basically you give them your name, address, phone numbers, email address, and other personal info and they send you email (and possibly regular mail) offers from various places like AOL, Columbia House, Doubleday Book Club, Stamps.com, Ancestry.com and the like. Well, the problem is that most of those are pay services that they’re making you sign up for. So of course your ipod isn’t really free. It amounts to whatever you have to spend to meet the “offers” they send you. Obviously that’s going to cost you less than $400 that you’d spend on the ipod, but all the fucking spam you’ll end up with wouldn’t be worth the headache in my book. You can opt out of their program, which will stop the spam from THEM, but what about all the other stupid bullshit companies that they’ve already given your info to? You have to opt out of each of their “programs” individually. Talk about a lot of hassle just to get a stupid ipod. No thanks… Oh, even worse… they even say in the terms & conditions that they’re free to substitute the product with one of similar function, including one that is either used or refurbished, substitute it with something of similar VALUE (not even necessarily the same function), or just cut you a check for the value of the product. Like I said, too much hassle… and I’m sure that most of the other “free ipod” offers are similar to this one.

Here’s the link to the “free ipod” offer.