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Inside the Free iPod Offer
jonathanhowell writes "David Lazarus, The SF Chronicle's tech guy, has an article in today's paper with an interesting investigation into the work you have to do to get a "free" (as in beer) iPod. I'm trying not to call it a scam, because it appears completely legal, if ethically challenged." From the article: "What it doesn't say is that the offer terms will expose you to reams of spam and marketing solicitations, that the user survey is actually a lengthy marketing ploy, and that the sponsor offers needed to qualify for that free music player will almost certainly cost you money."
Duh, anybody thinking anything is "free" today doesn't value their time, other people's time, or their sanity.
I just drop mine on the ground, and have my employer buy me a new one.
http://www.firstcallpaintball.com/
As anyone who's read Heinlein's The Moon is a Harsh Mistress knows, the Loonies were schooled in survival, not proper English. "From the TINSTAAFL Dept" may be more proper, but the definition (according to the usual source) is "There Ain't No Such Thing As A Free Lunch". Sure, it's a double negative and ain't ain't a word. But I don't think you'll ever hear a Loonie say "There Is No Such Thing As A Free Lunch, by Jove" on their way to High Tea.
Or perhaps the editors left it that way so that us whiners would have something to bi^Wcomplain about.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
I'm glad I won't have to worry about falling for those stupid "Free iPod" scams. As soon as my Nigerian friend returns my savings "fiffty fould" I can buy as many iPods as I want!
Cool, eh?
people offering free expensive things are usually lying!
Join my Folding@HOME Google Toolbar team
And I dissected the bastards' EULA at length.
Read, if you're interested.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
TiVo has a TiVo rewards program. Sign up for a credit card and you get points with your purchases that you can use to get an iPod. If you pay the thing off every month, your iPod is free.
Besides the iPod, they also have Bose noise cancelling headphones, a Nikon digital camera, a couple types of new TiVo units, and some other lesser things.
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
For an uninformed or disconected soul, the "chance" for a free iPod is well worth selling out your vital statistics. I'm always amazed at how easy it is to convice someone to sign on the dotted line, and it's offten only for a T-Shirt.
This organization simply raized the reward, and thereby made the hoops you must jump through more elaborate.
Plain and simple. Same with all the other Free deals.
Whether you consider the Pyramid Scheme a scam, is up to you.
iPod Shuffle: $99
iPod Photo: $349
wasting your time, money, and creating a new e-mail address because you got r00ked by a net dot scam: PRICELESS
"For everything else, there's legitimate commerce."
-- often wrong; never in doubt
1. I used a throwaway email account.
2. I signed up for free AOL for broadband.
3. I put links on my personal website.
3. I cancelled AOL for broadband 2 weeks later.
4. I waited about 6 months.
5. They sent me an iPod.
6. A week later they sent me a t-shirt as well.
For every story like mine, there are a bucket of people that never got enough referrers. I think I got in early enough so that it was still a novelty.
Best Windows Freeware
As others have said, nothing is free.
Beyond that, is the deluge of spam and junk mail that you'll get worth saving a couple of hundred bucks? If you believe the studies that outline how much productivity (and thus time) is lost due to spam, it seems to me that you'll making a bad choice.
On the other hand, I'm probably not their target market anyhow. Enjoy the spam, folks - just don't bitch at me when you get it!
Are you sure about that, chief? Because I think it might be free (as in speech).
Why do so many Slashdotters insist on adding the "as in beer" or "as in speech" qualifier when it's patently obvious which type of "free" is being discussed? Oh yeah, because a lot of those people think they're really clever. In the words of Tyler Durden, how's that workin' out for 'ya?
Personally, I'm a big fan of free (as in beer) speech.
I don't know if the iPod's competition would be qualified as equally good. Most have a couple of good features but none come close to the experience that has been called iPod.
From the SlashDot article:
I'm trying not to call it a scam, because it appears completely legal, if ethically challenged.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but if a person has to buy something, even from another company, to get a "free iPod", then advertising the iPod as "free" is false advertising, no? That makes me not so sure about that "completely legal" part.
I know seeing my sigfile makes this post look like irony, but it's on topic, and I'm posting cause I think this program is exactly as descibed in the article. Having said that, anyone who thinks their personal information *isn't* being passed around for $ right now by different 'marketing' companies is naive. Yes, if you sign up you get spam, but guess what? If you don't signup you get spam! Yes, it's a fact of life now, and is why we're all hopping from free email to free email; after time they become unuseable. Time will tell if Gmail will suffer the same fate, but spam prompted me to learn how to build a LAMP and have my own mailserver with spamassasin at home.
End of my story is; I have many friends who have gotten their free ipod. I don't look down upon them, they made an informed choice, something I'm making sure all ppl that sign up through me do. If you don't like it, fine, but again, I see no harm, as all of this crap is going on in the background anyway.
Sincerely
bo
bad_outlook
--
Is this vague enough for you?
please mod this STORY down as "this is not news - just plain obvious"
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Now when you say "patently" obvious, do you mean as in Intellectual Property or Leather Shoes?
--
If this were Fark, I'd say it needed an [obvious] tag. That or, "I'd hit it". Whatever.
Okay, so a philosopher, a philologist, and a philatelist walk into a bar...
Note that this article is not about the Gratis Networks freeipod offer, which was the first and most well-known, but about one of their more sleazy imitators. Here's another article that compares and contrasts a sleazy imitator to the original Gratis Networks.
Gratis Networks just requires you to do one single promotional offer--and get several of your friends to do the same. Unlike the fraudulent con game that most people are referring to when they say "pyramid scheme" (you know, the "send five bucks to everyone on this list and then add your name" type thing) no money changes hands between you, Gratis, or your referrals; the money is paid from the advertisers to Gratis. Click the link in my signature to find more info. It's legit. Granted, you're going to receive a lot of spam to the address you sign up for with, but that's what easily-available GMail addresses or disposable email address services like SpamGourmet are for.
Oh, and FYI, I received my free 20 gig iPod several months ago, and just got my free 27" Sony flatscreen TV last night. And I only need six more completed referrals to get my free Mac Mini...
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
The doctors wrote software that integrates the ipod.. And had their employers buy them ipods..
Pure Geuinus..
article 1
article news.com.com
Disclaimer: I haven not tried hard nor received
my free ipod...
But...
Several friends of mine have... Some have even gotten free flat panel monitors,
and even a free Dell Dimension 4000 system... Apparently, it helps to have
a popular website to promote it...
But the truth of the matter is that SOME of these free offers do exist... Wired
has published stories with mixed results...
Also, since signing up, I haven't noticed *any* increase in snail mail spam... I
did not give out my real phone number, and no credit card is necessary. My
throwaway gmail account has only 8 messages in it (and only 2 may be related...)
so who knows... I am a believer for the time being....
and i suppose you'll also be saying those penis pills are a scam too...
It's because saying "free as in XYZ" demonstrates what an excellent understanding the poster has of open-source licenses. Shut up and be impressed. :P
From the tech specs page, the iPod can play MP3 (8 to 320 Kbps), MP3 VBR, AAC (8 to 320 Kbps), Protected AAC (from iTunes Music Store, M4A, M4B, M4P), Audible (formats 2, 3, and 4) and WAV.
The majority of these formats are not encumbered. I really don't understand why so many people think the iPod can play only iTunes Music Store songs.
I know several people who have gone thru all the steps on these sites, and actually received a free ipod! For real. Then they just cancelled their trial accounts.
I've seen those consumer incentive places and they look pretty sleezy to me, but I DID get an ipod for free from freeipods.com. And it really was free.... with the possible exception of some junk mail to my house (easy enough to throw away) and some spam to an email account I don't use, and some telemarketing to a phone number that isn't really mine (When forced, I give out numbers that are a few digits off).
Seriously people I don't get the "They're going to spam me under" argument. Who doesn't have access to a 'spam account' now a days? If not, get a free one from google. As to the 'deals' they make you do, if you're careful you and your friends won't have to pay a dime. The key is be CAREFUL...
oh and avoid that consumer incentive one... but just looking at that site should be evidence enough
Now maybe all you iPod owner wannabe's can remove the "Get a free ipod" link from your signature lines? For that matter, why not remove the free mini mac offers while we're at it?
I'm sorry to hear you got flamed.
Some script kiddies probably got jealous.
I think everyone knows that this is a piramid scheme, but it also works. You just "hack" the system with dummy email addresses, and get the iPod.
I myself found it easier to buy a shuffle, than have to nag on my friends, but I've never heard of anyone NOT getting an iPod after sucessfuly jumping through the hoops, while I did hear of people who got theirs.
If you don't know what AltaVista is (was), get off my lawn.
The point of free ipod is to offer you something that costs essentially only time, as opposed to mountains of cash. That, to the vast majority of people out there, is valuable. I've got a pal who paid people to sign up for the orders for him and collected his ipod for about $50 bucks. Saved a boatload of money.
Read jack phelps dot net
Us belters though, we've still got grit!
the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff
A looong time ago, I tried the "Green Laser Pointer" scheme, a protytype of this one (I think also run by Niu). That was about three years ago. I never got the green laser pointer, but my mail server still gets about 800 spams/day addressed to the pseudo I used.
This isn't as obvious as it sounds. The sites that the article talks about are not the Gratis (e.g., freeipods.com, freegamingsystems.com, freeMiniMacs.com) sites. They are the sites that have the "Hit the target to win an iPod" ads, and then ask you to complete a survey. From what I have seen, it is so obvious that those sites are a waste of time and money, I can't believe anyone tries them.
The Gratis sites are completely legitimate, and it is actually beneficial to complete the offers to get the iPod. I actually got the shipment of my free 1GB iPod Shuffle today (for my fiancee; she was thrilled), and by doing a $1/month trial of Great Fun (I think), I ended up with $20 in Circuit City gift certificates to boot. Hardly a waste of my time, since all I had to do was take 5 minutes to fill out the sign-up form, and then take 5 minutes to call in and cancel (literally, 5 minutes). So in the end, my free iPod Shuffle cost me negative $19 and 10 minutes. Not bad at all.
Quick, name a non-DRM format the iPod does not play. Hmmm... oh! I know! It doesn't support FLAC, I think... though, you could convert that FLAC to an AIFF or WAV and you'd be in business, i guess...
Just curious, why do you think iPods play only DRM formats??? Only Sony would try to do something so crazy as make a player that doesn't support at least MP3... and even they would figure it out after the it failed to sell...
You mean all I have to do is tell them I'm 12" by 2" and they give me a free iPod?! Cool.
I might drop a hint about all my ex's calling me "Rammstein" and see if they throw in a free iTMS voucher.
I've gotten a free iPod, free Photo iPod, and I'm 3 refs away from a free Mac Mini :-)
-- Gone Crazy, Back Later
First of all, the company profiled, Incentive Reward Center, is not the freeiPod company. They aren't even on the radar. Gratis Internet operates the most well known freeiPod site, while OfferCentric comes in second. Both are reputable companies that have good track records shipping products and providing customer service. Secondly, the author compains about spam. Both Gratis and Offercentric do not spam your email addresses. I have had over twenty people do referrals under me with these two corporations and have had no trouble. Finally, there is the issue of paying for offers. This is a total non starter because you know the terms of each offer before you choose to complete it! There are several free offers, including the easy eFax, which even allows cancellations within the 14 day trial to be done online. I can confirm eFax does not spam either. Is getting free stuff from these sites difficult? Yes. Is it feasible? Definately. Don't let this poorly researched article scare you away if you're dedicated.
It works but it's more ponzi scheme than pyramid. Only the early ones in receive anything.
TINSTAAFL = There is no such thing as a free lunch. In this case, there is no such thing as a free iPod, as you have to not only sell your information to spammers, but also apply for offers for more services on the web as well.
I I present a new acronym:
TINSTAAFI = There is no such thing as a free iPod
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
People fail to realize that their time has value. The chump who got his $400 ipod in exchange for lots of pain with opening and closing accounts, shelling out some cash, arguing with vendors, using bunk email addresses so as not to drown beneath the deluge of spam, and so on, probably spent 40 hours overall. If you subtract the $75 from $400 and divide the remainder by 40, you end up with a cost per hour of about $8.13. I suppose that you could argue that taxes and such make the Ipod worth more, or the hours worth less, or something, but I would counter with the cost of the pain of having to deal with all of these issues.
Another way to look at it is to compare the cost of those hours against the cost of doing something else, from an overall well-being perspective. Perhaps instead of spending 40 hours fenagling a free Ipod from some shyster in Florida the chump would have a higher quality of life doing something he actually liked.
Maybe people just undervalue their time.
Maybe people just get obsessed with the idea of "free."
Adrian Goins - President / CEO
Arces Network, LLC
The old addage holds true now just as much as it always has:
"You don't get owt for nowt".
If you think otherwise, you're either stupid or I'm missing something really obvious that could make me a lot of money.
No wonder why your family is poor. They should spend their free time learning instead of goofing off with "free offers". Some people throw their time in the trash as if it wasn't worth enough.
Please guys, gals... Modify the lameness filter so the signatures having sort of referrer in the URL doesn't pass.
I don't care if its scam or real. They give us no choice than disabling legit signatures displayed.
This thing goes bigger each day. Stop before it becomes crisis.
In my opinion it's not a scam because they make it completely obvious that it is a pyramid scheme. Pyramid schemes are not automatically scams, it's just when they lure you in and you don't realize it's a pyramid scheme until you're already signed up.