March 19, 2005

The truth about those 'Free iPod' offers Of course they're not really free. Duh.
  • Interesting... of course we suspected that this wasn't on the up and up... but.... the ONLY participant this guy actually spoke with acknowledged that he DID get an iPod and by selling it on ebay he ended up making a profit of about $250... hmmmm....the point of the article was what????
  • not only is this old news, but by now i would think it is common sense...
  • Wow. And free pop-ups.
  • Where's shawnj? I know he was trying to get one of these. Someone else on MoFi was too, and actually got one, I think. That's assuming this is the same scamdeal.
  • although... if you would like to get one you could go here and join the deal that wired called reputable... it would certainly help me out...
  • Do I have to do anything at that link, monknoiz? Because if all I have to do is give them an unused email, I'd be happy to, but I don't want to have to sign up for anything.
  • you have to sign up for something... a free blockbuster online trial or something... but then you can cancel that...
  • I removed the referral code from your link, monknolz. We've had that around here before.
  • yeesh... it's not like i was trying to be sneaky or anything...
  • I tried it, I am hideously embarrassed to admit, and ended up getting another credit card I did NOT need and a subscription to Blockbuster Online, which is actually okay, I like it - but, when I got myself finally towards the end of the "you must choose two of the following ten offers" maze, it would have cost me nearly $200 to keep going; there was no alternative. I could buy a damn ipod for that much (actually, I was going for a $300 Old Navy gift card; this was before xmas) and so I bailed. The whole thing pissed me off - I was sucked in by the big names, figuring, well, if these companies are using this as a marketing ploy, it is probably on the up & up. Wrong. Sigh. Never again.
  • You were, as they say, "sucked in".
  • This isn't technically a double, but these questions were asked and answered in my Curious George and its AskMe cousin. If a post is such old news that even the poster says "Duh", is it still a good post?
  • Yeah, it ended up working for me, but not for shawnj. Here's basically what freeipods.com boils down to: You have to get lucky to find an offer that doesn't require a large/longterm commitment (I went with a Vonage voicemail offer which only charged me when I use it, which is never). Then you've got to find 5 people (and heaven forbid they live anywhere near you or share a last name, they need to be truly random or else the company will say the referals were not valid) who you can convince to also do the offers. This is not very easy because even if you luck out and find an offer that doesn't require a lot of money, that offer will not show up for them, and most likely they would have to commit to money or trials in order to help you out, which people are loathe to do. Lastly you have to submit all of that for verification once you have all the referrals, which is usually when you will be denied one or more referals with no explanation. This was the only difference between shawnj's experience and mine. While we were both denied, when he asked for a reason they froze his account. When I asked they dodged at first and then opened the account for ordering and I was able to order the ipod. It's important to note all of this information applies to freeipods.com which is brought up at the end of the article and does not apply to the first service mentioned in detail as being somewhat more of a scam. I really need to go to bed because I think I've typed a novel here, but I figured a firsthand account wouldn't hurt. To put it all in perspective I'm a poor college student that ended up selling the thing on ebay for $260 to pay for art supplies. So after all that I'm still technically ipodless. :)