{"id":841,"date":"2010-06-04T04:56:00","date_gmt":"2010-06-04T09:56:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=841"},"modified":"2014-12-11T22:13:53","modified_gmt":"2014-12-12T03:13:53","slug":"free-crap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/?p=841","title":{"rendered":"Free Crap"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love free stuff (especially food — the grad student cliche is true). It’s like cheap, only better<\/em>.<\/p>\n

However, I turn down a lot of free stuff that I know isn’t actually free: it comes with strings that you have to untangle later, especially free crap I don’t really want. The telemarketers sometimes get confused at this (or are trained to act confused when people reject their offer of free crap), why would I turn down free crap when I can call back within 30 days and wait on hold for an hour and go through 6 automated menus to cancel?<\/p>\n

Ellen Roseman this week covers the case of Seema, another newb who fell prey to Extreme Fitness<\/a>. Their business model is built on the free trial followed by lock-in concept, yet Seema jumped for it, signing up for something she had “NO intention whatsoever” of actually signing onto long term just to take advantage of a free trial. Due to a mix-up of cancellation times, she ended up calling back 4 days too late and they tried to lock her into paying for a full membership. Fortunately, Ellen Roseman rode in to the rescue and helped get her out of the contract. <\/p>\n

The lesson? Don’t sign up for crap you have no intention of using, even if it’s (temporarily) free<\/strong>. That goes for gym memberships, magazine subscriptions, Rogers TV upgrades, Bell phone features, credit card insurance, music subscription services, credit reporting services, World of Warcraft accounts… need I go on?<\/p>\n

In fact, I think at least a quarter of the consumer activism Ellen works towards could be eliminated if people just followed this one simple rule. TANSTAAFL.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I love free stuff (especially food — the grad student cliche is true). It’s like cheap, only better. However, I turn down a lot of free stuff that I know isn’t actually free: it comes with strings that you have to untangle later, especially free crap I don’t really want. The telemarketers sometimes get confused […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=841"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/841\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=841"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=841"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.holypotato.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=841"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}