Do you love free stuff but find that all you get are annoying phone calls and emails? Today, I am going to touch on certain things to avoid when requesting for free stuff online! Learn to protect yourself with these useful tips and never be deceived 95% of the time (we can’t be 100% sure can we?). Ok, with that said lets start =)
1. Never use your real working email address.
The reason is simple, you will not want spams (in case you requested for a phishing scam) in your email inbox which you use for official purposes. The spams can go up to hundreds of emails a day and are extremely irritating. In this case, its better to set aside a few emails for use in requesting for freebies.
2. Observe the freebie being given away.
Is the freebie being given away a big ticket item? Is it a brand new luxury car, Xbox Series X, Playstation 5 or a brand new television?! Well, if its anything even close to the value these items are worth, it will not be FREE! Remember, there is no free lunch in the world. However, companies do often give free samples away for marketing purposes. As a general guideline, anything worth over USD$50 is fishy, and any worth over USD$100 is almost impossible. If you see these offers, you most probably need to go through a string of “activities” to get the free stuff.
3. Website only has a single page.
This is extremely fishy. If a website offering something for free has only one page, the home page and the page is filled with a contact form, it most likely is a phishing site and is designed to capture your personal particulars. For example, if you come across a site that says free body lotion, and the site url is freebodylotion.com with no other pages, exit the site IMMEDIATEDLY! However, rarely but it happens that there are real freebies with a single page, usually the url will have a celebrity’s name or a well known brand. So exercise your own judgement =)
Avoid these sites at all cost, they have been complained by our users and are now deemed as websites that do not provide any free stuff. If you know of any such sites, do come forth and let the rest of us know.
With all that has been said, you still need to exercise your own personal judgement to see if a freebie is valid. Many people have benefitted from receiving free stuff online and i am sure you can achieve that too, as long as your safeguard yourself against the pitfalls of ordering free samples online.