Punchbowl digital greetings cards: data harvesting and fraudulent marketing. Avoid.

hybernia

American e-card provider Punchbowl has been trying, ever since it launched, to monetize its "free service". Fair enough. You can choose to pay to remove ads from the card you send; can choose to pay to schedule the time the card is sent; you can choose to pay for a gift card to accompany the greetings card.

Evidently, none of these money-making efforts  have been enough, so although Punchbowl continues to publicise its 'free cards' in hope of drawing in the unwary, it has now stooped to straightforward fraud, enticing customers into visiting the website with promises of a free e-card but then pressuring them for money at the very moment they thought their card was going to be despatched.

It's after you've provided Punchbowl with the name and email address of the intended recipient -- data which the company then harvests for its own purposes, and very probably sells on --  that Punchbowl refuses to send your card. Instead, the screen changes to an advertisement for 3 different types of "greetings card account" at three different monthly subscription rates which you can "cancel at any time".

The card you've spent so much time and effort on "has not been sent", Punchbowl advises.

Nor will it ever be: Punchbowl wants your money, though anyone signing up to a recurring credit card subscription having seen the trickery this firm will stoop to really needs their head examining. Regardless, then, of whatever references to 'free digital cards' and 'free ecards' appears in Punchbowl search engine results and the stuff it says about itself there's no such thing as a free card in the same way that there's no such thing as a free lunch.

Forget Punchbowl -- and certainly don't pass onto it the names and email addresses of your friends and relatives for this American company to do with whatever it wants.