Click for freebies websites - A warning!

cyberactivist

Hi all, I just wanted to give a warning about so called 'freebies'. I've just learned today to my cost, that if it looks or sounds too good to be true, it probably is. A bit long, but it could save your hard earned cash.

Ive been reading the website this past week or so and found it very interesting. We all want to save our hard earned cash after all.

However, I looked at a website from a link through MSE. This was a freebie giveaway site which offered a £100 cinema ticket card for free. All you had to do was click on 6 company links in their selection. Naturally I clicked onto the ones with no or very little financial outlay involved.

One of them was for easydvd.com which stated you had to take 3 dvds at £1.99 each. When I went through the registration process, on the penultimate page after punching in all my card details, it said I would actually be charged £19.99p for 10 dvd rentals, not the less than £6 it claimed. I did not click the 'press to confirm' button and instead, simpluy hit the back button on the browser, thereby not clicking on the confirm button. However, another screen popped up saying congratulations I had joined the easydvd membership and thanking me for my payment of £19.99 for 10 dvd rentals.

I immediately sent an email to their customer support address shown and thier accounts dept explaining what had happened and that I did not want to join or be charged due to very misleading and confusing info on their website signing in process. There are no telephone numbers to speak to a human listed on their website.

A few minutes later a standard welcome to the club type email arrived explaining how to use the service. I then replied to them stating what had taken place again and also to around 5 other departments which were listed as having email addresses. However, no response has come to me asking for a halt to the service or a refund of the £19.99p I believe I was conned out of.

There is a warning here for eveyone - these freebie websites are in fact just schemes for companies to get you signed up into their clutches and through misleading information and registration processes, actually cost you money which normally you wouldnt have spent. The easy company (easyjet, cruise, cars, etc) have conned me out of almost £20.

These freebie sites are not to be trusted and are to be avoided like the plague. As a result of the con listed above, the registration requirements to get the £100 cinema card failed and so about an hour online was also wasted. A call to my bank HALIFAX, said that I could not in any way cancel the transaction or head it off before being charged, as Id used my card for payment online and the only possible way would be to close my account and open another one, thereby completely screwing up my DD and SO payments, rent, electricity etc. So much for the banks trying to help us prevent online frauds, cons and mistakes!

Secondly, as a direct criticism of this website (MSE), in the free texts online section, it shows a company called Cbfsms now this is also a bit of a con because their service only works (after you have spent ages typing your text mssg and navigating the website) IF you disable your popups and ads restrictor on your web browser. In return for sending a free text through them, you are absolutely bombarded by adverts and some of these sit in your computer and continue to pop up and pop up and pop up faster than weeds in the garden.

Maybe some of the reccomended links on Money saving expert should be checked thoroughly in the future. My experience has been a very bad one so far and I am not likely to use the MSE website again if this continues. Rather on the contrary, I am more likely to tell everyone of the bad experience. A so called money saving website which in fact, through their reccomendations, lost me £20 and a lot of time. This seems more of a self promotion and publicity seeking medium rather than a real consumer saver.

Minus points on this occasion Martin.

a11waysindebt

Hi,
I've said before that nothing in life is free.

Anyway as for Halifax,the card payment would need to go through and then stopped,did they advise you of this.

chococat

Once bitten. Twice shy.:D

teaonshirt

all i can say never give card details then they cant charge u and its free

manch235ter

At the top of every page it states :

Remember, this is an open forum! Anyone can post so always exercise caution when acting on info.

So how can this be anyone elses fault that you fell for a pyramid scheme? There are plenty of posts on here advising to steer clear of these , as the cash these companys make, far outweigh the "freebie" they give to you

lilmissdebauched

I too am new here and I only have good experiences from my time using this site. Since January 1st I have saved more than £200 and won cash and items to the value of almost £750. I have acheived this by using the links that the kind users of MSE have posted here for the benefit of people like you and me. The links are placed on here by the users of the site so they dont always get checked until someone has reported it.

I do however avoid things like "the freebie network" and "giveaway network" because of the bad press they get on here, and on various other sites throughout the internet. Not to sound mean to you or anything OP but you really should have done your research about this, had you have used the search feature, you would have found enough posts to put you off using the so called "freebie" sites.

As for your direct critism of MSE's free text section, it is not Martins fault that you have had to disabled the pop-up blocker installed on your PC in order to get a free text. Blame the free text site, but they will tell you that is how they fund their site and keep the texts free. In my opinion, if you want free texts then send for a free sim card - Virgin do one with £5 FREE credit

runragged_2

You said it yourself. If it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. That's a good rule of thumb to go by on here. usually those pyramid scheme threads are reported very quickly, or at the very least, someone usually posts *spam* on them straightaway so people don't click.

I'm sorry your experience here has been a bad one so far, but you are in a minority I'm afraid, many more people here have had good experiences, & have picked up good freebies/tips/ bargains or whatever.

123xyz

manch235ter wrote: »

At the top of every page it states :

Remember, this is an open forum! Anyone can post so always exercise caution when acting on info.

So how can this be anyone elses fault that you fell for a pyramid scheme? There are plenty of posts on here advising to steer clear of these , as the cash these companys make, far outweigh the "freebie" they give to you

This is a little unfair, it is so easy to make this kind of mistake, and I bet a lot of people on here have been tempted by a so called offer, or even fallen for it.

Thanks cyberactivist for a timely warning.

carolinosourus

If a website that you don't know needs you to uninstall a pop-up blocker before you can use it, did you not think that it might want to take advantage of this so that it could upload some nice pop-ups?

milesoneill

Always use websites with caution. As mentioned before, if they ask you to shut-down your pop-up blocker then best to leave the site and never return! (I even quit sites if they're not compatible with Firefox!)

But the best advise would be to never never NEVER use your direct debit card online (I've been hit by fraud myself after using my DD card). Always use a credit card, that way it will never affect to your day-to-day account should things go wrong. Plus, credit card companies tend to have more power and autonomy when it comes to online fraud:-

For example, if you notice a dodgy transaction on your credit card you call the cc company and they should (!) say "No problem, we'll cancel the transaction, and reimburse your card and investigate"
From your bank you will get: "you need to report this to the police who will fill out a fraudulent transaction form and give you a reference number. You then need to fill in one of our forms with the police reference and we will investigate." Usually two months later you will get your money back.

Also, if you find yourself about to be charged a different amount than you thought, and cannot find a cancel button on the screen, DO NOT hit the back/reload buttons, simple close your broswer and keep an eye on your credit card account. Report any unusual debits if any occur.

In short. Beware, and use a credit card.

Hope this helps.
Miles.

cwp500

Sorry to hear this.

Please note; it is very bad practice to give out card details unless you are 100% certain its what you want.

True freebies dont cost a bean.