Free Shipping Scams
The world of online rewards is bustling with energy and is growing even as you read this article. For any industry you care to look at online, there are countless coupons, discount codes, rebates, and offers. And, they are all being hurled at you at high velocity. What I’d like to talk about is how to weed out the garbage and go straight for that online gold. Simply searching the internet in this regard is no easy task, as what you will find is that for the same business or rewards program you will find both customers who are satisfied and those who are dissatisfied—and simply, and perhaps most importantly, those who are misinformed. One part of the industry I’ve found to be starkly polarized, with information all over the board, is the quickly growing shipping rewards and rebates sector. When you look, you will find people who are thrilled, and those who are ranting and raving about some sort of free shipping scams. The first and obvious step is to see which side of the coin more people fall on. This sort of research can be fairly well trusted. There are a few problems, though. For one thing, people often don’t go out of their way to “review” a product unless they were somehow dissatisfied with their experience. So, right off the bat, you might have someone claiming fraud when, in fact, he or she was not the victim of a ripoff artist but in fact was uninformed or unaware of the stipulations of his or her rewards program and is now venting frustration online. The point is, read with a critical eye and, ultimately, take five minutes to read the terms of any agreement you sign and make your own decision.