<![CDATA[Spitzer Sues FreeiPods.com, Spinners of Spam Dreams - Consumerist Comments]]> <![CDATA[Spitzer Sues FreeiPods.com, Spinners of Spam Dreams - Consumerist Comments]]> <![CDATA[Spitzer Sues FreeiPods.com, Spinners of Spam Dreams]]> Adrian writes: "Have to make the point that plenty of people did actually receive items from Gratis, myself included. I signed up for probably 4 of their sites, and the one only one for which I was able to sucker enough others to sign up after me was the ipodshuffle one. But I did get a shuffle sent to me. Actually, I got two as there was some sort of shipping error that caused items to be sent twice. I ended up choosing the good karma route instead of selling on ebay, and gave one to my brother and the other to a friend. Now in the course of investigating the legitimacy of these sites before signing up, I ran across any number of guides and walk-throughs...and every single one of them advocated creating a new email address specifically for these types or sites, or at least using an address that you didn't care about. Everyone already figured they would be selling your email address. I'd hope that no one is actually surprised by this development, and no one actually used their good or preferred email address when signing up with these sites. That said, I have no problem with Spitzer going after them for breaking their Privacy Policy. But I don't think you should call it was a scam either; lots of people did receive their items. Adrian"

Ben Popken

]]> <![CDATA[Spitzer Sues FreeiPods.com, Spinners of Spam Dreams]]> Mary writes: "Hi there - Your posting about NY's attny general suing the free ipods sites includes the line: "Greedy suckers typed in their contact info in hopes of getting something for nothing" Greedy? Yes. Suckers? No. I can't speak for some of the other sites mentioned (which may indeed be scams), but the Gratis-operated freeipods.com was definitely not a scam. I will definitely give you that Gratis was more than a little...unfair? in how they enforced various "rules" regarding the freeipods deals...but as long as you were fully aware of the rules, and were very careful in how you went about fulfilling your requirements to get the ipod, it worked. How do I know? Well - there's a ipod sitting on my desk right now. And I certainly didn't pay for it. The mac mini I'm using to write this email? Also free, courtesy of Gratis. Between myself and my boyfriend, we greedy suckers ended up with 4 free items, which would have cost us somewhere in the neighborhood of $900 had we gone to a store to purchase them. Via the Gratis offers, we MAYBE spent something like $30 to get them. And the spam? We both made up new email addresses strictly for the purpose of completing these offers. I initially received TONS of spam email on the new account, but it tapered off after a few months, and now I get little to no junk. I used my cell phone number when I signed up, and never recieved any spam calls. Our junk regular mail definitely increased, though, but we've since moved and it didn't follow. Again, I know nothing about the other sites mentioned - especially if they're the "click here and get a free ipod!" sites, I'm sure they're scams. I just wanted to let you know that Gratis, while shady, wasn't a scam company. They definitely had some questionable business tactics, but they got me my free crap! Damn, maybe I am a sucker... - Mary"

Ben Popken

]]> <![CDATA[Spitzer Sues FreeiPods.com, Spinners of Spam Dreams]]> GenXCub

]]>