Lucky for me I have plenty of karma to keep fighting this, because all this outrage is due to ignorance and emotional play. I am tired of companies getting raged on because no one is out there to defend them. Here are the facts:

1) The words Free and Trial, when paired, mean that a Trial of a product is free. This is not the same as a free product. It is in no way a lie, according to Webster Dictionary definitions of the words, for a free trial to charge after the period the the Trial is over. This is because the trial period was free but the word trial means, with certainty, that at some point the trial ends... this is when the product or service is no longer free. To claim you didn't know this was going to happen is dumb because the company would have changed to wording to "free product". This is a classic example of selective listening. It is not deception on the companies part, it is deception within each person who chooses to ignore the literal meanings of words and substitutes their own meanings, like you have.

2) "No obligation to buy" means you can make the choice to buy the product. It doesn't mean you are not signed up to pay for it. Much like the WoW trial I mentioned earlier, you could cancel before you get billed, just because you chose not to doesn't mean there was an obligation to pay. Obligation means required and it is clearly an option, one you must act upon, but it is still an option.

3) Nearly all of these companies return your money if you complain and return the products they sent. This should pretty much clear up all the outrage part, but no, its easier to portray the tactics as evil and pretend like people are getting screwed.

4) These companies are VERY up front about the terms. They are not hidden in the fine print, they are written on the cover so to speak. In the video professor example it is on the front page of their site how every aspect of the deal works.

5) Shipping is not part of a product. Once my father got a free piece of construction equipment under the condition he paid for the shipping and any other expenses related to the acquisition. Does that mean equipment wasn't free? No, it means someone wasn't willing to give away something and pay for all the costs of completing the transfer of the free product. Language has subjects for a reason. The word free can't just be applied to anything you want in a sentence, sorry.

6) None of these tactics truly meet the definition of scamming, lying, etc. The best you could go with is unethical/immoral.

You blame the marketers. I blame people like you who make up meanings of words and apply certain adjectives such as "free" and "no obligations" to the wrong or non-existent subjects. Once gain, ignorance is no excuse. I am not an English major or grammar Nazi. I am just pointing out the technicalities of why you are wrong. If I wasn't right these companies would be breaking the law because it is illegal to do the things you are claiming these companies are doing.

That is my fucking point, the trials that everyone is getting so upset about here allow you to cancel before you are billed, people *don't* and then get billed. It is exactly the same situation.

"If you're selling a good product which actually gives value for the customer's money you don't need to use such tactics in the first place."

This reeks of rofl. Products don't sell themselves. The business world is a tough place where every sale is hard to come by, even more so today. These deals and tactics are used to get people to try the product and make a decision while protecting he company from people trying to get free shit with no obligations. If there were no terms to the deal everyone and their mom would sign up for free shit and never even consider buying the real product. By forcing the customer to make a decision they gain real paying customers without giving away product to those who were never interested and just wanted free shit.

It is not false advertising just because people may be illiterate and not understand the words that are being displayed on the ad. It is very fucking clear that these deals are not just free shit delivered to your door, they are TRIALS. Ignorance of the law doesn't get you off the hook, why is ignorance of the deal you signed all of the sudden different. Oh yeah... the "evil corporation complex" that half the nation has because they are brain dead. Once again, it is the governments job to ensure people are literate and can understand the word "trial" not every company who sells something. The company shouldn't have to use up expensive ad space to define words for the illiterate, sorry.

There is no trickery going on here and if you call right after you get the first bill they will take it off if you return the product.

You are assuming that this shit is in the fine print. It is not. Often these terms are in the face of the consumer they choose to ignore them. The terms of the agreement blatantly say the customer is signing up for future services unless they cancel, they are not being tricked except by their own minds ignoring the terms they agreed to.

I think the operator word that everyone misses in this is the word "trial". Most of these offers never claim to be giving away a product. They are letting you try the product in order to evaluate and make a decision. This obviously requires interaction. It is not the companies fault that many customers don't provide the proper interaction with the *trial* and take it as a free gift and walk away not expecting a bill because they didn't meet their trial obligations (making a yes or no decision and reporting it).

It is not a companies job to ensure customers are literate.

While it is true that you can't put anything into a contract... most of these these offers are blatantly legal and are not even complex enough to warrant looking into. These aren't complex contracts that abuse nuances in the legal system.. they are the most basic examples of contracts.

The real lesson is not to be "skeptical" but is instead to understand what you are getting into at all times. Skepticism is doing this in excess, rational behavior is understanding that products cost money and they aren't shipping them to you for free and expecting nothing in return. You might want to find out what they want in return.

Call it a scam if you wish but I hardly feel sorry for people who willingly accept these offers thinking they are getting free shit with no obligations. It is their fault because many people are willing to pay for the products. A scam, in my opinion, can't be selling a product that people can truly get value from at the offered price. If someone is just trying to get the free offer without any intentions of following up then they are "scamming" the company just as much as the company ends up "scamming" them back. Just because that person didn't realize that by accepting the free trial they were opted into a program doesn't make it a scam.

You are missing the point of a free trial if you don't understand why a company would bill you. A TRIAL is designed to allow you to, try, or test the product for a period under the assumption you will choose to buy it or not choose to buy it. The company is assuming, based on participation in the trial, that you do want the product and are making sure you don't want it. If you don't want it they figure you would have the sense to cancel the trial. It is not called a "here have a free product", it is a trial.

What you end up with is a situation where people see the word free and are greedy and think they can just get free shit. They order said free shit without thinking because they are so greedy and just want stuff without paying. Then they end up getting a bill because they never had any intention of participating in the product trial, never read the conditions but instead just wanted something free. Most of the time these companies are very up front about the conditions of the trial but people chose to ignore them anyway. The whole reason it is set up this way is that so only the most interested people will accept the trial because they know if they don't want the product they will have to hassle with canceling. What else is there to stop greedy people from accepting every damn free offer on the TV with zero intentions of ever buying the product.

I love the irony that people expecting free shit end up with a bill. Sad thing is the companies can't be outraged at consumers abusing trials...

I think there are different version of the free trials. The version that gives you full access to the game required payment info, the versions that have a level cap of 20, and trading restrictions don't. Regardless, Blizzard has/had a version where it was a "free trial" and required payment info.

No need for that question mark. Say it with authority!

Grow op!

I hope you are joking about this being a "scam". This is a tactic used by many many legitimate companies that offer "free" trials. Even Blizzard does it with World of Warcraft free trials... you must cancel your subscription before the trial period ends or you get billed. Do you call Blizzard a scam company and want their CEO in jail? Just because you didn't cancel the subscription that you signed up for doesn't mean they scammed you, it means you were too ignorant or lazy to cancel it.

It is the rule not the exception that when you sign up for a "free trial" that you will be billed for the real product unless you opt out before the trial period ends. This is nothing new in any product trial situation. Maybe you should read the contracts and keep up with the norms of how the world works and you wouldn't get "scammed". Sure this may be ethically suspect but that doesn't move it to the realm of scams and definitely doesn't make it illegal. I don't even think it is ethically suspect because no one should honestly just expect free anything to come with no strings. Since one should be expecting and looking for strings in a free trial situation it doesn't really count as trickery when you ignore the terms of the trial you signed up for.

Every element of this "scam" is common among almost all free trial TV ads, past and present, get over it.

*awaits the flaming and troll mods for being right but not aligning with the communities(unwarranted) rage*

You don't have to abuse a monopoly to have it and MS certainly doesn't have a monopoly in the search industry, which is the industry in question. This deal has nothing to do with operating systems... bringing them up is just a tactic being used to make MS look evil and apparently to label me a troll. Awesome.

Maybe because Google is the one with the monopoly on search, not MS?

I agree with this for your coffee statement, not for sushi. After everyone is done with their meal at a sushi place they would/could still say "I just had sushi" even if they had ordered sashimi. In the coffee shop you would not say you had ordered coffee under any circumstance.

That is like saying because I can't go to the zoo, ask to see an animal, and they don't bring the animal I want, that a zoo doesn't contain animals.

The image of sushi is best described by a google image search of sushi.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.sushilinks.com/sushi-poster/sushi-poster-glow.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.sushilinks.com/sushi-poster.html&h=400&w=700&sz=54&tbnid=xTIBIyogvZFSoM:&tbnh=80&tbnw=140&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dsushi&hl=en&usg=__NaeMBmlwS5TuOT6fgSeaBUPLqOg=&ei=kvEJS9K6GcSUnQf5j626Cw&sa=X&oi=image_result&resnum=2&ct=image&ved=0CA4Q9QEwAQ

You just fucking agreed with me without even knowing it because you are too dumb to even get what you said. When your bank says you have $100 in it society know what that means because everyone agrees what 100 is and everyone knows what a dollar is. If you think 100 dollars means what everyone else is calling 200 dollars YOU are shit out of luck because everyone else is going to act as if you had the 100 not the 200. Society determines the meaning and values of words. If everyone believes that a word means one thing THAT IS WHAT IT MEANS. If everyone in a region says that raw fish can also be called sushi then raw fish is fucking sushi. How hard is that to understand.

I never claimed that sashimi doesn't mean raw fish, I claimed that the word Sushi can refer to sashimi. In my culture people go to eat a "sushi restaurant" to go get "sushi" but then they order "sashimi". This would indicate that in the culture I live in sashimi is a subset of a boarder category of "sushi". Thus my point stands, when someone says the word sushi it includes the subset "sashimi." If you don't agree with this assessment please let me know your experiences that indicate that sashimi is not referred to using the broad term "sushi".

Maybe you didn't read the thread so you don't understand what I was even saying, but I never claimed that sashimi wasn't raw fish.

I eat sushi very regularly with friends and family so I do think I know what I am talking about within the average US sushi eating culture.