Buy one and get a second one, for free! This is a common sales tactic used to trick or pressure potential buyers into thinking they are receiving a greater value, and it’s used on the majority of “late night” TV commercials today. But is it really the great value that it’s made out to be?
How the Buy One, Get One Free deal works:
The basic premise is that the first product is over-priced and by giving away a second one for free just to get you to purchase the first one, the company is still making a profit. This works well for many brick & mortar and ‘big box’ type retailers.
But in the late-night TV commercial and ‘online world’, they take the buy one get one offer one step further. When you request your free product, you must also pay shipping, handling, and usually a “fee”. Here is an example taken from our “Money back guarantee scam” page.
You pay the full purchase price for the product as well as shipping, handling and any fee for that product. This is an example of how much money you would have to pay for the “free” product:
- Shipping & handling for the free product: $12.99
- Fee for the free product: $7.99
- Sales tax for free product: $0
As you can see in this example, before you can receive your ‘free’ product you have to pay over $20. In some cases you might pay far more. Since we know that often, the company does not have to pay the shipping provider the full amount that they charge for shipping and handling and any other fee generally goes straight into the company’s pocket, they are making a decent profit on this ‘free’ product.
To make matters worse, often times they may force you into requesting this additional “free” item, or make it very difficult to order the product unless you also opt-in for the ‘free’ product as well.
am interested in the purchase of the knife
Have you read my comments under Trustycane (Telebrands)? There is not one review of the cane, but rather bad comments on Telebrands. They’re horrible. Do you know how to reach Trustycane directly? I know it would probably amount to nothing (they must be aware of Telebrands’ practices and are fine with them.)
Telebrands is one of the worst to deal with in terms of customer service. I ordered the Alumawallet from them with expedited delivery for 10 extra dollars. Well, it didn’t come in 3 to 5 business days like I was told. It took almost 3 weeks! I called them at week 2 and told the lady I should get my 10 dollars back since it was late. She was only allowed to give me a 5 dollar discount! Wow, so I bought one in the store the next time (as seen on TV shelf) and no shipping & handling charges.
Mine broke at the hinges, so I got the bigger one they make now. They are not indestructible, they are “virtually” indestructible!