Do  not follow my lead, do not go down the rabbit hole, do not pass go and collect $100.   If you have a facebook account then you know that you’ll get random things popping up on your pages (of course, you might consider MasonMetu one of those random things……”nah, that could never happen, right?” lol).  I still don’t know what Farmville is and not sure I want to know but I get requests to rescue a pig or help a cow and I just ignore them.  But last week, I got a notice that one of my favorite stores in Cincinnati, IKEA, was giving away $1000 gift cards.  “Could this be too good to be true?......duh, yes! “ But I still got sucked into the hoopla.

I thought, “wow, a $1000 gift card that is so awesome what do I have to do?”  Let the madness begin. First, I had to send the request to all my facebook peeps (so sorry if you got this from me and got sucked in as well).  Then, I got directed to a site where you had to choose two of the “special offers” listed and then you were on your way to your golden IKEA ticket (my wording not their's).  So, I soon became the proud recipient of Gevalia Coffee (I can handle this one – got 3 bags of coffee for only $3 and I can cancel at any time).  Next, I became a member of Netflix. I’ve been wanting to try them out so I have a free two week trial and they are zippy quick in getting the DVD’s to you plus you can watch some of the movies online instantly.  But, since my television/movie days have been on the sidelines recently due to my CAD (Computer Attachment Disorder), this may not be the best thing to have started.

I thought great, I’m on my way.  The next screen popped up and encouragingly said, “you’re almost finished” and again I had to select two more offers.  Ok, I guess I can figure out two more things to try – hmmmm, a book club sounds good – check!  What else?  A free credit report, teeth whitening, magazine subscriptions, music downloads and on and on and on……I opted for the book club and the music downloads.  Again, I can cancel each of these but after you click on each offer, you are then directed to sign up sheets, questionnaires and a whole host of other information to fill out so it ends up taking you at least 20 minutes or more per offer to get it all done. 

So, I got my next two offers done and thought, “IKEA here I come”.  I was wrong.  The next screen said I had to sign up for NINE more offers.  WHAT?????  I threw in the towel at that point.  I was already doing this late at night and I could not stay up for another 3 hours doing offer after offer.  So, needless to say my dreams of a new IKEA room are long gone.  I’ve got coffee (that I don’t even drink) and movies (that I won’t have the time to watch) on the way.  I was able to cancel the last two offers before anything was charged on my credit card so that was a plus.  What’s the moral here: don’t be as gullible as me and beware when offers for fabulous free stuff pop up;  there is always a price to pay (time, money, your SANITY).  Whoever devised this type of marketing ploy is one clever SOB and I’d really like to meet him/her face to face someday.