Damek.

Today I heard about FreeiPods.com, where you can go sign up for a free trial offer from, say, Blockbuster, USA Today, or TrimLife, and get a free ipod. I thought, hey, I already have an iPod, but if I were to get another one it would make a cool gift for my sister, or I could sell it, or whatever. I knew there would be a catch, but I would be on the lookout for anything too egregious. So I went and signed up, and here are the catches, one worse than the other.

The first catch is nothing big at all, really — it’s mentioned right up front and seems pretty obvious. The trial offers are all on the level of one of those music clubs, where you’re signing up for a subscription or service, and the hook is that your first hit is very cheap. Now, some are worse than others. For example, one is that you sign up for a subscription to USA Today, where the cheapest option is around $25.00. That’s pretty expensive if you don’t give a rat’s ass about USA Today. Another offer I saw was for Boca Java — you buy 4 packs of coffee and a mug for $8 (+ ~$5.00 shipping), and find yourself enrolled in a monthly coffee club. You have to buy at least $30 of their coffee at the regular price before you can cancel. That’s even worse than USA Today. Then there’s TrimLife. The TrimLife offer is that you pay them about $6 shipping for them to send you a free sample. You then find yourself enrolled in some sort of TrimLife subscription plan, but you don’t have to spend any more or do anything to cancel. You do only have 14 days to cancel, but the whole thing only costs the inital $6.

So that’s not so bad. The second catch is the kicker. After FreeiPods.com is satisfied that you’ve done an offer, you still don’t get your free iPod until you’ve gotten 5 other people to go to the site using your referral link and also complete an offer. So basically, you have to attempt to sell out 5 friends to get your cheap-but-not-free iPod. So, is it worth $6 and selling your friends to marketers to get an iPod? I don’t know. It’s not really for me. The whole thing is obviously a pyramid scheme of sorts. Once enough people have done it, there’s a layer of people at the bottom who will find themselves signed up for a useless trial offer, but will not get their iPod because there’s no one left interested enough to refer. Really, I should have seen that coming. I guess I’m feeling so good from my mood-altered commute this morning that I’m not operating on all gears.

And yet, here I am, asking you, fine reader and possibly friend, to consider going to sign up so I can get an extra iPod and give it to my sister or sell it. OK, no I’m not. Don’t bother, it’s not worth it. Unless you’re feeling exceptionally kind. If you don’t even care about the iPod, I’ll pay you the $6 or so it costs to complete the cheapest offer! Help out a pal? Come on, you wouldn’t leave a guy hangin’, would ya? I need my iPod fix, I’m gettin’ twitchy thinking about it. Maybe I should go stand out on a street corner with a cardboard sign: “Will whore for iPod.”

Seriously, though, I’ll pay you…