Just saw an ad for Handy Heater Turbo Heat. As if their claims of what it can do aren’t horseshit enough, they then say “buy one and we’ll send you another free. Just pay a separate fee”.
Wait a minute. Shipping is already free so what separate fee are they talking about? Fee for what?
And the fee isn’t nominal, it’s $14.95, half the price of the first unit.
Is there a legal definition for the word “free”. Is this free claim something the FCC or FTC need to kick the shit out of?
A handling fee. It’s nuts.
On the company’s website they bill it as a “double offer” which probably insulates them against false advertising charges. Your link is apparently not the seller’s site? It also says mostly “double offer” in its ad copy, most of the time. I see the “buy one get one free” buried near the bottom.
On the TV ad it did indeed say the second one was free, using the actual word free. I have seen ads for other products that have said “we’ll send you a second one, just pay a separate fee” but do not use the word free. The Turbo Heater TV ad used the word free.
If the first unit has no handling fee YTF does the second one.
This is not a buy one get one free deal, this is a buy one get a second one for half price. Not the same thing. I’m willing to bet there will be complaints about this ad.
Maybe you can do some scambaiting, call them up and ask them for that specific “buy one get one free” offer, and insist they honor that offer, and no extra “fees”. See how far you get. 
Yeah, but I don’t like talking to Indians and I don’t want that piece of junk. One of our dispatchers bought one similar. It’s as useless as teets on a bull.
I’ve seen the phrase “free offer” used deceptively, I fell for that one once. Apparently the offer was free but the product wasn’t. It was presented as a “free offer” in exchange for filling out a customer survey.
The free offer was for a face cream, my credit card ( which I had given for shipping and handling) was charged a month after I accepted the “free offer”. I was going to write it off as a life lesson, to read more carefully and not to put aside my skepticism just because I was directed to the survey site after a transaction with a major banking institution.
But American Express called me about the transaction and I told them exactly what happened, and they told me they were reversing the charge, I didn’t have to dispute it or return the product. The final irony was that the face cream was really good, I probably would’ve have purchased it again if they had legitimately sent a free sample instead of trying to scam me.
That’s like buying a movie ticket and they tell you to piss off.
“You didn’t pay for a movie, you paid for a ticket. Now leave!”
I saw a sign at the gas station “ANY size fountain soda 99 cents*”
*Excludes 64 ounce size
Well, then, I guess it’s not ANY size for 99 cents, is it?
Nowadays, the ads say, “Get a second one free. Just pay a small handing fee.”
But that makes no sense if the first one doesn’t have a handling fee.
And as I posted earlier, that handling fee isn’t small. It’s 15 bucks! That’s half the cost of the first obe.
Let’s face it, these ads are set up to dupe the Gump types into thinking they are getting a deal when they really aren’t.
Yeah, on the page linked to in the OP, it clearly says “two… for the price of one with free delivery.” It seems awfully weaselly to me if you do, in fact, have to pay more for two than for one.
Moderating:
This is really offensive. We have a rule about not being a jerk. You’re breaking it.
(Discussing whether this is a note, a warning, or more with other mods.)
Don’t forget “free gift” – as opposed to what other kind of gift?
(If folks consider this threadjacking, apologies and I’ll delete! Just feels related…)
The kind of gift you get charged for, which I see depressingly often. Arguing with the seller about them using the wrong word to advertise their offer usually just makes them dig in harder.
I’d gladly pay $15 for someone to handle my nuts.
I don’t like talking to anyone I can’t understand. Doesn’t matter if they are in India, The Philippines, Mexico, or Arkansas. If I can’t understand what the heck you’re saying I don’t like talking to you.
Take it to ATMB, or DMs.
(Or your pit thread.)
Kind of tangential to the thread, but maybe interesting… a UK-based company I used to work for was setting up a store in Denmark (I think it was Denmark, but it might have been Sweden); They planned a load of promotional offers for the opening week, including a lot of ‘buy this and get a free gift’ and ‘buy one, get one free’.
This ran into trouble because apparently consumer law over there allows the customer to reject the free gift and instead demand that its retail value be deducted from the price of the purchased item - so if you buy a bottle of perfume that comes with a free branded umbrella and you don’t want the free umbrella, you can ask for the notional price of the umbrella as a discount against the perfume.
If the free item being offered is a second one of the same, you could (so I was told) just demand the whole of the price subtracted from the whole of the price.
Continued moderation: after discussion with other IMHO mods, this is a warning:
If you want to say you don’t like struggling with accents on the phone, find a way to express that that doesn’t smear members of an ethnic group. There wasn’t even anything to make you think you’d reach an Indian if you called the number.
Years ago an eyeglasses store ran an ad in the paper (so you know it was years ago) which said “two for one sale” but when I got there it wasn’t. The salesperson actually said, “It’s two pairs for one great price.” People were pissed at them, but I don’t know if anyone complained to the BBB or appropriate government agency.