I get them all the time, but wait - have any of you actually attended one? I haven’t.
No interest. Not even before I retired.
I actually called the number once, and they said they were full. Later on, I googled the company name and ran across several articles about how they were a scam.
This was for retirement/financial planning.
Hey, I just picked one of those glossy invites from my mailbox.
It was addressed to my husband.
Yeah. Tossed it.
I don’t get them, but also I’m completely not interested. I hate sales pitches far more than I enjoy even very good food.
I was thinking it might be a pyramid scheme for supplements, but apparently not.
Wow and all I get are dinners to sell me hearing aids. If they don’t give me my hearing aid first, how do they expect me to hear the drivel?
Wow! I went to one of those once and the salewonk kept talking softly and dropping words, then had a buddy of hers “confirm” that she was speaking normally,
Yeah I wondered if that would be the case.
Best dad joke of the day. Still made me laugh. Bravo. 
The ones I get are all for annuities.
I haven’t gone to these in years. I just got a funeral services one, not more than 3 hrs ago.
The ones I remember were ‘financial planning’…and we were strongly coerced into providing names/contacts of friends and family.
I wouldn’t call them scams, I’d call them slimy sales guys providing minimal value to their target customers. Apologies to the stereotypical used car salesman, but…that kind of person/company
The food was always baked chicken, mixed green vegetables, and mashed potatoes. The kind you would get at a cheap conference or wedding dinner where the couple should spend the money on a house down payment.
My mom gets loads of these things, almost always for “retirement planning.” They always promise a tasty steak dinner.
Mom has been a vegetarian for over 40 years.
Crazy, I have literally never heard of this before - I’ve gotten plenty of invitations for a free TV or even a free weekend at a resort so I could listen to high pressure sales pitches, but never anything at a restaurant or pain relief. But in yesterday’s mail was an invitation to a free dinner to discuss “Regenerative Therapy” which can “minimize or eliminate your pain”. The company is “Amplified Wellness.”
It’s hardly an upscale restaurant, more of a local watering hole. Certainly not someplace I’d take someone on a 1st through 10th date, more of where married couples possibly with kids go when they want an inexpensive night out that’s not fast food.
Those are typically precisely targeted mailings to people with specific demographics. It’s not a junk mail blast to the whole city. If you’re a wealthy individual over 50, you’ll get them for retirement planning and hearing aids. If you’re young without a lot of disposable income, you probably won’t be targeted.
How do you intend to fight all our ignorance if you don’t attend, take notes, and report back to this thread?
I get these all the time, usually for retirement/investment planning. I’ve been retired for over 15 years. Also, as @carrps said, they’re usually at Ruth’s Chris Steak House.
I also get offers to visit one of the local retirement communities. Out of curiosity I’ve tried going to their website, but apparently the only way to get any information on costs or other details is to attend one of their dinners or sign up to to have a salesman call you.
This company has looked through all the information it has acquired about you that is somehow available online (sometimes with considerable research, including using illegally acquired information). These are things like your name, your address, your telephone number, your E-mail address, the social media you subscribe to and what you write there, your age, your income and/or pension, the amount of money in your bank accounts and mutual funds, your health, the names of the people who will inherit your assets when you die, your purchases online and in stores, and anything else they can discover about you. They then use a formula they’ve developed to tell them the probability that you can be conned into paying for what they’re selling (although they may even be such gangsters that after taking money from you, they will close down the company and go into hiding so it’s impossible to sue them) and compare the amount they get from you with the cost of the meal they will give you. Is a free meal worth that?
We bit hard on one of those. It was ‘sponsored’ by our local public radio station and was a presentation for estate planning. We actually decided to go with the attorney who was the featured speaker, since we were in need of someone to set us up anyway, and the guy who’d been recommended to us by a ‘trusted source’ I didn’t trust to do a good job. We’ve been happy with the service and price, too.
One of these days, though, I expect I’ll bite on another one of those free dinners and wake up in a hotel bathtub full of ice with a note to go to my doctor immediately.
I get the financial planning ones too and it’s always at a nice place. I’m very well set financially so it’s not necessary or worth my time. Maybe I’ll go to the next one and report back
I get mailings all the time like that. I would never go to one, but I always investigate as a courtesy to my neighbors, who might be vulnerable. Invariably, they are pushing some medical treatment or product of questionable value, and that’s being complimentary.