I got a $10,000 check for free (well minus the taxes, which came to about 800 bucks)
I used to enter all kinds of online sweepstakes. I entered so many that I forgot most of them. When I got an email saying I was a 2nd place winner I figured it was a t-shirt or a coffee mug or some such. I phoned the guy for more info and he told me it was ten grand :eek: I was skeptical to say the least. I figured there was a catch, like maybe I had to buy a two thousand dollar vaccuum cleaner or something.
No such catch! I filled out the obligatory paperwork (press release consent etc.) and 8 weeks later Fed Ex handed me a check for $10,000.
The scary part is I almost deleted that email and thought about not calling the guy. Jeez would I have been a putz or what?? :wally
The best I can remember off-hand is 2 $50 savings bonds for test driving a car.
The first time, I had to actually do the drive, even 'tho I said upfront that I had just gotten a car and would not be trading. The second time, I just got the savings bond.
(Do the free Weinermobile whistles we got when the Oscar Myer mascot was in town count?)
I’ve won records, a fancy dinner, and movie tickets on the radio in the past. No money, though.
My ex-brother-in-law gave me a perfectly good stereo equalizer, which I am still using every day.
An ex-friend gave me a fabulously expensive, powerful stereo receiver that will work just fine if I send it in somewhere to get the fluorescent display to work. That is to say, it works now, but you can’t see any of the icons or the display. I’m waiting for a bigger room to put it in, because it gets so hot it increases the temperature of the room.
Our landlady gave us a turntable that sold for about $500 new.
An old friend of my wife’s mailed us his old HP Pavilion computer about 5 years ago when it was already obsolete. I used it until it died, and I’m still using the C: drive in my current computer.
My father-in-law gave me some lawn & garden tools when we moved to this house. Mower (now dead), blower, edger, various tools.
I could have my pick of CDs that get mailed in to the radio station where I work, but 99.9% of them are by people you’ve never heard of and will never hear on the radio. The “vanity press” is alive in well in music-land! I think that in four years, I’ve got four CDs total.
Thursday I received a package in the mail with acalculator inside. The inscription on each calculator says Compliments of
SHARKTOOTH RACING
Kent, WA 98042
Sharktooth Racing was a website I had devoted to a NASCAR sim in 1997, it has long since gone away, in fact, I had completely forgot about it. I sent the folks that sent the calculator a thank you email and suggest they double check the mailing lists they buy, who know how many folks got a free calculator inscribed with a long gone business or project.
For about a year my wife and I were participants in a local Arbitron rating service. We recieved a number of free goodies from the local radio stations hoping we would listen to them. The best item was a pair of 3rd row tickets for a Yes concert. I got a couple of very suggestive offers from some young ladies in exchange for a pair of Brittany Spears I had. I have a strong fear of doing stupid things and decided if the girls were that desperate for the tickets, they could have them. An old fat bastard like me will only get a chance like that once in a lifetime and I said no.
I was once given a logging truck load of wood to use as firewood in exchange for the name of the guy’s trucking business on the trunk lid of my race car. He made the offer out of the blue and I gladly accepted.
My employer has a recognition program and I get someone every few months. Got a neat Craftsman BBQ tool set a few weeks ago.
I got a free pass to a movie. At the movie, my ticket (that I had exchanged a free pass for) had the lucky combination. I won a giant box of popcorn, a large drink, and two free passes to another movie in the future. (This was a long time ago. The movie was Garbo Talks starring --I think–Carrie Fisher, and it really sucked. Had it not been for the two free passes I would have felt ripped off.
I almost always win a free round of miniature golf.
Once I hit it big at the grocery store. I got a sack of groceries that included cereal, Spaghetti Os, and a can of dog food. At the time I did not have a dog and resisted the urge to get one simply to eat up that dog food.
That’s it. One of my sons gets free stuff all the time. Paintings, computers, clothes. Wouldn’t surprise me at all if somebody gave him a house one of these days.
I won 52 free Chic-Fil-A combo meals. All I had to do was be in the first 100 people there on Friday morning. The line started forming about 8 hours before, so I waited with my girlfriend. It wasn’t bad at all, it was dark, and cool, only a little humid. It was worth it for free Chic-Fil-A.
I got free tix to Suzanne Somers new Broadway show The Blonde in the Thunderbird. The hidden catch there was having to watch Suzanne Somers new Broadway show The Blonde in the Thunderbird. My word, the things that can happen when your husband produces a show for you.
I got a free car. My car had been stolen, but since I live in Manhattan, it wasn’t exactly the tragedy it could have been. After a few months a good friend of my mother in law offered to give me one of his cars. He’s a collector, and this one, an '84 Mercedes, had been collecting dust. We decided to accept, and after a few hundred bucks to get it tuned up and on the road, it’s been a good solid car.
Free tickets to Universal Studios in Florida, plus a free breakfast, all for going on a timeshare condo tour and enduring the sales pitch. We didn’t mind the tour, because these were some really nice looking condos.
As a writer, I get books for free. Some I have to pass along (I’m part of the SFWA circulating book plan), but I get one or two books a year to keep – with the implication I’m supposed to recommend them for a Nebula Award. I do nominate if I like the book, but don’t feel obligated.
I also get free memberships in science fiction conventions, but I have to pay my travel expenses.
Working with computers, I get a bunch of stuff for free, often in return for giving out my address at conferences. Some include a copy of Windows XP pro, t-shirts, polo shirts, hats, pens (lots of pens – I never need to buy them any more), highlighters, a computer case (given to conference attendees – I won’t count the reimbursed business travel), a backpack, tote bags, mousepads, free basketball tickets, pocket flashlights, software, a toaster, and all sorts of junk (if you watch the Digital Duo, it’s the sort of things they give away in their PR Pinata).
When I first went to PC Expo in NY, people were literally throwing these things at you as you walked by (this was the year before the dot com bubble burst – things were quite different a year later).
years ago, I devoted a summer to Ivan Stang’s HIGH WEIRDNESS BY MAIL- oh the delights that filled my mailbox- probably the biggest freebie was the large PB titled CHRISTIAN TECHNOCRACY by Hillman Holcolmb. Didn’t tell me much about Christianity or Technocracy, but it sure told me about the evil Satanic Talmudic Khazrian Zionist Jews! ;j
One of my professors likes to update his tech stuff fairly frequently, and my wife and i are often the beneficiaries when he gets rid of his old stuff. We currently have, courtesy of this professor:
[ul]
[li]an Epson Stylus inkjet printer[/li][li]a Linksys wireless router[/li][li]a 10Gb Creative Nomad mp3 player[/li][li]a whole bunch of great movies on video tape, passed on as he converts his collection to DVD[/ul][/li]One of our other professors lives in New York. She and her husband went on vacation to England a few weeks ago, and my wife and i got 10 days free accommodation in a lovely Chelsea co-op apartment.
I’ve been upgraded to business class twice on international flights—once from Vancouver to Sydney, once from Dulles to London.
My little brother just started at Columbia, so he decided to junk his Corolla that was on its last legs.
A couple of weeks ago, before the tow truck got to my parents’ house, I hustled over there and boosted his Aiwa in-dash MP3-CD player. That sucker was $300 new.
One $18 wiring harness later, and my $25 cassette deck is no more.
Unfortunately, the Aiwa is cheesy as all hell. Rather than displaying the station, song title, or clock by default, it scrolls this marquee of “AIWA HIGH POWER AUDIO SUPER NITRO TYPE R” across the lcd in inch-high letters, and I can’t make it stop.
Anyway … I did win two free tickets to Lollapalooza 1993 once, kinda. There was a radio contest that a local alternative DJ was doing. One of the bands playing the show was Front 242 and the contest was “When you hear me play a Front 242 song, be the third caller and you win.” Apparently, not many people listening knew who Front 242 was because he had a legion of callers who called on EVERY song and asked if they won. I called him up just to say hello (he and I were acquaintances through the show) and he was so frustrated with the constant calls that he just offered me the tickets. A couple of songs later, he played 242 and told everyone that they didn’t win.
Mrs. Stone and I just moved to a different state and had to close our accounts at a local bank. Shortly after arriving at our new place we got coupons for free money for opening an account with a large nationwide bank who it seems many Dopers dislike to the extreme… but hey, free cash is free cash…
So we opened two accounts with them, a joint account that will garner us a $100 bonus in 6 months, and (just to take advantage of them sending us two coupons) a personal account in my wifes name that will get us another $50 bonus also in 6 months.
After that we’ll see how good their customer service is regarding if we stay with them.
My cousin gave me his Yamaha acoustic guitar about 20 years ago, saying it was because he’d never play it as well as I did.
And a couple of years ago, a guy I worked here with for awhile overheard me saying I played bass. He asked me if I wanted one. Somebody gave it to him, but he couldn’t play it and it was just sitting there, so I could have it if I wanted it. Score!
