Free Trials and Tribulations

 

Free Trials and Tribulations

 

How irresistible are these free trial offers that bombard us every day? Free delivery for just $5 a month.  Automatic refills and get the first order free. Buy a subscription to Life-on-Mars Magazine and get 13 other magazines, no charge. You know the allure and the drill.

 My mom has a lifetime supply of toothpaste with more coming every month. If she brushed her teeth every hour—instead of just once a week—she still couldn't use it up.

 My uncle, who is now over 90, has 200 bottles of The Horny Goatweed Guaranteed Cure for Erectile Dysfunction in his medicine chest—one of which was free. All of which are useless.

 As for me, well, my free trials are bankrupting me. I can't keep track of what's on order or when to cancel it. My apartment looks like a landfill.

 I now get hundreds of emails every day from hundreds of charities, addressed lovingly to dear Mickie. Some of these charities are real.

 I have made it on to every sucker list. People who sell these lists to scammers are making a bundle off me. I should get a sucker cut.

 At the urgent urging of all who stand to inherit my fortune, I decided to seek advice —free, online of course. And here's the advice I got on how to stop being a sucker--which I now pass on, free, to you:                              

            1. Change your name
            2. Cancel your credit cards
            3.  Move to the moon
            4. Just stop being a sucker

                                                           Good luck


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Image
  THE WATERING OF THE DECORATIVE TREE CONSTERNATION I overheard some friends at my house one night saying: "Her tree looks more real than ours."  Why was this innocent remark, even compliment, so upsetting? Why did it keep me awake that night? BACKGROUND About six months ago my husband and I decided we needed an indoor tree--for decorative value and to clean the air.  We went to The Nursery and picked out a leafy, oxygen-exchanging machine, which according to directions, “would thrive in conditions of semi-light with weekly watering,  at which time the tree should be turned.” And we rented a van large enough to bring the tree home unscathed. The tree looked beautiful. As the weeks passed, I did find it to have two unique characteristics. Firstly, after my husband watered the tree, which he did at 9:00 AM every Sunday, I had to take a syringe and suck up the excess water which just seemed to pool in the bottom of the plastic plate on which the tree sat. In my mind, ...
Read more
Image
  THE DOWNSIDE OF POWER From Politics Police and Other Earthling Antics “Hello madam mayor,” the policeman said with a smile. I got off my bicycle to return the greeting and he said, “do you know what you just did? You just crossed the railroad tracks after the gates were on the way down." " Usually,”  he continued, “I just give bikers a lecture, but I can make an exception for the Mayor.”  And he wrote me a ticket.  Crossing the tracks was not all I had done. I had voted against giving a precipitous salary increase to the police unit in our town.   More dangerous than standing up to police was standing up to the framers of our heritage tree ordinance. I renamed this ordinance the “Heritage Twig ordinance“ for which I was accused of liking people more than trees.   There were the dog owners who wanted to use the fenced in Little-League field for a dog run when the field was not being used by the League. When I warned that the park would become known...
Read more