TheBanyanTree: Zeek Rewards as a Business Model?

[Theta Brentnall]

When Darling Lizzie was about 12 or so, she would get so upset with us 
when we'd get a call that we'd "won" something and all we had to do was 
sit through a sales pitch for whatever, and we'd tell them we weren't 
interested and hang up.  I couldn't understand why we kept getting these 
calls and finally found out that she'd been signing us up for the "free" 
things where ever she saw them.  So one night a guy called about this 
great deal for a cruise club.  All we had to do was sign up for their 
free seminar (read sales pitch) and we'd get as a minimum a voucher for 
a free 3-day cruise for 2 out of LA down to Mexico and back.  Lizzie was 
adamant that we weren't losing out on this great deal, and since the 
pitch was pretty close to us, we agreed to go and waste a couple of 
hours, but she had to come with us.

It was just what you'd expect this kind of thing to be.  The members 
(read: victims) bought into this cruise club for $5,000 and then they 
got to get cruise tickets for all the luxury cruises they wanted for 
only about 10% of the going rate.  Details were sketchy on the when, 
what and where, but it was such a great deal.  Well, the kid's not 
stupid.  She started asking questions that they didn't want to answer, 
and because we were being so uncooperative, they brought the "closer" 
over to our table.  The guy was beyond sleazy, and he used all the 
negotiating tricks in the book (and Ger and I, both negotiators for the 
Air Force, had the book memorized.)  The great thing was to watch 
Lizzie's body language go from involved/interested to "get away from me, 
you snake."  We finally said we'd spent enough time - it was a school 
night - just give us the voucher for the cruise and we'll be gone.

We got the voucher, and on the way home, Liz started reading it in all 
its fine print.  First, if one of the people was under 21, the other one 
had to be over 25, and since the idea was for Liz and Darling Maggie to 
go on this, she was displeased about that.  Then there were the 
black-out dates, which were scattered at about 4 week intervals through 
the whole year, plus 2 weeks before and after each date.  Hmmm.  That 
works out to the only time you could actually use it was in a month that 
had more than 4 weeks.  When she got a calendar, she discovered that it 
was actually only good for three sailings during the year, and of 
course, every voucher they handed out was going to only be valid on 
those same three dates and there was limited space for voucher holders, 
and so on and so forth.  What a complete rip-off!

A few weeks later we got a follow=up call from the cruise club. She 
happened to answer the call, and it did a mom's heart good to hear that 
sweet child rip into the caller about his scummy outfit being immoral, 
unethical, lying, cheating, stealing candy from babies, no good rats.  
It was well worth those couple of hours of our time to have her learn 
the lesson so well stated by Robert Heinlein:  TANSTAFL:  There ain't no 
such thing as a free lunch.

Theta

On 8/25/2012 12:47 PM, Monique Colver wrote:
> Earlier this summer I was contacted by someone who was interested in my
> book and who wanted to meet me. Naturally I was flattered, it being my
> first book and me prone to flattery. So we set up a time to meet, and she
> asked me for two books to sell to her.
......................
>
>
> A few days ago the SEC shut Zeekler down. Because guess why! It’s a Ponzi
> scheme! That just really made my day. I know, I know, there are affiliates
> out there screaming, “but I was making money!” And the people who made
> money, who pulled theirs out before it was shut down, are saying, “hah! Got
> mine!”
>
>