There are many gimmicks out there that have made companies millions of dollars.  Smart-minded marketing heads of major companies are paid big bucks to help make sales.  With the extreme growth of skin care products, as well as the amount of competition in the industry, companies have turned over new leafs in their attempts to drive customers to their brands.  They are even giving away products for FREE.  But, these free products rarely are free when you magnify what is exactly going on behind the scenes.

You see, the use of the word “free” is almost fraudulent.

This isn’t to go out and say that all free trial offers are bad or fraudulent, I don’t want to come off sounding like that.  But Ive read way too many wrinkle cream scams for my liking, and it’s unfortunate that a few bad apples have to ruin what was a great business concept for the rest of the world.

Basically, a free trial offer works like this….

Customer signs up on a form to obtain a “free” product. The customer is usually responsible for shipping and handling, which can be anywhere from $5.95 to $11.  Once this is paid, the product is shipped out to the customer.  Of course, many of the companies use sometimes confusing web forms with pre-checked boxes that basically lock the customer into an agreement that they may or may not understand fully.  You see, customers don’t always read the legal mumbo-jumbo, and it can be quite hard reading through all of it, even if one wanted to.

At the end of the day, the customer, whether knowing it or not, signs up for a program that AUTOMATICALLY ships a product or two to the customer on the same credit card that was used to pay for the shipping.  Now, if the customer is happy with the product, God bless, this could be a great arrangement.  It provides a hassle-free way of re-ordering a product you care going to use anyways right? Well, while I can’t put a percentage on the number of people who are truly happy with an arrangement like this, I can say that there is a group of people who do NOT like this arrangement.  The fact is, the majority of customers do not understand exactly what they are getting into when they sign up for the free trial offer.

For these people, this can be the beginning of a nightmarish experience with the company who sold them the free trial product.  Of course, there are many methods of contact that can be used to get in touch with the company, but if they don’t respond, guess what – you are STILL locked into the billing agreement you signed up for earlier.  Emails go unanswered, and phone calls can be ignored.  This is all done in hopes of having hundreds, if not thousands of customers to get to the “next month” of the billing arrangement, which brings gobs of cash to the manufacturer.

Moral of the story – be careful when you sign up for something that appears “free.”  Nothing in life is free, as we all know, and the same can be said for skin products.