SUBMITTED: Wednesday, April 02, 2008
POSTED: Wednesday, April 02, 2008
Welcome to the world as we know it today. Everything we know and use evolves, and the processes used to make money are no different. They evolve, just as RPR has over the years.
I have had to convince no fewer than a dozen of my friends and family members that have received "free cruise" offers and others like it to let me go over the fine print before they do anything. I'm not a scam artist, nor am I an expert in the field of spotting scams, but I am a college graduate who can read. As such, I've yet to fall victim to any of these, and instead get a pretty good laugh out of the numerous attempts by the companies to do so.
For those of you who are still trying to Google "caveat emptor", it means "Buyer beware", and it is a principle upon which our beloved free-enterprise system is based. There will always be an RPR out there (there are literally hundreds of companies just like it), and there will always be new people to scam/swindle. The trick is to learn how to protect yourself from these kinds of companies. If their business practices were illegal, they would not be in business; at least, not in today's world.
What prompted me to get on here and submit my thoughts was a phone call I received from RPR this afternoon. Actually, my work phone received the call, and whoever happened to answer the phone had the opportunity to get a "FREE cruise for two to Nassau in the Bahamas", and all I had to do was complete a 10 question automated survey. Being the intuitive person I am, I recognized this IMMEDIATELY as something I did not want to do because of the dreaded port fees, car fees, taxes, not to mention the cost of my plane tickets to Florida, but say I lived in Florida, and better yet, lived in the city from which the boat was departing......now I'm probably interested, regardless of whatever "tour" or timeshare presentation I would have to sit through. If I had been planning to take a small cruise, but didn't want to spend much on it, this would be a perfect getaway for me and a little hottie. The difference today from the horror stories I read from previous years is that this really is called "FREE".
TANSTAAFL This is a very important economics term. It's an acronym for "There ain't no such thing as a free lunch". There are always costs involved, but your responsibilities as an adult are to work out any and all costs associated with any trip (or anything else for that matter) that is supposedly "free". Would you buy a 2007 cadillac from someone for $3000.00? Probably not. There must be something wrong with it for a person to sell it at that price. Would you buy a "free dog" from someone across the country when all you had to do is pay the shipping charges? I hope not. Does that make sense? Funny as it seems, I was also on a scam alert site, and noticed something that was very funny to me. On the left side of the page, they had sold google ads, and one of these said, "Free Golf Clubs", all you pay is shipping and handling. This is no different than what RPR does. Yes, you get free golf clubs, after you complete X amount of offers, just as you get a free cruise, once you pay the fees, and go to the seminar. You definitely get the cruise, there is water under the boat, you will have a room, there will be food/water, but just remember, anything too good to be true, probably is.
Have you every received the publisher's clearing house sweepstakes packets? Those are FAR worse than anything RPR does. They mass market the packets to people who didn't ask for them, and on the front of every one is says "JOHN DOE 10 MILLION DOLLAR WINNER", but in very small print between doe and 10 it reads "could be our next". All you have to do is subscribe to magazines, and you're in.
Casinos have no clocks, few doors, maze-like structures, extra oxygen being pumped in, free drinks, happiness inducing chimes/bells (all play CEG)...these are all things done in the background to get us to gamble more money away, but we're responsible for how much we lose, not them.
I cannot condone the high-pressure tactics used by these companies, but they are just high-pressure, merely sticks and stones, and if you can't handle a little pressure, you're not going to do very well in this great big world. Give me your card info...... Ummmmm no thanks :-) Not until I'm completely positive on what I'm getting in to.
My point is, no matter how many of these companies you slam on-line, or how many class action lawsuits are brought forth, 10 more brand-new companies with newly innovated and evolved programs will pop up in the place of the closed. The only sure-fire way to prevent unnecessary losses is to prepare yourselves better, talk things over before committing to anything permanant, and if you ever have a question, ask someone who might know something about it. Even the smartest English person will need help solving a puzzle if it's written in French.
Good luck, and be careful.