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Scam on THEM, not you silly... read on. It's not for everybody, but it IS legit.
---begin guide---
How to get a free 4gb iPod mini, or 15gb iPod classic in 4 weeks:
1. read this guide in its ENTIRETY before starting
2. Click here http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7297695 and sign up.
3. Click "NO" to the 11 mini-offer questions which pop up. Then when it give you the choices of the offers you must pick one of, pick the ancestry.com 14-day free trial offer. You will need a credit card to sign up for the trial offer, but they are an established reputable company that I've worked with before, for Google Answers researching, and will honor your free trial cancellation request. It is the easiest offer to cancel, and you assume NO risk unlike some of the other offers such as the 5 DVDs for $.49. Alternatively if you need a credit card, you can sign up for a GM Card with no annual fee, or a Citi Platinum Card if you're a college student. I already have enough credit cards so I just did the ancestry.com one. note: if you do one of the credit card signups you will assume no financial risk, but I hear carrying many credit cards may impact your personal credit rating
4. Send the offer to 5 friends who are willing to go through this same process. Alternately you can use the referral link that they give you to send to friends through IM/email/etc. like the way I did above. <antiflame full disclosure>This is a pyramid-type marketing strategy which makes money on the fact that not everybody is going to find 5 people to propagate offers too so they'll never collect their reward. This would be an added risk to people signing up IF they didn't have an offer which you could cancel without risk (i.e. the ancestrry.com offer). Because you can cancel without risk, you don't have to worry about actually paying for anything as long as you remember to cancel (see next step). Or you could have just signed up for a credit card if you didn't have one or wanted another (see above). You can only receive ONE iPod maximum, so when I receive 5 people with confirmed offer acceptances (you can see how many more you need to be done) I will be changing/removing my referral link.</antiflame full disclosure>
5. In 5 days, or whenever you see that your offer acceptance has been marked successful call ancestry.com at 1-800-262-3787 to cancel your subscription. Simply select option #4 at the teleprompt to speak to an Account Services representative who can cancel your account and will give you a confirmation number verifying the cancelation. Account Services is available between the hours of 8 AM and 10 PM Eastern Time (Monday-Friday) and on Saturday from 10 AM to 7 PM Eastern Time. In these 5 days, find out cool information about your parents/grandparents/ancestors... you have the free service for a couple days, might as well use it.
6. In about 3 days, they should have processed your ancestry.com offer, or in about 2 weeks if you chose a credit card. Add in the time that it takes you to get 5 friends to do the same (let's say a week) and you should have one ready to be shipped in 2 weeks. They say 1-2 weeks for shipping, but let's assume the worst, that brings us to 4 weeks. Enjoy your iPod, you didn't deserve it, but you got one anyways.
---end guide---
For the skeptics in the group, I've already done my homework on the company behind this. I pulled Gratis Internet's Dun and Bradstreet report (their financial ranking report and history which is pretty expensive to get) because it's what my company does, and they've been in business for 4 years. They're in the business of "innovative internet advertising" and this is their latest. They've established about $55,000 of credit with various companies (Dell, etc.) over the course of the last 4 years which has been (this is the important part) being repayed in full, on-time to a maximum 8 days late (VERY good ranking for businesses as the industry standard for advertising companies is 9 days). They have no open or closed suits, liens, or judgements against them, meaning nobody's ever had a reason to sue them or bring them to court over late/missing payments. All-in-all they're ranked positively, and the D&B report is one of the most positive you can get on a company. So they're legit, and this is a bonafide marketing tool.
That said, if you choose to sign up, you carry the risk of $99 charged to your credit card if you forget to cancel your ancestry.com account within the 14 days, which is more than enough time. You also risk damaging your personal credit history if you have like 9 credit cards already and decide to go the route of opening another. However if you follow the guide above step by step, you should have 0 problems, and the worst that could happen is that this company gets a bit richer from all the kickbacks they're receiving from their partners like ancestry.com and you're one iPod richer. Please note, do not use any fake information in any part of this process as you will jeopardize your iPod and the referrer you're under. Ask any questions you have, and if you decide to copy/paste this guide to another forum to get your 5, strip out my referrer id and also the part about the D&B reports. Remember it doesn't to any good to get more than 5 people to use your referral id because it's one iPod per household, so don't go spamming this crap to everybody you know.
For you final nay-sayers, a news article I found with more backup that this is legit:
http://www.engadget.com/entry/1771223899144212/
Thanks for your help and good luck on getting yours.
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OK, OK, I know you've all seen the "free Ipod" scams. The typical one
has you spend $50 to get information on how to get a free Ipod
(ridiculous) or you join some "matrix" where you have to get 250
people or some outrageous number to join in order to one day hopefully
get something.
I've been checking these out for a while, and I finally found an offer
that's actually legit (I know, I know what you're thinking, just keep
reading.)
At http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7409208, all you do
is join and sign up for one of their offers (more on this soon), and
then get five other people to sign up also, and that's it. Once the
five people sign up you get either an Ipod mini or a 15 GB Ipod (may
be refurbished, but hey it's free so who cares?)
Here's the deal with the offers: In order to sign up you need to
choose from about 10 different offers, all from legitimate companies.
There are few AOL offers (no credit card required), there are a few
credit cards you can sign up for (Citibank or GM), some wrinkle cream
thing, a video professor, or ancestry.com. Once you sign up and the
offer is recorded on the website, you can then cancel the offer if you
aren't interested in it anymore and you won't be charged for it. A
lot of people are signing up for ancestry.com because it immediately
registers as a completed offer, where the other offers take a few days
to register. The only catch with ancestry.com that some people are
worried about is that you need a credit card to signup for the free
trial. BUT don't worry, you have 30 days to cancel and your card
never gets charged. Ancestry.com is a legit business and they're not
going to rip anyone off.
Regardless, I invite everyone to check this one at
http://www.freeiPods.com/default.aspx?referer=7409208
if you're
interested.
If not, no sweat, have a nice dayFreeIPods.com
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Why do people with neat foolprrof scans feel the need to share these scams all over the interweb with people they don't know?
I just don't get that.
If I did my background research into it for all the skeptics out there, and I found out that this scam worked, I would only tell the people that I liked. In other words, I'd keep it to myself.
