When Free is Not Free

The $34.95 “Free” pizza and other adventures

By Paul A. Herbig

Like most consumers, I am always entranced by that one glorious word “FREE.”
I am also a quicker learner, it has only taken me twenty or thirty “learning experiences” to really understand how free FREE is.

Let me explain. When our youngest son was growing up, he would come home with Pizza Hut Book-it awards for meeting his reading goals. This was commendable because it encouraged him to read, a worthy endeavor in itself. However, every time we went to redeem that FREE award, my wife and other son would accompany us. Being in a Pizza Hut with those delicious aromas blaring out of the kitchen and it being, naturally, near dinner time (why else would the youngest be hungry), we would allow our stomach to override our brain and partake of a pizza or two and breadsticks and perhaps a salad or two and let’s not forget drinks for everyone (and refills). Only after we were filled with Italy’s greatest export, did I notice the bill for that FREE pizza was over thirty dollars. Like I said, I am a quick learner so after a few dozen of these trips, we decided to carry out our order and cut the bill down by half (we didn’t need drinks nor dessert).

The other day while watching a program on cable, I saw an ad for a revolutionary cooking dish that had holes in the top so you could boil spaghetti and strain spaghetti from the same bowl without having to have a separate strainer and take the chance of burning yourself when straining the spaghetti. I could see the benefits in having one of those contraptions since spaghetti is a staple in our household. The price was right and then they threw the kicker, an additional smaller bowl for free when you bought the larger bowl. So being my thoughtful self I held off ordering by phone and investigated the website of this modern miracle. My initial thoughts on purchasing were quickly doused when I found out the FREE smaller bowl only would cost me $9.95 in shipping and handling. (This small bowl would not have weighted much and could have fit smugly into the larger bowl so I wondered what freight service they were using, Dan’s Mafia Couriers?)

In glancing through the paper on Sunday, I saw “Second meal free” with ,in very small print, “purchase of a meal of equal or greater value.” Then I attempt to calculate how much that FREE toy cost that is found in every McDonald’s kid’s meal (not including any purchase by mom or Dad, see above example). That second recliner free with the purchase of the first one or the free ottoman that comes with a purchased living room suite.

Since this column is oriented towards marketers, the moral of the story must be how consumers see your FREE offers. Are your free offers like the ones above, barely legal and buyer beware? Do they have enough catches in them to provide sufficient protection that no item will truly be free? Are they adequately worded so buyers are not awestruck when the final tab is calculated? Do you aim at the kids and make the adults pay? All the examples above are quite legal but questionable ethically. Even then, as a marketer you should be careful on your actions.

You are attempting to create a relationship with a customer, a lifelong arrangement where he trusts you to provide a quality product when he demands it and you know he will return to trade with you again. To treat customers like proverbial used car salesman, that is to take them for all you can the first time, is not conductive to relationship building. Do you want your customers reading all the fine print to see what you are hiding and where the hidden charges are? Or do you want them to trust you to deliver what you said you would at the price indicated? The first type of producer has no loyal customer base and it will desert him at first sign of a viable option. It is the second type that will be in business from generation to generation with customers from birth to death in unrelenting loyalty.

Who would you rather be? Free can sometimes actually mean Free!