2.7¢ : Costly Free Shopping Website

Everyone likes free stuff. But if you are offered to get free stuff you like worth of thousand dollars, you might think "it’s too good to be true". It is very likely is the truth. I started with studying Consumer Research Corporation (CRC) and found there are so many complaints filed by its members who registered to their websites like retailreportcard.com and producttestpanel.com. These websites promised their potential members free gift with registration, but eventually the members not only complained about not receiving the freebies but also complained about the unstoppable spamming horror.

So exactly what information CRC collects from its members? I barely found it hidden among all the fine prints:
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We use all of this information in the following ways:
1. to provide you with personalized marketing information via electronic delivery and/or direct mail;
2. to send you targeted advertising via electronic delivery and/or direct mail;
3. to contact you for feedback and surveys via electronic delivery and/or direct mail;
4. to send you general and administrative information about your CRC membership via electronic delivery and/or direct mail; and
5. to provide your contact information to CRC marketing partners to allow them to send you special offers via electronic delivery and direct mail. This most often occurs when you request that we do so such as when completing an online survey;
6. to deliver products to you for the purpose of review and testing.
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What we could easily understand from CRC's private policies is they have the right to spam the consumer to death. According to the previous court ruling of DoubleClick case, plaintiffs in this type of case need to establish the accused company's primary motivation intercepting communication is criminal and the transactions are not authorized by users. I am sure by now majority of the people are aware of the freebie online is most likely very costly --- cost of your privacy.

I think consumers have a love-hate situation about marketing research and how insights should be collected. For example, many of us will obtain product rating from Consumer Report before buying the product, but most of us don't want to give user experience to some strange dude on the phone in the name of marketing research. We just need a trust-worthy organization to help us gather customer feedback and distribute them at an aggregated level. Truth to be told, I used to always turn away any marking research activities because I fear that my information will be wrongfully used. However, I found myself on the phone this weekend with a telemarketer guy from Spurs. I gave him information about how my experience was of the game, whether I prefer going with a big group or just 2 people, and whether I will be interested in buying next season Spurs tickets. I feel pretty good about helping Spurs to get to know their fans a bit better. Of course, I might regret my kindness to help out this marketing research a month later because all the non-stop marketer callings. "National Do-Not-Call registry" will come in handy then.