Lucky Charms?

Less than 24 hours ago I cleared my junk email box, yet this morning my email junk box was bursting at the seams with a whopping 124 pieces of garbage advertising. This did not include, of course, the handful of junk mail advertisements that got past my spam filters and wound up in my regular box. Delete, delete, delete....I dare not delete mindlessly, however, because every so often a good piece of email ends up in the junk box. What never ceases to amaze me is that email earmarked for my trash seems to increase at an exponential rate. The other thing that amazes me is that most, if not all, of the junk is advertising for something free. My favorite piece today was "Get two free boxes of Lucky Charms mailed to your doorstep." Lucky Charms? If they wanted my attention, why didn't they offer me something I really want like a year's supply of gourmet cheese or better yet offering to pay my mortgage payments for the next year?

The problem with all these free offers is there is always a catch. My favorites are the ones that offer you a free laptop or airline tickets to London...if you complete the required product deals. You click on page after page of product offers. If you take the bait, you will have your email address added to 30 more junk email lists for more free offers. If you think you are smart, you can bypass all that only to learn after clicking about 50 pages of advertisements that the only way to get the free laptop or the free airline tickets is to purchase a $500 satellite TV/sound system package (installation and shipping is extra), join 2 book clubs, 3 dvd clubs and buy 6 ink cartridge refills for your printer. Whose definition of free are they using?

While I sat there deleting and deleting this morning, it occurred to me that in our society, we are caught up in acquiring things. If we can get it free, the better. We are like vultures after a good piece of road kill. If it's free, we're there grabbing as fast as we can. A lot of times, it doesn't matter that it is something as little and useless (in my opinion) as a box of Lucky Charms cereal. We get excited about the fact that it's free.

What we fail to realize is that nothing is really free. Someone had to pay for the box of Lucky Charms, and it's probably you. It wouldn't surprise me if the fine print reads, "Just mail in $10 shipping and handling and we'll mail you 2 free boxes of Lucky Charms." It probably cost the company $2 to mail you the cereal, $3 for the boxes of cereal (which are probably out of date). Their profit? $5. Not to mention now they have your home address, phone number and email address which they will share with 100 other advertising friends who will be more than happy to fill up your spam email box for the next 10 years.

I learned my lesson when I agreed to sign up for a free laptop, because I was going to be part of a product test panel. So far, I have product tested 4 pieces of useless computer software (and believe me, they were useless), I gained 2 computer viruses, I got stuck in 2 cd clubs, spent over $200 on cds (to fill my requirement), got added to who knows how many junk email lists, and I still don't have the laptop, because I refuse to purchase a new $500 Dish Satellite system. I've learned my lesson. Now I only go to my spam email box to look for a stray email from a friend, and of course to delete, delete, delete.