Many of the offers to get free stuff require you to give your phone number or to sign up for a trial membership with a credit card. And of course, give an email address.
Here’s a few things you can do to make your life easier when you provide that information.
- Get a free phone number from www.privatephone.com. This is a web based number that only takes messages. You can set up the voicemail yourself with whatever message you want. Mine says, “Sorry, I can’t answer the phone now, leave me a message.” You’ll get an email saying you have a message and you can call the number and check it just like any ‘real’ phone number. I’ve used it - it works great. It’s free and legit.
- Get a free email address from gmail, yahoo, hotmail, etc that you use only for these offers. You’re required to give a working email address, so you can’t just make one up. This way, your personal email address is saved for your friends and family.
- NEW - Get a free temporary email address from GuerillaMail that expires after 15 minutes. That will let you enter your email address long enough to check out a freebie offer without having to give your real address.
- Go to the corner drugstore and get yourself a $25 Visa gift card. Use that number anyplace you’re asked for a credit card when you do a trial offer. It’s a real pain to get your monthly statement and find charges from some place that you canceled. Using the gift card protects your real credit card number and keeps you from being charged a fee for something you canceled.
Just doing these 3 things will go a long way to protect your identity when you do offers.
Many offers require your address, but hey, we already get tons of junk mail, so what’s a few more things in the mailbox. No one is actually going to come and knock on your door!
The offers for free merchandise or gift cards always require you to participate in some way or another. Nothing is really ‘free’, but you can get valuable items for pennies on the dollar by completing the offers. I’ve know people to end up with expensive electronics that retail for $500+ and only wind up costing them $35-$40.
Make sure you read the find print and follow the directions. Also, make sure you cancel any trial memberships in time. Keep them long enough to qualify, but if you don’t want them, cancel before the deadline.
Good Luck completing your offers!
