Forums | MacLife

I'm a Mac OS refugee. When I was eight years old my parents bought a Macintosh IIsi running System 6. It was love at first mouse-click, and some of my fondest childhood memories are from playing "Cosmic Osmo and the Worlds Beyond the Mackerel." From there we had various 68040s, 601s, 604s, G3s, and when I went to college I bought a 15" Revision A Titanium PowerBook G4. Alas, my financial situation went south and I had to sell it. I'm still kicking myself to this day.

After several years on my rather inexpensive, home-built Windows boxes, I'm longing to go back to Mac OS. No matter how hard I've tried, I've just never been as productive on Windows, though I've always found XP Pro to be a very stable OS. I will most likely be selling my PC workstation to my brother and buying another PowerBook as a desktop replacement (17" this time?). My wife, however, grew up with PCs and hasn't used a Mac in her life. (I assure you, she's still a very nice person!) I'd like to get her a Mac of her own, and this iBook deal through EveryGift.com seems just the ticket.

I went and signed up on EveryGift.com and completed six offers today. Some of the offers are pretty decent, so no regrets there. However, I signed up very early this morning (11/28), and at 11:00 PM (16 hours later) I still haven't received any acknowledgement from EveryGift.com of my registration. This makes me a little nervous. The other thing I considered odd was that after completing my six offers, I didn't get any notification that the process was completed. I just got a pop-up window with more offers that were unrelated to the iBook promotion.

Since I haven't received any notification from EveryGift.com, I'm unable to log in to the member's area of the site. I submitted a support ticket about twelve hours ago, but have not received a response yet. Maybe I'm just impatient, but it seems that I should have at least received the courtesy of an auto-responder when I registered.

Sitting...waiting...and hoping.

Oh, and to all my long-lost Mac friends here (and yes, I was a MacAddict subscriber at one point -- first issue's CD came with Escape Velocity -- can you say "a thousand wasted hours?"), good to see you all again! I sure am glad to be coming back to the side of Truth and Enlightenment.

Thanks for your reply, CaptKevinMan!

It has now been two days since I signed up for EveryGift.com and the requisite six offers. I've received notifications from all six of the companies whose offers I signed up for. I still have yet to receive any notification from EveryGift.com that they received my registration, however. I've checked my "Junk Mail" folder in Thunderbird, but so far to no avail. So at this point, I still can't log into EveryGift.com's member area.

Trying to be patient. I'll keep everyone posted.

It's been four days since I signed up for EveryFreeGift.com, and so far I haven't received any email from them, "junk mail" or otherwise. I've submitted another support ticket, but they haven't responded to that, either.

Not really sure what to think, at this point.

macman21 wrote:

I've submitted two support tickets with them.  The first one was for the issue you are describing.  It took them a couple days to get back to me, but they did, and solved the problem.  The second one I sent before Thanksgiving and didn't get a response until over a week later.  Again, they solved the problem.  They are probably playing catch-up right now due to the holiday.

I hope that's the issue. It's Saturday now (signed up Monday morning) -- still haven't heard a peep. Keeping my fingers crossed.

I think these emails are supposed to be automated.  Both times I sent in a help ticket it was because I didn't ever receive an automated email.  I was using a junk Yahoo account and checked to make sure it wasn't being blocked by that.  When I did get a response on the help tickets (to the same Yahoo account), they said that their emails are sometimes blocked somewhere along the way.  I'm not really sure what's going on, but the bottom line is they always got back to me and got the issue resolved.

UPDATE

Well, I promised a follow up "how to" piece. While I haven't really finished it as an article, per se, it is fairly comprehensive (in its own way, with links and whatnot). This is an email I sent out to a few friends who had inquired about this whole process...it contains some links to this thread where appropriate. So, while not a complete article, it should be enough for just about anyone to roll through this process pretty painlessly:

I wrote:

Hello All –



I mentioned the “free” iBook that I got via an online promotion to you, and I told you all that I’d let you know the details. I’m sorry for the delay in getting this information to some of you, but I wanted to ensure the information was as thorough as possible before sending it.



I hope this information proves helpful to you; it is based on my own personal experience in participating in an online offer for a “free” iBook. While it may or may not have been completely free (depending on how you look at it), the final cost for me in this whole process was less than $150 in cash and about 4 – 6 hours of time invested, plus about a 4-month wait.



READ THIS BEFORE YOU START ANYTHING:

   1. You WILL need a “dummy” email account set up specifically for this process (unless, of course, you absolutely love mountains of spam). If you need one, just let me know…I have plenty of Gmail invites available.
   2. You will need to DOCUMENT EVERYTHING. If you’re not on a Mac, find an easy way to take screenshots, print webpages to PDF, or whatever else it takes to meticulously record every step of this process. (If you’re on a Mac, all you need to do is “print to PDF” from your browser).
   3. You will need to ENABLE POP-UPS in your browser, since some of the agreement and fulfillment terms will show up in pop-up windows.



Having said that, please read on for details. There are a lot of links below, and I would recommend you read through all of them until you’re sure you understand the process. Please feel free to email me with any questions you might have…my personal email address is captkevman [at] gmail.com.



First of all, please review the discussion thread I posted on my experience at the MacAddict forums -- I’m “CaptKevMan” there (and just about everywhere else online, for that matter )



http://www.macaddict.com/forums/post/971754#p971754

http://www.macaddict.com/forums/post/1026491#p1026491

http://www.macaddict.com/forums/post/1027246#p1027246

http://www.macaddict.com/forums/post/1084433#p1084433

(you can also read the whole thread at http://www.macaddict.com/forums/topic/66247/1  , but the links above will take you to the meat of the discussion)



NETBLUE SITES:

These sites are all run by the parent company NetBlue, and they seem to all operate in the same manner. I had a great experience with the first site mentioned here (EveryFreeGift.com), and I got the iBook with no hassles at all:


http://everyfreegift.com
(many items to choose from. This is the one I used to get the iBook; it took 6 offers.)

http://yourgiftcards.com
($50 gift cards to popular retailers and restaurants - Applebee's, Blockbuster, Kmart, Red Lobster, etc. -- 1 offer required)

http://internetopiniongroup.com
(Motorola cell phones, Nintendo DS & Playstation PSP handheld game systems, iBook, Philips 20" LCD TV. -- 6 offers, I'd imagine)
I am going to try this one for an iBook for my son.

http://anyfreegift.com
(smaller stuff...game consoles, inexpensive digicams, etc. ...only 2 offers needed.)

http://gadgetcity.com
(lots to choose from here; research indicates that this site is owned by YF Direct, which is in turn owned by Netblue)

http://bigwin.com
(another YF Direct / NetBlue site)

The terms for each site say that there can only be one free "gift" per family or household...but each of them lists only itself, and not the other 'sister' sites...so presumably, one could attempt an offer from each of the above sites...I don't know, I've only done the EveryFreeGift promotion.


OTHER SITES:

http://rewardsvenue.com
(plasma TV, iMac G5, exercycle, Sony laptop, Sony wireless LCD TV, fancy Pioneer multifunction DVD player/GPS system)
This is the site from which I will be trying to get an iMac G5 (or hopefully an Intel iMac).

http://freegiftworld.com
Sony VAIO, iPod, and Canon digital cameras are among the items offered here.



Now, for the disclaimer: I’m just sharing this information as a courtesy, so of course I can’t guarantee anything…but I had a good experience, and I hope you do, too! Good luck!

...so, has anyone else made any progress in their efforts? If you've gotten your "gift," please share your experience with us!

Last edited by CaptKevMan (2006-01-20 6:46 pm)

I bought a monitor from Newegg and 95% of the reviewers say that they have waited six-plus months and still haven't received their rebates (and the Better Business Bureau gave the company a D). How can I receive my rebate?

Just wanted to give everyone an update.

I signed up for EveryFreeGift.com on November 28 and filled out all the offers the same day. Today I received a new iBook G4 1.33 GHz from EveryFreeGift via PCMall. I'm going to the Apple Store tomorrow to trade it in as credit toward a MacBook Pro (I've already talked to them - they said I could do this so long as I haven't opened the iBook).

Thanks for bringing this to our attention, ckm. It definitely isn't a scam, and is going to save me almost $1000 on a MacBook Pro. Cheers!

Well, I bit.  In February I signed up and have completed all my offers.  Only two of them are showing "In Progress" while the others merely state "Pending."  I sent an email to them stating that I had completed all of my offers and have proof for all if they need it, but got a response saying that "vendors have 45 days to confirm completion" or something like that.  Just was wondering how long it took you guys to go from "Pending" to actually being confirmed.

Hi everyone, I'm a newbie here in Mac and have a few questions about freebies

I'm a college student and living away from home, so when I sign up for any freegift site, can I use my school's address or should I fill in my home address? And if I fill in my home address for freegift then when I sign up for others like BMG... should I also use my home address or my school address is ok?

Thanks so much!

Last edited by fanfan (2006-09-16 8:57 pm)

no, I dont spam at all, I was very excited by what ckm said and want to check it out, but they said in the term of use that I have to have a physical mailing address. That's what I was confused about.

thanks a lot ignis fatuusz, so I sign up w/the companies by my school's address and sign up for freegift site(s) by my home address so they'll not give me trouble?

Since receiving the iBook last November, I've also done a similar promotion for an iPod (30GB 5th gen), which I received in June 2006, and another promotion for an iBook, which is due any day now. Since the iBook has been discontinued, the promotion company says they'll be sending out a $900 check instead (which is fine by me, since I was going to either sell or trade up the iBook or MacBook for a MacBook Pro whenever it comes).

This is the final post I'm going to make in this thread. The link in my sig (the one that says "Like Free stuff?" goes to a freebies forum I started called Free? YouBetcha! that is run by some very friendly and knowledgeable folks with a lot more experience in the freebie scene than I have. There's a lot of great info and discussion over there for anyone looking to try any of the free product offer promotions (of any type).