So Consumer Beware!

 Early mid-week last week, I get a call about doing a survey out of Fort Collins, Colorado on energy efficiency.  Nice survey and took only 5 minutes like they said and had some good questions.  Well, if you give them your address, you are entered to win a gas card of anywhere from $25 to $100.  Guess what we won a $40 gas card.

Now hold on.  They deliver the gas card but ask that you give them an opinion on a piece of energy efficient equipment, and only an opinion nothing is being sold, and you then get your gas card after the person spends an hour getting your opinion.

Well, I say okay.  The guy shows up and first thing he says is out of these prizes which one would you take in addition to the gas card.  I say, "None."  They all looked cool but were all cheap, probably everything only about $50.

Next thing is he is trying to sell a air cleaner, a super special air filter and ultimately even a super cool vacuum cleaner.  Nothing about just asking our opinion, everything was for sell.  And supposedly the company only did surveys.    I did find out that if we did buy the special air filter we would have had to call a number to day we were getting it and they would send one of the prizes the guy mentioned at first.

Well we wasted one hour of time our time to get a $40 gas card and fortunately were smart enough not to buy anything.  We never asked the price of anything but we figured it would be expensive.  We did get the $40 gas card.

The gas card is ridiculous. You have to get your gas and receipt, send the receipt in with the card filled out and get back four $10 coupons that you can only use one a month over four months.  It takes at least 10 weeks to get the coupons back. I will see if we really get the coupons but I don't expect much for the effort.

From what I can tell the entire deal was a scam.  We were pretty careful not to buy anything and not to show the person around the house or leave anything expensive out.  Based on all this I think everyone they called won a gas card of some value.

So beware if you get a call for a survey and then an offer of a prize at the end of it and they tell you they will deliver it to you. Oh! And they just want an hour of your time for your opinion on a piece of equipment.  Run away, say NO! This is a total scam.    ----   Remember the old adage, if it is too good to be true it is probably a scam.