Crowd Cow’s ‘$100 of Free Meat’
As a TINA.org reader put it, it’s only “free” if you first spend money.
You may now be seated -- if you're lucky enough to get in.
Imagine being invited to Easter dinner only to be denied a seat at the table once the meal is ready and all your aunts, uncles and cousins have gathered round.
Not very nice by any familial standard, but that’s basically what a reader from Los Angeles said she experienced after receiving an unsolicited email from previewfreemovies.com. The email invited her to see a free pre-release screening of Pitch Perfect 2 in Hollywood.
The reader said she and her daughter waited in line for nearly an hour and a half and still did not get in. They eventually left but not without paying the cost of parking at the theatre.
“It happened to be my daughter’s 14th birthday so I went to a huge amount of trouble for her to go,” the reader wrote in an email to TINA.org. “When we got there, it was all a lie. It was a press screening and we were ‘seat fillers.’”
Later, while reviewing the confirmation email, the reader said she spotted a section toward the end that stated seating was not guaranteed:
The theatre is overbooked to ensure capacity and therefore you are not guaranteed a seat by showing up at this private event.
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As a TINA.org reader put it, it’s only “free” if you first spend money.
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