Why is it difficult to give away something for nothing?

Due to the current economic state we are all becoming accustomed to a life of ‘recession chic’ in that we are all unaccustomed to paying full price for, well, just about everything. So, in a society that is looking for more and more bargains and companies cutting back as much as possible, is it difficult to give something away for nothing?

Take www.comparehomes.com for instance. A website created with the purpose of helping the public by providing the most up to date website to help them find the right care home for their relatives or friends requiring a care home that is free to use. This site is unique in that it is the first that provides availability for affiliated care homes. It also creates advertising for the care homes that affiliate with the website.

As a new and unproven website, Compare Care Homes offered short-term free listing opportunities with no obligations to care comes and care home groups. This would literally give them additional free advertising and potentially help them to fill any available spaces in their care homes. The offer was met by a somewhat negative response. It created the confusing question: Why?

So society wants bargains and discounts but we have become so cynical now that when the ‘gift horse’ comes calling, we are looking at it squarely in the mouth! We can only blame these schemes and services that promise something for free but then have a hidden or unclear ‘sting in the tail’ that results in unwanted and expensive costs we were not expecting.

I speak from personal experience when I offer the following example: Free insurance on the TV I had just purchased, offered ‘just in case’ something happens to it on the way home, or while I was fitting it. This insurance lasts a month, completely free, providing you cancel it before the month is out where, afterwards, it has a monthly fee. I personally took out this policy and subsequently forgot to cancel it by the allotted time, when I realised, I called the insurance company and had to go through a call centre, who would not accept my desire to cancel, I got passed between departments, put on hold, offered discounts and finally had to send off written confirmation of my desire to end my insurance and when all is said and done, I was £45.00 lighter in my bank account and 4 weeks later you find the time on the call cost over £5.00 when the phone bill arrives! I can easily imagine, if not yourself, you surly know someone this has happened to.

So when you truly have something to offer for free, you have to fight through the fear, uncertainty and doubts of the prospects you are making the offer to.