We have been in business for over 16 years now, so trust me when I say we have “been there, done that”, and I love to share my knowledge to help you not make my same mistakes. With that being said, today we are going to discuss why you SHOULDN’T give Free Gifts (or, if you truly want to give freebies, you can find the perfect one).

You’re likely a normal person, like me, and you hear “free gift” and your eyes light up; after all, who doesn't want something FOR FREE? ….or so you would think…. But surprisingly, people actually can be upset (and even OUTRAGED) by freebies even though your intentions are pure.

WHEN FREE GIFTS GO WRONG

For a decade I thought I was alone in the  “My buyer left bad feedback over the free gift" club, but then I accidentally stumbled across many similar stories on Reddit, PurseForum and the eBay Seller threads and it dawned on me… people in 2021 are a different breed… they’re not like you or I in the sense that they become upset and even OFFENDED over extra items included in their parcel when they didn’t ask for them. Let me start by sharing my “free gift horror stories” with you:

FREEBIE NIGHTMARE #1: My very first bad feedback from a free gift is a situation I will never forget! Many years ago we had some kind of stupid special where we were giving away 1 free piece of (random pull of) Macys jewelry with any purchase of X-amount or more. I don’t even remember the exact amount but it was probably something idiotic like $50 (because I wasn’t a savvy business person at that time and didn't really realize what I was gifting). Back then I would pre-pack freebies by putting one of the free items in a Ziplock plastic baggie with an awful-quality pc-printed business card. When a customer purchased the required monetary amount to trigger the bonus item I could simply grab one pre-filled bag and insert it into the outgoing order.  Easy enough, right?

So this chick purchases whatever it was… it was something inexpensive...and she gets a free bangle bracelet from my Macys stock.  A couple days later I receive an email from her to complain… but not about the item she ordered because she was apparently quite happy with the merch. Instead she was upset about the bangle bracelet being “rusted”. However, the bracelet was not damaged; it was a “weathered look”, so it was supposed to have a chic “worn look”, like this:

To add insult to injury, it was a Jessica Simpson brand with a MSRP of like $65; regardless, she was outright livid about me "dumping damaged items" into her order.  Of course I was disheartened, but I chalked it up to being "one crazy customer".  I suggested to her that she could consider “gifting” or donating the bracelet so someone else could enjoy it, however she absolutely insisted it so rusted that she couldn't even imagine gifting it, so I asked her if she could simply throw away this free gift and to my surprise she complained again that she has “very little room” in her trash can and stated that this was a massive inconvenience to her. At that point I offered to pay for return shipping so she could avoid throwing it away, regifting it or donating it for a tax write-off.  However, instead of replying she left bad feedback. The bad feedback never mentioned anything about her actual purchase and instead said something like “Bracelet was covered in dirt and rust”.... Which made it sound like I shipped her a bad purchase. *Sigh!*

FREE GIFT FAIL #2: Lady places an order over X-amount and I randomly grab a ziplock with the goody in it and slide it into her parcel.

A week later I am slammed with a 1-star…. Not because she disliked the Sugar Lips brand tank tops she bought but instead because the free gift (which happened to be a Betsey Johnson necklace) OFFENDED HER. The necklace looked something like this:

According to her bad feedback, it was an “evil, anti-religion, Mark of The Beast”. Now keep in mind, I didn’t spend any time examining each piece of free Macys jewelry; I simply bagged a hundred pieces and made sure each ziplock included the crappy looking biz card, so at no point did it dawn on me that a skull-theme piece that is sold at a famous chain store could insult anyone... but clearly it did, and I have to admit, I felt truly terrible about making a person feel as though my company had disrespected their religious beliefs.   

FREEBIE FAILURE #3:  Like most companies I gave out out free logo ink pens, stickers, totes, water bottles and other promotional items. I even gave out coffee mugs, shot glasses and drinking glasses. For the most part we had compliments, but then there's those couple people that insist on bitching. The complaints would range from the ink pen “not writing well” to the mug not being “dishwasher safe so the graphics came off when I washed it!” to the sticker “not coming off the paper backing” - O.M.F.G….. such waste of time and energy….

MORE FREE ITEM FAILS:  It wasn't terribly uncommon for people to ask if they could exchange their free item for a monetary value, "Hi, I see you gave me this $14 key chain.  I would like to return it and get a refund posted to my credit card because I don't drive so I don't have  key ring so this is useless to me"

THE FINAL FREEBIE FAIL: Fast forward to 2017-or-so; another buyer threw a tantrum because the free womens fashion promo item featured camouflage print material and, quote, “Camo print means hunting and I am a member of PETA and very anti hunting!”... but HE wasn’t the only one to complain about the camouflage print… there were actually 2 livid people in 6 months. After the second complaint about this same freebie we stopped free gifts completely. I had reached a breaking point with the entire thing.

Keep reading this series: