I’m constantly amazed by these offers that seem too good to be true. After all, what is better than free? Well, if it seems too good to be true, it ussually is. This latest offer from Visa is an example of this.
I received an offer from Visa this week for a free Dell Laptop that they say is valued at $850. Naturally I’m skeptical, but before I threw the ad in the trash I looked over it to see what you had to do to get the “free” computer.
To qualify for your “free” computer you must transfer a balance of $5000 to the new card and maintain a balance of $3,500 for 18 months. If you don’t have $5,000 on another card to transfer you can take out upto $2,500 in cash advances to make up the difference. This means you need to have at least $2,500 on another card in order to transfer it to the new card.
After some serious number crunching, they figure out that the “free” laptop ends up costing over $900! Now that’s an offer I can definitely pass on.