Product: Freester
Price: $1 every 16 days ($2/month)
Website: freester.com
Rank: 50/100 – An affordable coupon/discount site which has some advantages, but may not be much benefit to the vast majority of people. Their greatest perk (25 rebates to Target, Walmart and various restaurants) has been taken away, making it mostly useless.   Use with caution as they have the right to change pricing with no warning.

What is Freester?

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Freester is a discount site that offers all sorts of perks from weekly coupons, movie/themepark/broadway discounts, roadsite assistance, medication discounts, and even a yearly subscription to your choice of magazine. I’ll admit that I thought it was cool at first. Since it was only $2 per month, I signed up thinking I could definitely get some use out of it, even if I only just used the coupons and magazine subscription.

But honestly, the reason I signed up is because I heard they offered $25 rebates to Walmart, Target and various restaurants. Basically all you have to do is post your receipt online from a shopping trip to Target or Walmart in which you spent a minimum of $25, and Freester will mail you a $25 rebate check. The best part? You could do it once per month! Pretty cool, right? Well, after signing up I find out this service is no longer available, which really makes this program way less valuable.

But are the other discounts and perks provided actually legit, or will Freester scam you out of a bunch of money? Programs like this can be notorious for putting secret charges on your credit card without your permission, or making you pay for services they told you were free. After signing up and being ever so disappointed that the rebates were no longer offered, I did quite a bit of digging to see if the rest of the membership perks were actually beneficial or just a bunch of talk.

Membership Benefits

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Weekly Coupons in the Mail

This is one perk that offers some value. Yes, I know there’s tons of websites that offer coupons for completely free but the downside is you have to print them yourself. Digital coupons aren’t widely available or used yet, and printer ink is actually quite expensive and doesn’t last long. So if you think about it you’re probably spending all your “savings” on ink for the printer.

Freester will let you pick out individualized, pre-cut coupons and they’ll mail them to you at no extra cost. You are allowed to pick up to $12 worth of coupons each week, so that’s not bad as it’s a $48 monthly value. Although if you already get the Sunday paper you may have access to very similar type coupons without paying $2 extra a month.

Here’s 2 weeks worth of coupons they have sent me:

But one thing I really like is these are coupons of stuff I already buy and they’re either for individual items or on 2 purchases. That is the big thing I hate about coupons… many times they’re some random product I never would have bought in the first place, or you have to buy 4 of them to even get the deal!

I picked out coupons for stuff I need and buy on a consistent basis anyway – Tampax tampons, Secret deodorant, razors, shaving cream, Vaseline brand lotion (the good stuff), Ziploc bags, toilet paper, Listerine, Lash Blast mascara, Energizer batteries.. and even a pack of coupons for Red Lobster. Many of them are for between 1 – 2 dollars off, there are even a few for 3!

One thing that sucks about these coupons, however, is the only ones they offer have very soon approaching expiration dates. At the beginning of October, 95% of the coupons offered expired by the end of that month. Considering I have to wait about a week for the coupons to come in the mail, that only gives me a few weeks to actually use them. If you like to wait to use coupons when the item(s) are also on sale, it doesn’t give much leeway.

Roadside Assistance

All members have access to their  24/7 roadside assistance service, which covers up to 3 $100 claims per year. It provides towing to the nearest service station, jumpstarts, changing flat tires and 2 gallons of fuel delivery.  If you’re only interested in their roadside assistance, make sure you don’t already have it through another provider. Many people already have access to roadside assistance through other means like their insurance or car warranties.

Also keep in mind with someting like roadside assistance, you get what you pay for. With a $2 monthly membership fee to a service that doesn’t specialize in roadside assistance, it can’t be that great.

Yearly Magazine Subscription (your choice)

This is a pretty nice offer as the yearly price of Freester is about equivelent to a yearly magazine subscription anyway. And they don’t just offer crap; they have nearly 50 popular magazines to choose from such as Seventeen, Entrepreneur, The Atlanic, Weight Watchers, Shape, and many more.

Monthly $25 Walmart or Restaurant Rebates 

This was definitely the best perk offered so if you are interested in it strictly because of this, I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news.

Cash Surveys

They really push their members to participate in the cash for surveys program, which pays $1.30 per survey completed. But be careful with these – you are required to pay $1 PER SURVEY! That means you’re really only getting 30 cents for each one you complete. They take awhile to complete, too. As with all online surveys, you’re just going to be wasting a lot of time for barely any money (less than minimum wage). And if you really want to take surveys online, there’s entirely free programs for that.

Pharmacy Discount Card

They claim as a Freester benefit that you’ll get a membership to USA Health Alliance, but if you actually go the their website you’ll find out that this program is available to anyone for 100% free… so it’s not really a perk at all.

While it is a legitimate health discount card, you can’t use it in combination with your insurance so it’ll only be available to medications not covered with insurance. If you don’t have insurance, it can probably save you a few extra bucks.

Discount Hotels/Vacation Rentals/Movies

They provide you with “discounts” to various things like theme parks, Broadway plays and car rentals like Hertz. But if you do any sort of research online you can probably find an even better deal somewhere else, without a special membership fee.

For example, I noticed Freester had tickets for Matilda the Musical on Broadway for $90 a piece. They declare a savings of $20 per ticket, but a quick Google search for the same tickets (in the same section) led me to showtickets.com where I found them for $87… $3 CHEAPER per ticket than the “deal” you get with Freester!

… but you can get the SAME seats (same section and row) for $3 cheaper for free at an online ticket site…

You can also buy discounted tickets to theme parks at places like AAA or even Walmart for comparible savings.

This is the reality and is true for these “discount” offers with sites like this. They’re often not as good as other discounts you can get online or elsewhere for completely free.

Free Long Distance Calling

This is only usable on a home phone line. Most people don’t have home lines anymore…

Tech Support

Most people these days use Windows 7 or 8 or Mac, and it’s only offered to Windows XP or Vista users. Even if you do happen to use XP or Vista, the help offered is extremely limited and most likely wouldn’t be of much benefit.

Watch out for their Terms of Service…

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There is one part of their terms that pulls out a red flag to me, and that is they state they can modify their pricing without informing members. 

Most companies will put within their terms they have the right to raise prices, but any decent one would at least inform their customers of it beforehand. It isn’t likely that any future price hike would be drastic, but you never know. It’s always good to be aware of how much you are actually being charged for any service, and any company that claims they can raise prices without warning is a red flag in my book.

Another thing that led me suspicious was the fact they state within their terms cancellation is only possible by providing 30 day prior written consent. That seems a bit ridiculous as I’ve never encountered a company that had that sort of policy before, so I called them to clarify. I was informed that it’s not necessary to provide written consent and cancellation by calling their customer service line is sufficient.

Still though, calling and canceling these types of things isn’t a piece of cake. Their reps are trained to follow script and get you to stay a member no matter what, so you have to just keep saying “no” a million times. It’s rather annoying and I hate dealing with it.

Is Freester worth it?

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Since the $25 rebates to Target and Walmart were taken away, this program is no longer worth it in my opinion. The coupons and magazine subscription are cool perks, but you can find those easily without a membership fee. While Freester isn’t any sort of scam and is legit, you probably don’t need to be a member here to save money. There’s a difference between thinking you’re getting a deal and actually getting a deal. Most of the services and perks offered are available for free elswhere and you can find better deals on parks, entertainment and car rentals than the ones offered from Freester.

I would spare your credit card from another monthly fee and find these perks for free elsewhere.

If you want to make money online, you’re not going to be very successful with methods like the “paid surveys'” inside Freester. Learn the proper way to build an online business and you can set yourself up to earn sustainable, passive income for years to come.