Apparently, Me No Habla the English Language Very Well

(With apologies to my Spanish-speaking friends): me no habla English very well. When I see the word “free” I expect a thing or service - as it says in the English language dictionary - to be free of charge or payment.
        IT"S FREE?
When I see “new and improved,” I expect to see something new and improved. When I see “totally new” I do not expect to see the same old product (think different makes of cars) over and over again. I am constantly fooled however. Actually, I think I am constantly betrayed by advertisers who avoid delivering what they promise because their ad writers have taught them how to lie creatively. Some of our products and pitchmen (and women) make the most outrageous claims when they must know what they’re saying is at least misleading if not outright false. Or do advertisers fool themselves just like they try to fool us? I’m totally ticked off at Alex Trebek and Fred Thompson for shilling products that seem wonderful on their face, but can cause buyers all kinds of remorse.

       It’s New & Improved!

I’m on this tirade today because I just bought a new ROKU 3 so I could watch TV without being dependent on cable or satellite dishes. I’m tired of watching my subscription bill go up month after month - and for what? TV is a wasteland where someone is constantly trying to sell me something - lying to me to convince me to buy. “If you order this product now friends, for the low, low price of only $19.95 we’ll send you not one, but two of these wizamagidgets.”

Then you have all the news channels which channel the same news over and over and over again. I lost count recently of how many times (and how many days) I saw the same coverage of something. I get the feeling sometimes that news channels take turns reporting the same news, most likely because they have so much time to fill they have to keep passing stuff around. There is very little news that is “new” anymore. You can see and hear the same thing over and over again all day and all night and into the next week. The thing that really bothers me about news reporting is how many times stations say they have “breaking news,” when that particular news “broke” earlier in the day. If it’s an hour old, it isn’t “breaking” anymore.

But back to the word free. I mistakenly thought if I bought a Roku 3 that the programming on there would be free. Not so! The services, such as Netflix, Hulu and others are loaded onto the Roku free of charge, but if you use those services, you pay a fee. Okay, maybe it’s a minimal monthly fee, but it’s NOT free. And if you’re not careful, you’ll subscribe to enough “channels” you suddenly find that you have surpassed your monthly cable or satellite bill. Free does not necessarily mean free.

“If it sounds too good to be true it probably is.” Let the buyer beware!