Thursday Feature: Reviews & Interviews - Free Giveaway Worth $25 with $25 Purchase

The other day I took a supplier up on an offer to "get $25 worth of beads with a $25 purchase". I thought that sounded great, wanted a few things I could have bought elsewhere and saved on shipping, but figured the benefits of the offer outweighed that.

Here's the $25's worth of beads (click to enlarge):

Yes - that's the whole lot - I'm not holding anything out. I have no idea what these beads are. They came with no identifiers - are the roundells and top drilled drops glass or stone? No idea, but they look like glass, although the drops have a iridescent coating and feel a bit 'plastic-y'. Are the beads in the tube glass? No idea. The label on the tube does say $1.95 though, and that seems reasonable. So the other two items are valued at $23, which is what has me puzzled, because I can't see how the two 3" strands and the one 7 1/2 inch strand are worth that unless they're some semi-precious gemstone, I guess.

I will leave it up to you, reader, to decide if this special offer was really $25 worth of beads. I want to be clear, you get what you pay for, I understand that. I didn't pay anything for these, they were a gift and, as such, it's not the quality or quantity of them that concerns me. I'm just a bit disappointed because the advertising used to promote the 'giveaway' that enticed me to a rather impulsive purchase implied something better than I got.

If these are really worth $25, my apologies, but I'm doubtful. If it had just said 'free gift with purchase' I'd have no complaint - and I might not have made the impulse buy, either, which came to over $30. If the pieces had been identified and I could see they were worth the offer's stated value, again, no complaint. As it is, I'm just left to scratch my head.