Free drinks, free coffee, free samples, free admission ... all these offers use the word free to catch the attention of the customer to sell a service or product.
So it was that the online gambling company, Bet365 decided to use the phrase $200 FREE BETS FOR NEW CUSTOMERS on the Opening Page of its website. It was very successful - active users increased by 83% over the previous year and wagering revenues increased fourfold.
There was only one problem - when they posted the FREE BETS phrase, they put an asterisk after the word CUSTOMERS*, but did not put a click through button '*Terms & Conditions Apply' underneath. Had they done so, then the new customer have learned that they could only claim $200 in free bets if they staked three times that amount and could withdraw their winnings only if other conditions were satisfied.
Bet365 were prosecuted by the Australian Consumer Regulator, the ACCC, because Bet365 had displayed the FREE BETS phrase on its website without the Terms & Conditions click through button for 302 days. The Federal Court found that this was likely to mislead consumers and fined the two Bet365 companies involved a total of $2,750,000 for breaching the Australian Consumer Law.
There are two lessons here - for the consumer, there is no such thing as a free bet (or anything else) because terms and conditions apply; and for businesses, to make sure that the terms and conditions which apply to free offers are available to the consumer at the point where the free offer is displayed.