Certificate free gift online

I don't know about you, but when I was a kid, this was the time of year I got more scoldings than any other. In some ways, family scoldings - if they're done right - are almost as important as hugs. Sometimes you need a little help.

Remember all the times you ran out of the house without buttoning your coat or perhaps forgetting your knit hat or scarf?

And shopping. When you were a kid, did you ever get an older family member - someone with a car - to help you with your holiday shopping? They either thought that your gift choices came from Mars or that your ideas cost too much or too little. But thanks to Aunt Nellie, I became a believer in gift certificates. I give stores the money, and my relatives can pick something they really want - for free. Well, it's only free to them, but as long as it feels that way to the one getting the gift, does it matter?

And that question popped into my head like a sugarplum last week. I was reading the holiday sale papers on Sunday and came across an Internet start-up ad with a wrinkle on the "free PC" theme.

The company, Urban Media, wants to attract business users. And the "free offer" is all-you-can-drink broadband bandwidth - not a free PC. Perhaps it's no surprise that its founders are three former @Home executives. Urban Media's approach, however, requires more than a simple decision to cancel a subscriber's bill for monthly Internet access. The company can offer free broadband Internet access because it intends to provide business clients with other services, including voice, e-mail, remote dial-up access to on-site business systems, e-commerce services, Web hosting services and even high-capacity VPNs, over the same wire.

With that kind of service menu, you might think that Urban Media execs need some way to ensure that office buildings can support that kind of traffic. Well, they have it. A handful of Urban Media's investors are REITs or real estate management firms. In exchange for equity in the start-up, these firms get into the dot-com business by wiring their buildings with fiber optic cabling and other media to prep the offices for high-speed access.

Prices for these add-on services range from $5 to $100 per user, depending on services selected. Urban Media, of course, will provide integrated billing for all services. What better way to ensure that all of these services are provided by Urban Media?

But what happens when the public finds that the "free" item or service is quickly followed by the dreaded: "additional services not included"? What happens when the additional services are the ones that people really want in the first place? Or worse, what happens when the free services don't operate up to snuff unless you upgrade to a paid service?

Just how well the public will take to this offer, and others like it, will soon be known. Urban Media plans to be up and running in 10 cities in early 2000, and it will offer voice service to many markets by the summer.

I'm not judging or bashing Urban Media or any other Internet company with this "free something" marketing. The trend seems bound to continue. In fact, it may even be a great new approach to holiday shopping. But I wonder how Aunt Nellie would feel about getting her $100 gift certificate this year if she knew she had to buy me $50 worth of stuff to use it?

Unfortunately, I think I know. Good thing I already know that this is that scolding time of year.