A water softener company called Hague Quality Water advertised a drawing at a home & garden expo that promised $500 in gift certificates to the winner. I felt that it was worth providing my contact information to the company and considering buying their products to have a chance to win such a great prize, so I entered. I was surprised when I received a call a week later telling me that I had won. I asked whether the gift certificates were only for Hague's products, and the caller said no, that the certificates could be used for anything I wanted. I had my appointment with one of Hague's salesmen, after which he presented me with my prize. He handed me a card that had a website address and an ID number on it, and said that I could select $500 worth of merchandise from that website, and it would be free to me. I would just have to pay for shipping & handling (S&H), which he admitted was 'a little high'. I later accessed the website, and very quickly figured out that this online company - KE Shopping Online - was charging enough S&H to cause the customer in reality to pay the full retail price of the item. For example, the S&H for a gold bracelet was $100. I then noticed that the card that the salesman had given me included this instruction: 'Go directly to keshoppingonline.com. Don't search the Internet by using Google or any other search engine to find our website.' So of course I did use Google, and every hit was for a complaint that had been made online against KE Shopping. I went to RipOffReport.com, the first hit in my search, to see what others were saying about KE Shopping Online, and found numerous complaints about this deceptive practice and how some people who did order items didn't even receive what they ordered. I didn't see anyone talking about how KE Shopping works in cahoots with other companies, acting as a promotional for them and enabling those companies to lure people into giving over their contact info, so I'm making this report in order to mention that fact. If anyone sees a company that promises '$500 in gift certificates' or '$500 in merchandise' as an incentive to try their products, ask them for details on the promotional and find out if they're using KE Shopping Online. If they are, I would say that you cannot trust that company. Any company that would partner itself with this bad of a scam - so bad that it tells you not to use Google so you won't see all the complaints - is likely to deceive you in other ways and do whatever it takes to get your money.