What a free consultation is priced into

Free is a statement about the other price

A free item never arrives on its own. It arrives attached to something you buy, and that is what makes it a pricing claim rather than a gift.

The Federal Trade Commission puts it directly. An offer of free merchandise or service is based on a regular price for the thing that must be purchased to get it. When a buyer is told one article is free if another is bought, the word means the buyer pays nothing for the first and no more than the regular price for the second.

The Commission then draws the line that matters. A purchaser has a right to believe the seller will not directly and immediately recover the cost of the free item. Three ways of recovering it are named: marking up the price of the article that must be purchased, substituting inferior merchandise or service, or otherwise.

So the useful question about a free consultation is never what the visit is worth. It is whether the price of the medication beside it is the same price it would be without the offer.

What that document is, and what it is not

The passage above sits in an industry guide, and a guide is a specific kind of instrument. The Commission defines one in its own rules as an administrative interpretation of the laws it administers, published to help the public conduct its affairs in conformity with legal requirements.

A guide is not a statute and not a trade regulation rule. It describes how the Commission reads a practice.

It is not decorative either. The same definition states that failure to comply with a guide may result in corrective action by the Commission under applicable statutory provisions.

For a reader comparing two sellers, the practical value is that somebody has already written down what the word is supposed to mean. You do not have to decide for yourself whether an offer is fair. You can check it against a published description.

Regular price has a definition, and it is a measured one

The whole claim rests on a regular price existing, so the guide defines that term rather than leaving it to the seller.

A regular price is the price at which the seller has openly and actively sold the product in that market, in the most recent and regular course of business. It has to be the same quantity, the same quality and the same service. And it has to have run for a reasonably substantial period, which the guide sets at thirty days.

Where prices move around, the rule tightens. For products or services that fluctuate in price, the regular price is the lowest price at which any substantial sales were made during that thirty-day period.

And there is a closing condition. Except for introductory offers, if no substantial sales were actually made at the regular price, a free offer would not be proper.

That is a demanding standard for a market where the figure on a page can change between visits. It also gives a reader something concrete to ask about, which is what the price of the paid item was during the previous month.

The conditions belong at the start, not behind an asterisk

The second half of the guide is about where the terms sit on the page, and it is unusually specific.

All the terms, conditions and obligations on which receipt and retention of the free item depend should be set out clearly and conspicuously at the outset of the offer. The standard is that no reasonable probability of misunderstanding is left. They should appear in close conjunction with the offer itself.

The guide then names the arrangement it will not accept. Putting the terms in a footnote reached by an asterisk or another symbol next to the offer is not treated as disclosure at the outset.

This is worth knowing because the asterisk is the standard layout for a free offer online. A reader who has to scroll to a footnote to learn what the free visit requires is looking at the exact pattern the guide singles out.

A free first period carries a promise about the period after it

Introductory offers get their own treatment, because a first-time free offer cannot be measured against a regular price that does not exist yet.

The guide handles that by attaching a forward-looking condition. No free offer should be made with the introduction of a new product or service sold at a specified price unless two things hold. The seller has to expect, in good faith, to stop the offer after a limited time. It then has to sell the promoted item separately at the same price it carried during the offer.

Read plainly, that is a rule about what happens after the introduction ends. The price of the item you were paying for is supposed to stay where it was, rather than rising once the free part goes away.

It also means an introductory free offer is by design temporary. A first month framed as an introduction is a claim that a normal arrangement exists behind it.

Where the quantity is settled after the visit

One clause in the guide speaks directly to how this market works, and it is the one most readers have never seen.

Suppose a product or service is usually sold at a price arrived at through bargaining rather than at a regular price. The guide treats it as improper to represent that another product is being offered free with that sale. The same applies where a regular price exists but other material factors are arrived at through bargaining, such as quantity, quality or size.

Quantity is the word to notice. A compounded preparation is made to a prescription, so the strength and the amount supplied are settled after an intake rather than chosen from a shelf.

That does not make any particular offer improper, and nothing here says it does. It does mean something worth noticing. A free offer attached to a purchase whose quantity is not yet fixed is resting on a price that is not yet fixed either. Both are worth asking about in the same message.

A permanent free offer is not a special one

The guide contains a section almost nobody quotes, and it is the fastest test a reader can apply from outside.

The guide sets limits so that a free offer stays special and meaningful. A single size of a product or a single kind of service should not carry a free offer in a trade area for more than six months in any twelve-month period. At least thirty days should pass before another such offer runs in the same area. No more than three should run there in a twelve-month period.

It adds a volume condition as well. In that period, the seller's sales of the promoted size in that area should not exceed half of its total sales of that product in the same size.

You cannot check a seller's volume from outside. You can check the calendar. A free consultation that has been on the same page every day for a year is not a promotion against a regular price. It is part of how the service is sold, which means it is already inside whatever you pay.

Changing the word does not change the offer

The last section of the guide closes the obvious escape route.

Offers that would be deceptive for failing the conditions above cannot be fixed by swapping in similar words. The guide names three: gift, given without charge, and bonus. It then extends that to any other wording that conveys the impression an item is free.

Complimentary, included, on us and waived all sit in the same place. The wording is not the thing being tested.

What is being tested is whether the price of the item you pay for is the price it would otherwise be.

What to do with a free offer when you are comparing two sellers

Start by working out whether the free item is something you would otherwise buy. A waived consultation is worth the consultation fee you were going to pay and nothing at all if the other seller does not charge one either.

Then find the price of the paid item without the offer attached. That is the number the guide is built around, and it is the number that makes two sellers comparable.

Ask when the offer started and whether it has an end date. An arrangement that has run continuously is a permanent feature of the price rather than a reason to choose one seller over another.

Ask what the free item obliges you to do. A free visit that requires a subscription, a minimum term or a card on file is a purchase with a condition, and the condition is the part worth reading.

Finally, put the whole thing into the same total you would use for anything else. Working out the all-in monthly figure across medication, membership, shipping, supplies and labs is set out separately on this site, and a free line item only matters once it sits inside that total.

Sources

Each document below is named as it names itself, with the date printed on that document rather than the day it was read.

1. 16 CFR Part 251, Guide Concerning Use of the Word "Free" and Similar Representations, read in full — meaning of free and the mark-up sentence at 251.1(b)(1), the definition of regular price and the thirty-day test at (b)(2), disclosure of conditions at the outset at (c), introductory offers at (f), negotiated sales at (g), frequency of offers at (h), and similar terms at (i) — Office of the Federal Register, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, November 1971
2. 16 CFR 1.5, Purpose — the Federal Trade Commission's own definition of an industry guide as an administrative interpretation of the laws it administers, and its statement that failure to comply may result in corrective action under applicable statutory provisions — Office of the Federal Register, Electronic Code of Federal Regulations, June 1967