Urban Legends

The Legend

Found on the Internet in April 1999.

I am forwarding this because a good friend who would never forward junk sent it to me.

Microsoft has merged with AOL and the merged company -- MicrAOL -- is now the largest Internet company on the planet. In an effort to make sure that MicrAOL products continue to be the most popular platforms for Web and e-mail, MicrAOL has partnered with other corporations to run an e-mail beta test. When you forward this e-mail to friends, MicrAOL will track it (if you are a Windows user) for a two-week time period. For every person that you forward this e-mail to, you will receive $5 from each of our partners in this experiment, namely: MicrAOL, The Walt Disney Company, Time Warner, EMI, the Newell Co., RH Power Inc., and Bill Gates himself. For each person that you send this e-mail to who forwards it to someone else, you will receive $3 from each partner. And for every third person who receives one of your forwards, you will receive $1. Within two weeks, MicrAOL will contact you for your address and then send you a check.

In addition, just for participating in this experiment, you will receive the following:

• Two cases of Coca-Cola
• 12 CDs from Columbia House
• A new Honda automobile
• An IBM computer
• A case of Martian M&Ms
• A pair of Nike shoes
• New cell phones from Nokia and Ericsson
• Champagne from Veuve-Clicquot
• A trip for two to Walt Disney World
• $25 gift certificates from Abercrombie & Fitch, the GAP, J. Crew, Old Navy, and Outback Steakhouse
• $50 gift certificates from Applebee's, Bath & Body Works, the Cracker Barrel, and Victoria's Secret

I thought this was a scam myself, but two weeks after receiving this e-mail and forwarding it on, MicrAOL send me a disk in the mail that gave me a month of free AOL service!