In my humble opinion, people who post on message boards during work hours and trash companies and their managements during the day are either retired like me, or they are unemployable. Usually the real personalities of these people are a lot like their message board personalities. Awful and in many cases evil. People like this do not have smart ideas, do not understand marketing, and do not understand technology. They are what they are.

By the way, FWIW every major test strip company tries to give away their meters in exchange for test strip loyalty. Every one. In fact at the first J&J/DECN court case, J&J made the point in the appeals court that they could not be held to claims of predatory pricing and sales because they gave the meters away or in the least highly discounted them. Two of the three judges on the panel laughed at that statement.

Giving meters away, or offering meter rebates is a great way to begin building market share and don't allow message board personalities to convince you otherwise.