Bunuel
The usual meaning of
free is
devoid of cost or obligation. However, retailers often use the word for something which is merely included in the overall price. One common example is a
buy one, get one free sale. The second item is not
free under the normal definition, since, to obtain it, the buyer is obliged to pay the full cost of the first item.
What is the main point of the argument?
(A) Retailers often deceive buyers by creating the illusion of a discount; the buyer in fact does not get any discount.
(B) Whenever a retailer advertises an item as Free, the item is, in fact, not free.
(C) Retailers often trick customers by increasing the price of a product and then offering huge discounts on this increased price.
(D) An item cannot be free if one has to pay money in any form to acquire that item.
(E) The definition of
Free can have different connotations for different people or groups of people
Official Explanation
The main point of the argument is that an item cannot be called free if one has to pay a price (in the form of purchasing another item) to get the item in question. D states this best and is the correct answer.
Let’s take a look at the other answer choices for clarity:
(A) There is no deception as the buyer does get a discount. He does not get the product completely free, though, because he has to buy another product to get the one that is free. But he still gets these at a lower price than he would have otherwise.
(B) Extreme answer choice. There could be some instances in which the item is free.
(C) The argument never states this fact.
(D) The correct answer.(E) According to the argument, the definition of
Free should only have one connotation.
The best way of making Main Point questions difficult is to provide very close or ambiguous answer choices so that students get confused. If the answer choices are very different, you can easily eliminate four incorrect ones; however, if the answer choices are extremely close, things could get a little tricky for you.
It always helps if you can paraphrase the entire argument in your own words before looking at the answer choices. This will keep you from getting confused between two close choices.