is the stimulus not intentionally misleading?

Hi, it is absolutely intentionally misleading for the company to make this claim (if D is true). This smacks of late night TV offering you vitamin/supplements/THE NEXT BIG THING for FREE! (Just pay shipping and handling). However, I don't think the passage itself is misleading exactly, but it is pretty uncommon. Normally we wouldn't see a right answer that effectively attacks a premise, but that's close to what we see here. While D doesn't completely contradict the fact that it's free, it shows that, while the product is technically free, the effect on the consumer is as if it were not free. Ultimately, this has the same effect on the argument as saying that the product were not actually free. I think the critical thing to remember here is that for strengthen and weaken questions, we are asked about what, IF TRUE, would strengthen the argument. We are asked to imagine what each answer choice would mean for the argument if they were the case.

Thank you Emil. I really just didn't think D would apply because it didn't specify that the handling fee also is applied to the free samples. Ill try to brainstorm ways to fix this problem for myself

Hm, in that case, it would indeed be hard to see how D fits in. I'm a big fan of asking myself "so what" about each answer choice for weaken and strengthen questions. In this case, the information seems so utterly unimportant unless the product in question includes the free samples, and there's no reason given to think they wouldn't be included.