As someone who tends to see a lot of late night television peripherally while working on my computer, I have found a really entertaining habit. Every time one of those obnoxious commercials comes on, I immediately do a search on the product. A pretty consistent pattern has emerged. Let’s look at some examples:
First, there are “the product is completely bogus” scams.Lipozene, the magic pill that helps you lose weight rapidly by “burning fat”. The retailers of Lipozene have been fined twice previously for deceptive business practices regarding television advertising. Lipozene does cause a brief weight loss in that it is a laxative. Therefore, if you are constipated, you lose the weight of the stool you lose. Other than that, the product does nothing. This is a total scam.
Shapely Secrets, the “motionless exercise”: Greer Childers, the attractive blonde who hypes the program, was ordered by the Federal Trade Commission to stop advertising her previous scam, BodyFlex, in which she insisted that you could lose weight by breathing deeply. Why anyone fell for that one, I have no idea. Her new scam is to stand still and lose weight. She also includes some diet tips, presumably to keep from getting fined again. Once again, a total scam.
Dual Action Cleanse: That is the one where the guy who sort of looks like a 1970s porno star tells everyone about the terrible toxins in the colon and basically hawks an expensive natural laxative. The implication is that your own feces are poisoning you. Since most people find bowel movements pretty disgusting, it is an easy sell to the uninformed. There is nothing about his product does that can’t be accomplished with a healthy diet containing fruit and vegetables. Another total scam.
Free and Clear: A real estate investment program where people can buy foreclosed homes for a couple of hundred dollars. Take a minute to think about this: There are hundreds of properties worth hundreds of thousands of dollars that can be purchased for a couple of hundred dollars but real estate people don’t know about them, bankers don’t know about them, or even more unbelievable, they know about them and don’t snap them up two seconds after they become available. Does this sound logical? If it doesn’t, congratulations, you have figured out this guy is full of crap.
Next, there are a series of what are called “implied consent” scams. This is where the seller continues to send you stuff you don’t want and continues to bill you monthly.
Video professor, the guy who wants to send you his “free” demonstration software: The are hundreds of complaints about another billing scam where people are charged $79.95 a month for a subscription service which sends them educational software, sometimes for programs they don’t even own. Consumeraffairs.com reports “But in actuality, it appears impossible to just get one free disc. Instead, it is a packaged bundle of three discs that cost $6.95 for shipping and handling. If the customer doesn't return one of the discs, at their expense, within 10 days, they will be enrolled in an automatic renewal service which sends new three-disc bundles every month for $79.95.”
Girls Gone Wild: This is the group that gets women drunk and has them flash and do other nefarious activities. They use the same business model. They sell you a cheap initial DVD and then continue to send them and bill you much larger fees. Once again, getting them stopped is apparently not very easy. By the way, Joe Francis, the founder and owner of the company, just spent time in prison and is up on further charges for using under aged girls in his videos. Therefore, owning any videos he produced with under aged girls means you legally own child pornography. Just something to think about.
Pro-Activ: This is the anti-acne program hawked by Vanessa Williams, P. Diddy, Jessica Simpson, and others. I have some personal experience with this one as my daughter and one of my sons used it a while. It seems like an honest product although my daughter found stuff at Walgreen’s that worked better. The problem is getting them to stop shipping it and charging you for it. It took months to turn it off. Of course, during that entire period, they bill your credit card.
Then there is the ultimate combination of bogus product and implied consent.
Enzyte, the magic pill that enhances “that certain part of the male anatomy”: There are literally thousands of complaints to the Better Business Bureau, the Consumer Protection Agency, and the Federal Trade Commision over this scam. The obvious complaint is that the product is totally bogus, but it is much worse than that. Apparently, the product retailers entice customers with a 30 day free trial, after which you can return the product or stop the additional shipments. The common complaint is that as soon as the initial “free trial” is shipped, the customer’s credit card is billed. When customers complain that it doesn’t work (which it always doesn’t since it is bogus), they are directed to a number in
Kevin Trudeau’s Natural Cures book: Knowing something about medicine, I knew this charlatan was full of crap but it seems a lot of people listened to him. He charges a lot, about $100, for the book which is relatively useless then charges $9.95 a month for a newsletter that the customer is apparently not told about and doesn’t ask for.
Then there is the “Hard Sell” approach.
Direct Buy: I am particularly sensitive to this one because once, a long time ago, my wife and I fell for one of these against my better judgment. This reminds me of the “free” vacation or “free dinner” you receive just for listening to a sales pitch. It tends to be a time share or vacation sharing. At least when my wife talked me into a “buyer’s club” back in the day, it only cost about $600. By the way, we never bought one item from the club. The prices were not good and it was an incredible hassle. Now, Direct Buy is charging about $6900 to join and there are loads of consumer complaints about them. Avoid these people like the plague.
How about the “we bill you and sometimes we don’t even ship the product?””
Milinex Power Storm Vacuum is supposed to cost about $55. With a bunch of bogus charges, it sometimes costs up to $400 and some customers never received their vacuum. There seems to be no way to return it or get a refund. This is a classic example of if it sounds too good to be true, it probably stinks.
In thinking back over the years, I can only remember one infomercial which had a legitimate product that didn’t over bill, good old George Foreman and his grills. We actually own one of those (bought in a store, not from television) which actually works really well. Therefore, I know the possibility actually exists for a product on late night television which isn’t a scam but it is the only legitimate one I have ever seen.
1 comment:
Ha. I do the exact same thing every time I see one of those ridiculous infomercials. I look up complaints about the "product" and always find tons of them. Which I guess means it's true that there's a sucker born every minute. The scams haven't changed, and people continue to fall for them.
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