BEAUTY KLINIC

I’m starting to see more an more diet pills scams hit the market. And many of them are following similar tactics, so I thought I would write an article about one of the primary methods that some diet pill companies are using to scam consumers out of their money: The Autoship. This method seems to be working since we’ve seen more and more companies using this same sales tactic.

So what is an autoship program? Basically it is where the company agrees to mail you supplies (usually monthly supplies) of their product to your home on a regular basis and then charge your credit card when they ship the products.

So what’s so bad about it? It sounds pretty nice and convenient right? Well, it is. If that’s what the consumer wants, then there’s nothing wrong at all with sales practice. Please note, that I am not saying that all autoship programs are evil. An autoship can be good or bad, depending on how the company uses it. Unfortunately, many companies try to trick you into enrolling in the autoship without you knowing about it.

Somewhere along the line, companies (including diet pill companies) found out that they could hide the mentioning of the autoship in the fine print of the ‘terms and conditions’ and virtually no one would know (because not many actually read that fine print) that they were actually agreeing to enroll in the autoship when they made their purchase. And that’s where the scamming started to happen. Imagine their surprise when they started to see what they assumed were fraudulent charges on their credit card. “I didn’t authorize that!” they would say. Oh, but they did. Unfortunately, they did.

It got worse, however, when companies started to offer things for free and get them to accept the terms of the autoship under their nose. Everyone wants something for free, and hence they are able to get thousands to get the “free” trial and get them into the autoship without them knowing about. A few weeks later, they can start charging their credit card. You can quickly see how many cunsumers they are taking advantage of by doing a quick search on some of the internet complaint boards.

Let’s use a fake scenario to show you some of the nasty details that an autoship can have hidden in the fine print. Our friend John sees a very convincing and professional looking ad for a diet pill. He hops on the website and sees that they offer a free trial. How could he go wrong? It’s free! So he plugs in all his personal info and his credit card number to pay for shipping and handling of the free trial, of course. What he doesn’t know is that 1. they’ll often mention in their privacy policy that they have the right to sell his information to third parties, and 2. they now his credit card info on file to use for later shipments.

Once John submits his request, he now finds himself enrolled in the autoship. John will usually have around 15 days to call and cancel the autoship (which he likely won’t even know about unless he read the fine print). If he doesn’t cancel, on the 15 day he will be charged anywhere from $30 to $100 depending on the product (some even charge you for a 3 month’s supply in advance, tripling these charges). He is surprised and irate by the charges and tries to call the company to find out what is going on and to demand a refund. Surprise! They either don’t answer their phone or they give John the run around telling him to call a dozen different numbers, none of which gives him any answers (this isn’t always the case, but seems very common). And before you know it John has a couple worthless bottles of pills and few hundred dollars in charges on his credit card that he can’t get refunded. Sounds like a scam to me!

Again, I want to be clear that not all autoships are scams. Some companies give their customers an option of choosing the autoship while others do a good job of informing them of the autoship. But there are far too many companies who’s main source of revenue comes from taking advantage of consumers who don’t take the time to read the fine print. So be sure to read the fine print and be fully aware of what you might be getting into. We might not be able to stop companies from dong this, but we can certainly make sure that we aren’t scammed ourselves.

Tags: acai, diet, diet pill, diet pills, diet supplement, fat burners, fat loss, fitness supplements, health, hoodia, scams, Weight loss

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