Careful, Those Free Acai Products Might Come Attached To A Delicious Scam
The BBB is warning consumers about scams attached to the popular, yummy acai berry. Online ads claiming endorsements by Oprah and Rachel Ray are pitching acai-berry-themed weight loss products — and are generating thousands of complaints from angry consumers who say they've been scammed.
It starts out, as so many things do, as a free trial offer — but when you try to cancel — you may find yourself locked in to the automatic delivery of more acai than you ever wanted.
“BBB can’t speak to the restorative or weight loss properties of acai-based products, but we are taking companies to task for their misleading sales and marketing practices,” said Steve Cox, BBB spokesperson. “Many businesses across the country are using the same selling model for their acai products: they lure customers in with celebrity endorsements and free trial offers, and then lock them in by making it extremely difficult to cancel the automatic delivery of more acai products every month.”
The BBB lists two companies that sell acai products on this business model:
FX Supplements: " The company offers a risk-free trial of their products for the cost of shipping and handling. However, if consumers do not cancel within the trial period they are sent additional bottles every month and are billed $85.90. Complaints show that the trial period fluctuates between 10 and 14 days from when the consumer requested the free trial—not from when they received the product."
Central Coast Nutraceuticals: "In the last 12 months, the BBB serving Central, Northern and Western Arizona has received more than 1,400 complaints for a company called Central Coast Nutraceuticals which operates several Web sites selling acai, hoodia and male enhancement products. The company uses Oprah-endorsements of the acai berry in ads touting its weight-loss benefits and offers a free trial of acai-related products including supplements and tea. Due to the company’s negative option, if, after the free-trial, the consumer no longer wishes to receive a monthly supply they must cancel their subscription or they will be billed $40 monthly.
The complaints against the company all tell a similar tale of how difficult it was to contact the company and cancel the subscription — including enduring 75 minutes on hold. Additionally, consumers complain of unauthorized charges on their credit card or bank accounts for products they did not order. Central Cost Nutraceuticals has earned an F grade from BBB for a large volume of unanswered and unresolved complaints."
If you're looking for fruit with lots of antioxidants, why not just go to the grocery store? There are plenty of fruit juice drinks with acai in them — and let's face it. Apples may not be some exotic miracle fruit — but they have plenty of antioxidants and are cheap!
Weight-loss Berry Claiming Oprah Endorsement Makes Wallets Slim and Consumers Angry Warns BBB [BBB]
(Photo: Marc Boudreu )
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I am quite skeptical of endorsements by Oprah. In fact, if Oprah endorses it, it probably is bad. Remember, she is the one that foisted Dr. Phil on us.
endorsements by Oprah and Rachel Ray are pitching acai-berry-themed weight loss products
That spells scam right there.
Is Rachel Ray an actual cook? I guess I've never actually seen her cook anything. She just seems like a marketing scam. I'd love to see her on Iron Chef lololololololol
Can I just say I am LOOOVING this huge increase in posting?!
On topic...
@dorianh49: That's where the idea for all these juice "cleanses" came from. I tried the lemonade diet once and lost like 15lbs in 2 days. I was already underweight so it totally freaked me out plus gave me strange cravings for McDonald's (I'm a vegetarian and haven't eaten McD's in yeeears) so I quickly stopped the fast.
The biggest problem I have with Acai is pronouncing the nasal vowel sound that the a-i dipthong makes. It's a sound native to Portuguese, but has no English equivalent. Pretty tough.
People actually fall for this? I keep classifying these acai themed emails as spam yet they still come through. The article says online ads but I have only seem them through the spam email. Why anyone would purchase anything through an unsolicited email is beyond me.
I told my mom to leave this nonsense alone when I caught her looking at it online. I hope she listened.
I don't know where you got that information from, and frankly, it blew me away.
"read somewhere" - check
"I think" - check
hard facts? - nope.
You stop ingesting carbohydrates (SUGARS)- your body uses lipids (fats) instead. One of the byproducts of fat metabolism in the absence of carbohydrate metabolism is the production of certain ketoacids (beta-hydroxybutyric acid, and acetoacetate). Those can be considered free radicals, in a sense.
High levels of ketoacids can cause blood acidosis, and cause brain chemistry to change, resulting in a slight euphoria.
What you described has nothing to do with antioxidants. It's the Atkins diet.
@Triborough: I did like The Road though.
The best part of them making a movie is that all of the sticker badges on the book changed to "now a major motion picture" from "part of the Oprah book club".
I can never quite pronounce it, and I don't think it's a magical weight loss product or anything, but the bottled acai smoothies they sell at my grocery store are delicious and have some measurable amount of nutritional value.
That's all I really ask for.
Is part of the scam to get someone's credit card number as part of signing up for the free trial?
Yeah, it's tough, but you gotta teach yourself that if they ask for a method of payment for a free product, they're likely going to find a way to charge you for something. Just ask yourself--or ask them--why exactly they'd need any information besides your name and address.
If you really must try these, use a virtual credit card number to sign up - or be prepared to just cancel your card and get a new number issued. My wife tried this, and ended up being signed up for two add on products at nearly $100 a month. When we tried to cancel, they gave us the runaround. We canceled the credit card she used, got a refund for one of the products, and disputed the rest.
The same supplements are available at any pharmacy or supermarket with a decent vitamin section, as well as at GNC, Vitmain World or probably any other health food store. Do people just not leave the house? Why sign up for home delivery of something they can just go down to the store and get?
Are Oprah and Rachel Ray actually endorsing these products? Something makes me think they really aren't and that the ads are done w/o their knowledge.
The simplest solution to this sort of scam is to use a temporary credit card number.
Many banks and online payment sites like PayPal will generate a temporary card that allows you to limit either the validity dates or the total amount or both. Some even fill in the order form for you.
If you limit the amount to the shipping/handling charge they won't be able to charge you for more when they "lose" your cancellation.
@WBrink: She is actually a cook... not so much a chef, but a decent cook. She has lots of practical methods and suggestions and is more likely to get people cooking for themselves than Iron Chef is.
O.K. I'm a dolt for falling for this one. So when I called my credit card company to close out the card they told me the charges could still be incurred because the numbers would still be linked. Huh? About to call back and close the account. Dealing with Acai and its associates is simply too much of a waste of time (2 hours on the phone the other day).
I was totally hypnotized by these sites over the weekend -- they were EVERYWHERE!
I found at least three different "blog" sites all pointing to the same deal:
[meganweightloss.com] (OUCH)
[michelesweightloss.com]
[www.8weekslose30lbs.com]
They've all been redesigned in the past 24 hours -- Oprah, Dr. Oz, and Rachael Ray must have called their lawyers because their pics are down today.
No, the simplest solution would be to purchase your juice from a store like a normal person.
@WBrink: She's already been on Iron Chef. She & Mario Batali competed against Giada de Laurentiis & Bobby Flay in Battle Cranberry. Rachel & Mario won.
Endorsed by Oprah! HA! have seen her lately?
It doesn't work!!
Has no one mentioned [purplehorror.com] yet?
It's a health drink! No wait! It's a MLM!
Here's a fact...the average distributor's biggest customer is . . . THEMSELVES.
@Triborough: I agree for the most part, except that it was Oprah's endorsement of TIVO that persuaded my wife to get it. So she's not a TOTAL loser.
this is the same strategy that companies selling computer screen cleaners have been using. Or toner cartride companies. Send you one box cheap and then subscribe you to an ongoing supply, impossible to get hold of once the goods start coming.
And the comments section on meganweightloss.com is disabled.
@The Name's Ash78, Housewares: She didn't endorse their products, she had a doctor on her show stating the berries were healthy during a show about healthy diets. The shady company took that and ran with it, putting Oprah's photo on their website and stating "endorsed by Oprah!" As if she was endorsing THEIR company instead of the guest doctor on the show endorsing certain berries.
I wouldn't buy anything medical or dietary she sold or endorsed, regardless, she's into too much woo-woo and yo-yo dieting. But still it was scummy what the companies did.
Same thing with Rachel Ray, she featured a recipe with the berries, and mentioned they were healthy, and the companies started saying their products were "endorsed by Rachel Ray!" She never endorsed those scam artists, she just said the berries were healthy.
I noticed another tactic, if ABC or NBC or some channel features an expose on what a scam these products are, the people with the products will say on their website "AS SEEN ON ABC!!!" As if the channel has endorsed it. They know most people clicking on their website probably didn't watch the special.
Another trick is, if the company ADVERTISES say, during Oprah, for example. They will then claim "As seen on Oprah!" when it was just a commercial during that air time.
Regarding those berries, I read that blueberries have more anti-oxidants.
Working in a bank, I can guarantee that these Acai berries will somehow magically start taking more out of your account that you haven't ordered if you don't cancel, etc. Oh, and their phone doesn't work either. I don't understand why Oprah would condone such a thing when they like stealing from the American wallet.
Ah...acai...the new colon cleanse. I go by a basic rule of thumb. If it is a product that shows up regularly in my spam box, it is a snake oil scam! Also, you can spot the latest scam-trend food by checking to see what trendy shampoos are out there. When wheat germ was trendy, it was in shampoo, when green tea was trendy, it was in shampoo, when soy was trendy, it was in shampoo, etc etc.
@meechybee: I see them in the sidebar ads on Facebook constantly. They've been up for at least a month.
Pomegranate juice and blueberry juice are both extremely healthy have great amounts of anti-oxidants. And you can buy them in the store.
I have yet to find a pure 100% Pomegranate juice though.. Why does everything have to have fillers?
@mythago: Is only right twice a day? Cause me hopes you meant more along the lines as its worthless and can be thrown out.
If it asks for a credit card number, it's not a free sample.
Tropicana makes a tasty Acai-themed beverage. Kinda an absurd way to spend 5 bux -- I'd have felt better spending the money if only my wife had told me that Oprah finds it to be healthy.
No kidding!!!
I have never understood the sheer LAZINESS it must take to sit at home & order stuff rather than going to the damn store & just buying it. Is getting off the couch really that much trouble that it's worth risking your identity security & having to wait for products in the mail?
I HATE ordering stuff online.
I actually fell for a scam like this. Well, I didn't really FALL for it, I knew what it was, but I planned to cancel before they signed me up. Problem was- they didn't tell me what DATE I had to cancel by, they just said "within 4 weeks". Well, 4 weeks actually meant 20 days. They debited $120 from my account before I even had a chance to really try the damn product(it took 2 weeks just to get to me). I had to mail the next shipment back & I'm still waiting on my refund.
Never, ever again. If I want snake oil in the future, I'll go to the health food store.
@Skankingmike: I haven't had that problem. There's definitely some in Trader Joe's. I've bought a bottle or two in Costco. They might be impossible to find in your typical grocery store though.
If you get an F shouldn't BBB pull your business license?
@Julia789: That reminds me of an episode of "The Tonight Show" when Jay Leno was making fun of headlines and ads. He'd made fun of this one guy's mailer and a few months later someone sent in a new mailer from the guy Jay made fun of that read "As seen on 'The Tonight Show with Jay Leno'". Jay responded to that with "Yeah, more like 'As made fun of on The Tonight Show!'"
Seriously, though. People do this stuff all the time and its really up to the consumers to check up on these claims. It can't be that hard to go to Oprah's site and see if she does, in fact, support the company and their products.
It's got electrolytes! What plants crave!
Right now there are two major scams online. The first is the acai berry scam where you see lots of different ads that take you to different "weight loss blogs" but are all run by the same company. The second are the current IQ ads where you see Peyton's Manning IQ = 125. Again, there are hundreds of these but they all end up selling you ringtones and charging your cellphone company every month. The shady tactics are so similar I wouldn't be surprised if they're the same company.
Oh man, Central Coast Nutraceuticals. There's a name I wish I hadn't heard of. My mother ended up being scammed by that scummy corporation after buying some Hoodia despite my multiple warnings that the business looked shady. They fleeced her for almost two hundred dollars before she went to the bank because she couldn't believe it was anything more than a free trial.
That said, a question. CCN runs out of both Arizona, for their acai products, and, for the hoodia, Florida. Which attorney general and/or BBB should she report this so-called company to? And how do she do it? I don't know how, but this is the first time she's ever been taken for a ride like this.
@failurate: Doesn't that exactly sound like what's wrong with Steve Jobs? And insulin *is* a hormone, so technically it wouldn't be a lie....
I think I read somewhere that, by eliminating all anti-oxidants and sugars from your diet, your body will start to create lots of free radicals and you'll feel really sick for a couple weeks. Then, your body starts to create an enzyme or something that naturally rids your body of free radicals and, supposedly, you'll feel better than ever. I can't go without chocolate that long, though.