This Is Why You Don't Order From Fad Diet & Wellness Sites
Christina decided to give the famed acai berry a try. What the heck, she must have thought, it won't cost me that much ($10) and the site's refund policy clearly indicates when I can return the product, cancel the "subscription," and move on. She knew the cancel-by date and was prepared to follow the rules. AcaiBerryUltimate.com had other plans, which are best summed up by this email they sent to her: "You can get your refund in hell. haahah."
Here's what happened:
- Jan 28th - Christina goes online and places the order. She is charged $9.95.
- Jan 31st - Package arrives. On that same day, AcaiBerryUltimate.com charges an additional $94.57 to Christina's account.
- Feb 2nd - They charge an additional $2.84.
- Feb 9th - Christina calls to cancel the agreement and return the unused portion of the product, as per AcaiBerryUltimate.com's refund policy. They tell her no.
At this point, it might be better to read Christina's own recap of how that conversation went:
On February 9th, I decide it's a waste of money. I call to cancel my order. The man on the phone told me that I've exceeded the 15 day trial period and I'm bound by their terms and conditions. I argued with him that according to their terms and conditions, it had only been 12 days and that was if you counted Saturdays and Sundays.
He put me on hold, came back and said they would cancel, He told me they could only refund the price of the product which was [approximately] $80 dollars and that I would have to repack the merchandise and send it back, I told him there was no way I was going to give more money to them when I already cancelled the order. He finally said I did not have to send anything and that I would be getting my refund in 7-10 days, the full $90+. He gave me a confirmation number and told me I would get an email within 24 hrs letting me know that my order had been canceled and would be refunded within 7 to10 days. I received that email the next day.
That was the last Christina heard from the company. After two weeks they still hadn't refunded the money, so Christina called back. She was told it might take 30 days for the refund to go through, something nobody mentioned before this point.
Frustrated, Christina asked for the number to their corporate offices.
[The CSR says] they have only a fax number. I tell her that someone must get the faxes because a human has to pick them up and get them to the proper person/department, and the operator tells me they don't have that number.
I tell the operator that I will hold until they find someone who does. The operator puts me on hold for 20 minutes, a supervisor comes back, and I go through the whole thing again and ask for the number of someone who can help me because they clearly do not have the means to do so. After going as far as threatening to sue them for breach of contract, false advertisement and theft, citing all of the errors in the discussion and how they contradicted the information in their terms and conditions, he gives me a phone number.
I call and it's an answering service. They take my information and tell me someone will call back within an hour. [As of March 17th], l have yet to receive a call.
I filed a claim with my bank on February 24th. When I got off the phone, I come across an email from "Acai Berry":
"You can get your refund in hell. haahah"
I received a temporary refund from my bank 24 hours later and have yet to hear anything from Acai.
Stay away from AcaiBerryUltimate and any other website that offers a low up front fee for a service, but sneaks in a wildly expensive follow-up fee that you can "easily" cancel.
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Comments:
"You can get your refund in hell. haahah"I received a temporary refund from my bank 24 hours later and have yet to hear anything from Acai.
I can't imagine showing something like this to a bank and getting only a "temporary" refund. This looks like pretty clear evidence of intent to defraud to me.
But she did lose weight...her bank account is $107.36 lighter!
Fad diets are idiotic. Also, much of what we consider dietary science is actually "science." An investigative science journalist I know -- one of the finest out there -- spent seven years researching the reality of our dietary "wisdom." His name is Gary Taubes, and his book is "Good Calories, Bad Calories." I wrote about his findings (based on evidence-based research -- researchers who do good science) in a recent column:
I'll post the essential bit here:
The sad thing is, many women who are fat aren't that way due to a diet that's high in cupcakes, or because their fitness goal is avoiding ever going to the gym. In fact, their attempts to lose weight might be making them fat. Award-winning investigative science journalist Gary Taubes has discovered that we've been sold a bill of goods by the medical establishment, which based its advice to follow high-carb, low-fat diets on "science" instead of science. In Taubes' exhaustively researched book, "Good Calories, Bad Calories," he lays out substantive evidence that obesity is caused by carbs - from flour, sugars, and easily digested starches like potatoes - that cause insulin levels to rise. When insulin levels rise, we stockpile calories as fat. Eating foods with very low (or no) carbs - meat, fish, poultry, cheese, eggs, butter, and non-starchy veggies - decreases appetite and increases fat loss and weight loss.
Diet and exercise are free.
@Amy Alkon: I have an amazing fad diet that's guaranteed to work. It's 2 simple steps.
1. Eat less
2. Move more
Tada!
Um, those above? This post had to do with this women getting scammed, not about hre diet choices...
And prag? Not everyone who is overweight is overweight because they eat bon bons. Way to judge based on no information.
@LandShark: Yes, but they're so much work! Can't I just take a magic pill or drink a magic elixir and wake up thin the next day? C'mon, science, help me out here.
@Parapraxis: Acai berries are made of star dust like everything else, except scam artists, which are made in hell. That's why they will give her the refund in hell.
If weight loss was really as easy as taking some magical pill or eating some magical berry then very few people in this country would have weight problems.
My fiance fell for this scheme but from a different company (Acai Berry Detox).
Her - "I got the free trial! It was only $2.95"
Me - "You know that's a scam, right? They will probably charge your bank acount a whole ton a money on some recurring cycle schem"
Her - "No, it's a free trial. Why do you have to rain on my parade."
The next day:
She's freaking out, because she finally read the TOS and sees that she did in fact agree to a recurring shipment and $84 monthly payments. She cancelled her credit card, and called them several times. They jerked her around, wouldn't send a confirmation that she cancelled and actually send 3 months worth of pills to our house in a matter of days.
SCAM SCAM SCAM
I'm not trying to blame the OP. However, beyond any comments about researching web sites or fad diets, don't pay for anything online directly your bank account. If you're not that safety-conscious, utilities probably won't scam you (though double check that you closed accounts when you moved). But never use debit with a site you have not done business with in the past, or is by its very nature vulnerable to scams (such as online auctions).
I'm not a stickler for taking every protection imaginable, but this is one of the important ones, and rarely does it require extra work.
And in the next installment, someone sends his bank account information to an Algerian prince, but fails to receive commission for helping to transfer $30 million.
Why is anybody still surprised at this outcome?
If you really feel you must order from a dodgy site like that one (and we all do so from time to time), use a disposable credit card number that lets you assign a maximum charge amount. (I know Citibank does this, but others might do the same.) Set the charge limit for the amount of the purchase (or round up to the nearest dollar). If the store declines the card -- and they sometimes do -- take that as a sign that the store has nefarious intent, and just don't make the purchase.
Another perfect instance of when I'd use the one-time-only numbers some credit card companies will generate for you. (BankofAmerica is one). One time use, and you set the dollar value so if they try to come back for more money they get zip.
Without passing judgment on the value of acai as a dietary strategy, why do people "subscribe" to something from a company they've never heard of, then act surprised when it turns out to be a scam? There's no such thing as a free trial, people.
Recently my credit card number was stolen, and for some bizarre reason the thief used it to sign me up for acai berries and colon cleansers and other "trial" offers just like the one described here. I've been calling up and cancelling "my" subscriptions for a few days now; we'll see how it goes in the long run. The card's been cancelled so they aren't going to get any money out of me anyway. What I can't figure out is what the thief would get out of signing me up for all this crap other than purely being annoying?
All you have to do is wait a few weeks and all this crap will end up at your local GNC.
@Amy Alkon: I like Taubes, and I'm in agreement with him about science's tendency toward herd mentality (Judith Rich Harris' The Nurture Assumption is an interesting book on developmental psychology that addresses the same issue). But he's pretty imperfect in his own right, most notably the disappearance of the Mediterranean, etc. diets that confound his low-carb theory from his considerations after the start of the book.
@nakedscience: And people get interested in this stuff for more reasons than weight loss. I don't buy those reasons either, but that doesn't relieve the company of their responsibility to treat their customers ethically.
SO what exactly is in acai berries that isn't in blueberries?
@prag:Really? THANK YOU!! I've been trying to figure out how to loose that excess weight and I NEVER THOUGHT OF THAT.
True this stuff is crap, but some times it's not as easy as all that.
@wardawg: It's actually the packaging that's magic and makes you lose weight. And each bottle costs $84 to make.
Do business with snake(oil salesmen)s eventually you get bit.
(okay so that phrase didn't work out as well as I'd hoped)
Not all these diets are (money) scams. We tried the Lipozene diet, and got our money back. Lose weight? Not so much.
I had read that blueberries and other regular berries available in the supermarket have more healthy properties than these silly scam-berries. This is the same scam as that noni fruit, and whatever fruit it was five years before that.
Every few years, someone claims to "discover" an exotic fruit or berry from far away. They market the hell out of it. Usually they use pyramid schemes (multi-level marketing) but now they are using the "new pyramid scheme" which is the subscription-hell-cycle that cannot be broken free from.
@puka_pai: The refunds are always "temporary," meaning they reserve the right to revoke it down the road. They would never in a million years guarantee your refund without doing a full investigation on their end.
@Sam Lehman: Damn, beat me to it. The best was the guy who complained, and said that Brian should only judge MonaVie after buying a case from him. A CASE!
@Amy Alkon: Actually, dietary science has much more to do with the conglomeration of the results of studies. That is just about the only thing we can base Dietary Science around. The history goes that studies showed that diets low in fat cut heart disease risk. So they started pushing low fat diets. Then it is realized that the relationship is more complex than that; there are different kinds of fats, some actually good for your body. Also, it was found that high carbohydrate intake is also bad. Basically, the recommendations from Dietitians and Nutritionists will change over time as more is revealed about how our bodies react to the foods we eat. Then they have to distill it down to something people can actually follow, which removes detail. What most fad diets tend to do is over distill. They will latch on to one or two study results and take it to the extreme.
I think the common sense approach is the best when it comes to weight management. Stay as close to the way food grows (less refined and processed foods) and make sure to get a good mix of fruits, veggies, and meats or other protein source in your diet. Oh, and physical activity is just as important as diet (since it will be the deciding factor in what your body does with the nutrients you take in). It's pretty simple and doesn't require following a strict program.
@nakedscience: True, not EVERYONE. But there are a vast majority that are. I count myself as one of them. When I slack off on exercising, and start eating from the peanut butter jar, SURPRISE!, I start packing on lbs. When I complain about welfare/unemployment/, I don't mean the people who are truly need it. I complain about the scammers and lazy people. The exceptions don't disprove the rule.
@samchristian: I'm sure it's less than the 98.00 this lady was charged. I'm willing to pay $2.00 to save a lot more.
I have yet to see a legitimate acai berry company. I have run into three separate companies, all different from those mentioned here, simply through people I know directly. My impression is that there are dozens, if not hundreds, of these scam companies operating across the company. They are akin to the "sell crap on the internet from home" pyramid schemes. I wouldn't classify this as a "fad diet scam," I would give acai berry scammers their own category, on par with Nigerian e-mail scammers. I am surprised there hasn't been more in-depth coverage of the issue here. The acai berry is only "famed" because of the proliferation of these companies.
@nekussa:
This same exact thing happened to me. I got about 4 'trial' packages within 2 days. It confused me as to why someone would steal my credit card, and then sign me up for things and use my address...
I've had no luck contacting the companies to cancel, but like you said, the card is canceled anyway, so they aren't getting any ore of my money...
GO TO THEIR WEBSITE'S LIFE CHAT PAGE!
I'm chatting with one now. Let's force this story up their asses!
My girlfriend tried some of these and got them in the mail, with the plan to cancel before the trial period ended. A couple of days later her debit card stopped working. She went to the bank and they had canceled her card because of unauthorized charges, we assume from the site she ordered from. Fortunately they weren't able to get to her, and she got a new card with a new number.
I guess they're saying you can pick up your refund in Hell, Michigan (take M-36 west into Pinckney, turn south on Dexter-Pinckney, then west on Patterson Lake Road." Hell is located in Livingston County, MI.)
Or maybe not...
@Julia789: Even legitimate farmers fund advertising campaigns to promote fads. See the blueberry, cranberry, pomegranate, etc. promotions. Key gimmick: antioxidants.
@samchristian: Must be your particular account setup that charges for use of a Shopsafe number. Mine doesn't, just went in and did one. No charge.
Eat less. Move more.
Only diet you need.
Can we see a scan of the infamous email?
@nakedscience: This story has as much to do with looking for a shortcut to weight loss as anything else. There's a good chance (even with no information) that that is the case here. Eat less, exercise more and you won't need to worry about the scammers in the diet industry.
@LandShark: Only sort of. I mean, food that's good for you always costs more than cheap crap that'll make you fat and eventually kill you.
@dark_inchworm: Yes, that's the only reason anyone would ever be fat. Nothing else could possibly influence it.
@nekussa:
To launder the money...CC payments, that wind up in a bank account offshore somewhere. It looks like legitimate income from a commercial website, but is in fact fraud (and then the CC can't go abroad to contest the charges).
I have an amazing fad diet that's guaranteed to work. It's 2 simple steps.
1. Eat less
2. Move more
Actually, this is not what the science says, and I'm always amazed by people who pontificate while not really knowing anything.
You can call the Atkins diet a "fad diet," but read what I posted above.
I am not a typical columnist. My column is based in serious science -- although it's written as humor. I have learned to read studies in a way few journalists have, and get help when I'm above my pay grade.
The commonly held "wisdom" -- even by doctors, is wrong. Taubes is a skeptic's skeptic, with a physics background, and the first to spot limitations and flaws in a study.
Read his book instead of hauling off and saying "eat less/move more."
The e-mail is irrefutable proof that the acai berry is made from the dingleberries of Satan himself.