Well...a lot. That "free" trial of resveratrol suddenly turns into a recurring charge of $80 or more on customers' credit card bills. The free trial is 19 days, All this is explained, of course: in the fine print, on a separate page that most customers, blinded by the word "free," ignore. Arnold Diaz of New York's Fox 5 spoke to some victims of this particular scheme.

This scheme is remarkably similar to its cousins the "free" credit report and the acai berry free trial. On their sites and on ad banners, resveratrol peddlers often claim that their products were endorsed by Dr. Mehmet Oz, health adviser to Oprah Winfrey's audience. Concerned that consumers are being lured in to buy a product with questionable benefits and even more questionable billing practices using his image, Dr. Oz, along with Oprah's Harpo Productions, are suing many of the peddlers of resveratrol. You can read the suit here as a PDF download. The collection of screen shots is particularly dismaying.

In addition to using Dr. Oz's image, FOX 5 says resveratrol sellers also set up fake clinical study web sites (with a disclaimer that says the study is "fictional" at the bottom) and fake news report web sites. Ironically, when commercial news sites publish their stories about these schemes online, guess whose ads come up alongside them?

Meanwhile, we'll stick to getting our resveratrol the old-fashioned way.

Free Trial Scam [Fox 5]
RELATED:
Easy Weight Loss And Free Cash: A Dubious Product Online Marketing Empire Revealed
Free Trials Can Be Trojan Horses For Sketchy Companies
This Is Why You Don't Order From Fad Diet & Wellness Sites
Careful, Those Free Acai Products Might Come Attached To A Delicious Scam

Lazy Man and Money is just one of many sites (including this one) that have been critical of MonaVie, a company that has cleverly combined the miraculous, life-extending properties of the acai berry with the equally stupendous, wallet-emptying promises of a multi-level marketing company. Lazy (as the blog's author likes to call himself) has, however, achieved one thing that other MonaVie critics apparently haven't: He's gotten the company's attention, and they're accusing him of trademark infringement.

In an email to Lazy Man's domain registrar, MonaVie accused him of a raft of violations of the company's trademarks, and demanded that he "remove all references to MonaVie and its products" from the site.

The MonaVie name and symbol are registered trademarks. (U.S. Reg. Nos. 3111333, 3111332, 78526279). MonaVie's federal registration of these trademarks provides MonaVie with the right to restrict the use of the trademark, or a confusingly similar trademark, in any way that misrepresents the origin of MonaVie's products or dilutes the MonaVie brand and goodwill associated therewith.

We were surprised to see an email like this sent to a blogger. While businesses have a right to protect their trademarks from abuse, the news media and individuals are typically exempt from such restrictions provided the trademarks are used as part of "news reporting and news commentary" — as well as a wide range other purposes, including parody and satire — and not as part of a commercial effort to mislead consumers.

To find out what was going on, we called MonaVie, and spoke to Doug Whitehead, the company's associate general counsel. Whitehead admitted that the email sent to Lazy Man didn't accurately express the company's position. "We had a new person working in our compliance department," he told us. As it turns out, MonaVie actually supports Lazy Man's "free speech rights," according to Whitehead. So, everything's copacetic now, and Lazy can kick back with a Monatini? Not quite.

"Our issue with this guy is that he is using MonaVie in his keyword tags," Whitehead told us. The company's concern, he said, has nothing to do with user-visible content on the Lazy Man site, but instead is all about the site's metadata, which includes MonaVie's name. As precedent, Whitehead cited several cases, including Brookfield Communications v. West Coast Entertainment and Promatek Industries v. Equitrac Corp. In both of those cases, courts found that companies using their competitors' trademarks in metadata were guilty of trademark infringement.

So, how would this branch of law apply to a news organization? We spoke to Fred von Lohmann, a senior staff attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, who said that he thinks MonaVie "has the losing end of this argument." In an online trademark infringement case, von Lohmann explained, the plaintiff has to demonstrate that a consumer might be misled into believing the defendant's site is actually the plaintiff's. In this case, he said, "there's no chance that anyone could be confused into thinking that [LazyMan] is the official MonaVie site."

We reached Lazy Man by email, and he expressed surprise at this turn of events. "Wikipedia, CNet, the Consumerist, and even Yahoo News all include trademarked terms in their metadata when they write about companies," he wrote. "Some of them even include MonaVie's trademarked terms in their keyword metatags for articles related to MonaVie. Are such large organizations routinely violating trademark law?"

Since he hasn't been officially notified by the company that they're going after him for metatags, Lazy didn't want to comment about his legal plans — though he did say he found it "highly unusual and unfortunate" that MonaVie was willing to share this kind of information with us prior to notifying him. Meanwhile, we asked von Lohmann what kind of legal strategy he'd recommend. "Just take [the metadata] down," he said. "Every search engine expert I've spoken to says metadata doesn't do anything anymore." Now, there's an idea; hand MonaVie their legal — but Pyrrhic — victory, and go for the win out there in the tubes, where free speech — and keyword-optimized incoming links — rule.

UPDATE: MonaVie sent Lazy Man a letter on Friday, outlining the terms of its claim against his site. Sure enough, it's all about the metadata. The letter includes the following mind-benders:

It has come to our attention that you are using our trademark name MonaVie in your source code ...
...The use of our trademarks in www.lazymanandmoney.com in the source code constitutes trademark infringement and you must immediately cease and desist. ...
Failure to comply with our requests may result in legal action.

Lazy has followed up with a great guide to metadata, and an analysis of the precedents used by the company to justify its action. It's a thoughtful, well-reasoned post about Monavie and trademark law, and well worth reading — and linking to.

MonaVie is Trying to Sue Me... [Lazy Man and Money]
Metatags and Trademark Law: Continuing Uncertainty [Jere M. Webb]

PREVIOUSLY:
Just What The Heck Is MonaVie, And Should I Sell It?

I recently joined a Meetup.com group for local knitters because my actual friends stubbornly refuse to take up knitting. This afternoon, the following message came through:

Hey, I saw that we were in the same group. I just wanted to ask you to check out my diet blog and tell me what you think of it. It's my story of how I lost 40+ pounds after having 3 kids! My link is http://www.marciasweightloss.com if you have any questions feel free to message me back, Thanks!

Hey, funny how "Marcia" lives in San Diego when this group is based in New York. And how her blog looks like dozens of other acai scam blogs I've seen.

Edit: Meetup acknowledge and explained the problem this afternoon. Good for them!

Unfortunately, Meetup groups aren't the only venue for spam. Messages similar to this one have started appearing on Freecycle lists across the country:

SUBJECT: [OFFER] My Leftover Colon Cleanse Product SEALED - Downtown

I got the results i wanted from using this, and I have some
left over which I don't really need it anymore. (It's for
losing weight if you didn't know already)

Some moderators see what's up and let it through; others don't. You can guess how this works—anyone who e-mails asking for the free product gets a link to a site where they can get their very! own! free! trial! Similar scams are run with spammers purportedly giving away video game consoles, computers, and iPods. The poster claims that the item is gone, but if you just click here and fill out some offers, you can get your very own Dell laptop or Wii, for free!

RELATED
Careful, Those Free Acai Products Might Come Attached To A Delicious Scam
Should You Detox Your Colon?
Easy Weight Loss And Free Cash: A Dubious Product Online Marketing Empire Revealed

(Photo: George Arriola)

Not only are the profits they promise not, strictly speaking, possible, but the fine print of the deal leads unsuspecting Twitterpreneurs to pay as much as $100 per month for the program. This when the large print promises that the secrets of Twitter income will be unlocked after you buy mere $1.95 CD.

Overall, the marketing methods are similar to those for acai berry and government grants scams. Don't be fooled. The BBB reminds everyone that no matter how badly in need of work you might be, there are surefire signs of a work-at-home scam that you should look for:

• The "job" is actually a money-making scheme and doesn't provide actual employment.
• The work-at-home scheme claims that you can make lots of money with little effort and no experience.
• You have to pay money upfront in order to be considered for the job or receive more information.
• The exact same tweet touting the program is posted by many different Twitterers. The links in such tweets could lead you to scam sites or install malware onto your computer.

Stay safe, be careful, and remember the real profit center of Twitter: getting companies that have wronged you to listen to you.

BBB Warns Against Twitter Money-Making Schemes [BBB]
BBB sees rise in Pay-to-Tweet scams [Consumer Reports]

Central Coast Nutraceuticals, Inc. ("CCN"), and its Phoenix-based owner Graham Gibson have agreed to pay nearly $1.4 million total, but a million of that goes to the state. $350,000 has been set aside to distribute among customers nationwide who were victims of CCN's misleading upsells and deliberately bad customer service:

According to the complaints, consumers who purchased the low-cost "risk-free trial offers" of CCN's health supplements were also charged for costly products and services that they did not request. These included pre-selected "up-sell" products that the consumer had to actively de-select in the online order form to avoid being charged. When consumers tried to contact CCN regarding the unauthorized charges, they often faced hold times over an hour and their e-mails never received a response.

The Better Business Bureau, which says they receive over 2200 complaints about the company in the past 12 months, says consumers can file a complaint whether they live in Arizona or not.

Victims of CCN [can] file a complaint via phone at 602.542.5763 or 800.352.8431(toll free) or via email at consumerinfo@azag.gov by August 17.

Those same consumers can save even more money by not buying any more miracle drinks via infomercials or websites.

CCN Settlement Press Release (PDF) [Arizona Attorney General]

RELATED
"Careful, Those Free Acai Products Might Come Attached To A Delicious Scam"
(Photo: Ian Muttoo)

WOAI San Antonio pokes a hole in a sketchy Acai Berry offer on Craigslist:

A News 4 WOAI Trouble Shooters viewer recently emailed us about some Craigslist ads that offered $1,200 to take part in an Acai Berry clinical trial. The ad included a link that sent our viewer to a website selling the dietary supplements. To take part in the clinical trial, our viewer would need to order a "free" month's supply. Of course, a credit card is necessary to pay for shipping and handling.

That's pretty much where the "free" part ends.

We've received complaints in the past from other News 4 WOAI viewers that punched in their credit card numbers for these "free" trial offers.

What they wound up getting was a costly headache from trying to cancel their membership. One viewer told us her "free" Acai Berry products cost her $184. Another said she was charged $87, then another $75.

The main lesson here: People in San Antonio are crazy gullible over free Acai Berry offers.

Consumer Alert: "Free" trial offers can be costly [WOAI]
(Photo: The Ninja Monkey)

Meet Just THINK Media of Sherwood Park, Alberta, Canada, and their online empire of dubious products. Magic weight loss tea, free government grants, acai and red wine pills, colon cleanser, free credit reports...if there are incessant ads for it everywhere on the Web, they probably sell it.

Here's how this all started. Last week, we published a story about apartment rental credit report scams that prey on innocent people searching for housing online. Quick summary: Scammers advertise nonexistent apartments, then tell prospective renters to go to a Web site for a purportedly free credit report, and pocket affiliate fees in the process.

Alert reader Phil looked up one of the credit report sites, CreditReport America, to let them know that an affiliate was generating business dishonestly. How seriously do they take the situation? His e-mail bounced. Not a temporary ISP outage bounce, either—the address abuse@creditreportamerica.com doesn't even have a mailbox. It's a breach of pretty basic protocol to not have an abuse@ email address set up for your site.

Phil found the address on the company's advertising practices and FTC compliance page, which doesn't explicitly forbid using fake real estate ads to earn affiliate fees. It does forbid spamming, so there's that, and the apartment ads thing is probably unforeseen from the company's point of view.

What's funny, though, is the last paragraph on that page:

Recommendation Handling
Proper advertising practice is at the top of our priority list, and we are therefore open to further improving our practices as reasonably requested by any one. All recommendations are taken very seriously, and are promptly reviewed by our advertising and legal department.

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, and/or any other issues regarding our advertising practices we urge you to forward them to abuse@creditreportamerica.com for an immediate review.

Immediate review, yeah.

I noticed something interesting on the advertising practices page, though. The sample page showing their amazing reader-tracking technology isn't the CreditReport America site. It shows an acai diet page—specifically, Acai Burn. Looking up domain registrations for CreditReport America and Acai Burn led me to Just THINK Media.

They have a very slick Web page, in Flash. According to their site, they are "quickly becoming the leader in online direct sales," and have generated hundreds of millions of Google Adwords leads. Let's peruse their products.

Wu-Yi Source
This is apparently their "flagship" product. The page doesn't sell tea so much as the idea of thinness and the possibility of effortless weight loss. They're a popular target on Ripoff Report, with 251 reports against them. The site has a bonus Asian dude giving a sales pitch in the corner. You know, because it's a well-kept Chinese weight loss secret. Customers allege that the tea is nothing special, but just has extra caffeine in it, and doesn't help with weight loss. Easy Weight Loss Tea is a similar site run by the same company.

Credit Report America
Yes, Credit Report America is based in Canada. Ha ha. We've already discussed at length on Consumerist why "free" credit report sites are bad. This is another one. Except that it has an old man in the corner who talks to you. Someone shut him up.

Government Funded Grants
Hey, it's that grandfatherly white guy from the credit report site! I remember him! This site charges you for information on how to get U.S. government grants. You know, like on that site grants.gov. The one that's free. Similar site: Gov Grants Direct.

The site's sales pitch even cites our parent publication, Consumer Reports.

Consumer Reports magazine has reported that they literally hear "hundreds and hundreds" of reports of various government grant related scams throughout the year. Many of these scams seem obvious – and yet people still keep falling for them, time and time again.

Yes. Yes, they do.

Acai Burn
Effortless weight loss and bad Photoshopping? Sign me up. Similar to the Wu-Yi source site, and a pretty blond lady in a suit giving a sales pitch. We've been over this before. Don't fall for acai diet scams. Acai Burn Extreme is the same thing, but marketed to men. Maybe it contains barbecue sauce.

PureCleanse Pro
Colon cleanser. We've talked about this—you don't need to cleanse your colon unless a medical professional tells you to. Your body is set up to do that itself. This product is marketed as a weight loss aid, but there's a random embedded video about colon cancer in there, intended to imply that CBS news endorses colon cleansing pills.

Miracle Resveratrol
High-dose antioxidants derived from red wine. Or something. And some acai, too. Another "miracle" product to stop the aging process, help you lose weight, discipline your children, and balance your checkbook.

They also sell "Google cash kits" and home power plants, but I can't find those particular sites. I think we get the idea.

After all, the company's sites have a lot of common characteristics.

• They rely on affiliate marketing for sales—fake blogs, any way affiliates can get the links out there. High affiliate payouts are what led to the credit report scams featured here at Consumerist.
• The pages are very long. Too long, and repetitive. Lots of copy, lots of graphics, not enough disclaimers.
• The pages say "As seen on..." and show the logos of major media outlets. If you read the disclaimer, though, you learn that all this means is that the products have been advertised on those media outlets.
• Spokespeople appear on the pages and talk to you. They're actors from Live Face on Web.
• All operate on the free trial or inexpensive introductory item model, and depend on customers to cancel their subscriptions, memberships, what have you. Customers complain that their cards continue receiving unauthorized charges for months afterward.

It's not that Just THINK is trying to conceal their business model or that they own all of these sites. It's not hard to put the clues together. It's just fascinating to note the similarities between the sites, their pitches, and even their products. Sort of like window shopping in a strip mall where every store sells Amway.

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.

(from the bottle) "Filtered water, High fructose corn syrup, pear juice from concentrate, citric acid, natural flavors, vegetable extract (for color), acacia gum."

We know, Snapple isn't doing anything illegal—we're sure they confess everything somewhere on the label. The funny thing, though, is that nobody is touting Acai as a flavor to be sought out. It's all about the supposed health benefits, so the only reason to slap it onto a label is to attract health-conscious or Oprah-watching consumers. And can you imagine a less healthy drink than something that lists HFCS as the main ingredient after water? (Well, yes we're sure you can, but you get the point.)

Update: According to some of our commenters, Acai is a delicious flavor.

Forum 1
Forum 2
(Thanks to Chris!)
(Photo: littledan77)

The testimonial changes from site to site, but the stock design and marketing copy is the same. We guess lazy marketing isn't illegal, but nowhere on these pages does it say that these women are fictional.

You know that friend or relative you have who's not as skeptical as you are? The one who starts to believe in a fad if s/he reads enough unsourced claims of praise, or sees "as seen on Oprah" somewhere on the screen? Send them this post. And maybe point them to this page, too.

nancysdietblog.com
bigtofit.com (naomi's diet blog)
sarahstruediet.com
jennysdietblog.com

Even more: google search results

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 )

Purple Horror

I've been approached by a friend to join up with MonaVie acai juice—it's a "superfood" juice that's sold through "network marketing." I actually do like the product, and this is a friend I trust, but my alarm bells are still going off. I don't want to get sucked into a scam, obviously. There's nothing about this company on your site, so I thought I'd drop you a line and see if you had any advice.

Here's our advice: don't do it! When you look at the business details and filter out the friend-of-a-friend stories, it's not worth the hassle.

MonaVie—a concoction of acai and other fruit juices, and sold in wine bottles for $40 a pop—is the latest in a long line of mysterious and exotic cure-alls, and no, no you should not "sell" it. We use quotation marks because the majority of distributors are their own primary customers, according to Newsweek's Tony Dokoupil. The juice is loaded with good things and is certainly not unhealthy for you. But before you decide to shell out $40 on a bottle, or help your friend reach his or her sales quota by becoming another member in the company's multi-level-marketing (MLM) business model—funny, when you chart that model, it looks like a pyramid!—you should find out more about how the sales look from the top, and what's actually been verified about its health benefits.

Dokoupil points out that those people reportedly making millions of dollars in sales commissions are members near the very top of the pyramid.

Most of the million-strong sales team is really just drinking the juice, according to MonaVie's 2007 income disclosure statement, a federally required printout of their distributor earnings. More than 90 percent were considered "wholesale customers," whose earnings are mostly discounts on sales to themselves. Fewer than 1 percent qualified for commissions and of those, only 10 percent made more than $100 a week. And the dropout rate, while not disclosed by MonaVie, is around 70 percent, according to a top recruiter.

So that's the reality from a profit perspective. As far as health benefits go, most of the claims about its ability to cure cancer, eczema, general pain, anxiety, autism, and a case of the stupids, is gossip and hearsay. (In fact, it may cause a case of the stupids, we're guessing.) Newsweek points out that because unsalaried MonaVie salespeople are out making the ridiculous health claims and not the company, MonaVie stays within FDA guidelines, and doesn't have to worry about backing up such claims.

Wikipedia cites a few nutritional studies that place acai berries somewhere in the mid-to-high range on antioxidant protection. It's definitely a great fruit, and if you can find an affordable source of acai berries, go for it.

But even if acai berries were filled with God's own tears, it turns out that a $40 bottle of MonaVie isn't 100% acai juice, and the company won't disclose the ratio of acai to its other ingredients. In fact, their product page presents an amazingly content-free but fancy description that avoids any real details:

While the açai berry serves as the foundation for each of MonaVie’s vital formulas, with literally thousands of phytonutrients and antioxidants found in nature’s fresh fruits, MonaVie didn’t want to focus on just one at the expense of others. This led to MonaVie’s scientists and product development team selecting additional fruits whose synergistic union would reach far beyond what any single fruit could accomplish. These specially selected fruits have been exclusively combined to create MonaVie’s premier balanced blends.

In other words, "Just trust us!"

We think instead of lining the pockets of MonaVie's savvy head promoters, you should just shop around for 100% pure acai products, which will be much cheaper. Or just keep eating a variety of cheaper fruits, buy a decent $12 bottle of red wine, and lay off the health food fads altogether.

"MonaVie Acai Juice: Cure-All or Marketing Scheme?" [Newsweek]