Monday, March 2, 2009

Choosing Diet Pills - Watch Out for This!

By Cal Stevens

While reviewing diet pills lately, I've come across more scams that I've previously seen. I always try to give notice to these scams and the products that use them. But I've been surprised at the increasing number of companies (not just diet pills) that are using a certain scammy sales tactic known as the autoship. Since so many consumers seem to be falling prey to the autoship, I thought I'd write a little article about it.

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.

Now I don't know the history, but at some point in time companies figured out that if they hid the details of the autoship in the fine print of the terms and conditions, that they could get people to agree to it without them knowing about it. People would skip over the terms and quickly purchase the product and bingo. They're enrolled in the autoship.

I imagine it wasn't too much later that companies (including diet pills) realized that "free" trials were very popular. So they started to offer these free trials, and again hid the autoship in the terms and conditions. Bingo! They just created a money machine for themselves. And all at the expense of the unsuspecting consumer.

To give you an idea of just how horrible some of these programs can be, I'll try to walk you through a classic autoship agreement hidden in the fine print. I'll use Customer John as an example. John sees an ad for a free trial and says "Sure, why not?" In order for John to get the free trial they ask for all of his information. If John looked enough he might also find in their privacy policy that they reserve the right to sell his information to third parties (this is not a good thing). They also get his credit card information so that he can pay the small shipping fee (Bingo! This is also so they can charge it in the future).

John glances over the fine print, gets bored and checks the box saying that he agrees to the terms and conditions. He clicks submit and little does he know that he is now a full fledged member of the company's autoship program. 15 days later he sees a charge on his credit card for $60 (could be anywhere from $30 to $100 depending on the product). What he didn't know is that he only had 15 days to call and cancel the autoship. On the 15th day, they shipped him another month's supply and gladly charged his credit card. If he doesn't call soon, he'll see another charge for the same amount next month. Furious, John calls customer service to get an explanation of what happened and to demand a refund. John is either given the run around and can't get ahold of anyone with actual answers or his phone call doesn't get answered at all (this is not always that case, but is common). Now, after paying hundreds, he has a few diet pills that, even if they were effective, he wouldn't take because he's so mad.

Now again, are all autoship programs scams? No. There are many companies out there that fully disclose (and make it obvious for the consumer) that they are enrolling in an autoship. Others give the consumer the option to enroll or not to enroll. There's nothing wrong with this at all. But there are many, many other companies who's sole purpose of the product and website is to deceive the consumer and suck as much money as they can out of them. So be wise and make sure that you are fully aware of what you are agreeing to. Read the fine print. You'll be glad that you did! - 15255

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