Last summer (summer of 2009) I saw an ad on TV for two nutritional supplements supposedly endorsed by the very famous Dr. Oz. One product was Acai Berry; the other was a colon-cleansing product that was supposed to facilitate weight loss and promote good intestinal health.
I called the phone # given on TV and order the free stuff: was told I'd need to pay $9.99 for shipping. I agreed to pay the $9.99. NOTE: I _NEVER_ do things like this (buy mail-order stuff off of a TV commercial). It is very uncharacteristic of me. While I was on the phone with the sales rep a little voice in my head was trying to warn me that maybe this wasn't such a good idea, but stupidly, I didn't listen.
A few days later, a representative from the purveyor called me and told me I would receive a bottle of the same substance every month. I told her I didn't want to commit to that until I'd had a chance to evaluate the free products. She told me I would need to call 866-949-0138 within 30 days to "cancel." I called that # and used an automated system to cancel what was referred to by a computer-generated voice as "my subscription."
Just a few days later I received a bottle of nutritional supplements from a company named "Lifecleanse" that appears to be related to the company from which I'd ordered the two free-trial bottles. Note that this new bottle arrived in my mailbox well before the 30-day time period during which I was supposed to be allowed to "cancel" an "order" for something I hadn't even agreed to buy. I told the postmaster at our post office to send the packge back to the shipper.
An examination of my credit-card statement showed that a company called "TOPBODY CLEANSE" charged $39.95 to my account just four days after I'd ordered the free-trial bottles and more than three weeks before the end of the 30-day period during which I was supposed to be able to cancel "my subscription."
What followed was a three-month saga during which I 1) kept receiving stuff I hadn't ordered, 2) kept sending the packages back unopened (after making a photocopy of each shipping label because it was clear I'd been scammed and I wanted documentation), 3) made many phone calls to various phone numbers (866-779-7568,866-949-0138,800-244-2575,800-236-1042,877-545-2140) and got the runaround, 4) spent hours filling out on-line forms at my credit-card company's Web site to dispute the charges, 5) spent hours reviewing my credit-card statements and developing & maintaining an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of all the details attendant to this nightmare. (The phone numbers above are the phone numbers that showed up on my credit-card statement.)
The credit-card company (CitiBank, or - as I like to call them - CitiCrooks) did credit my account for some of the disputed charges but then a few weeks later they cancelled most of the credits and re-applied the charges to my account because I'd failed to fill out the paper forms they'd sent via U.S. Mail. I'd been travelling for a few weeks and hadn't been getting my mail; when I returned home I found the forms in my mail and saw that CitiCrooks' deadline for filling out the forms had expired. Don't ask me why CitiCrooks needed me to submit the paper forms; it seemed unnessary to me, as I'd already spent a ton of time documeting everything via their Web site. Since (in my opinion) most of the credit-card companies these days are scumbags and scam artists, too, I can only assume that requiring a cardholder to submit a paper form (with a deadline) after that cardholder has used their on-line system to dispute a charge is just CitiCrooks' way of causing things to fall through the cracks so that consumers like me won't get credit for disputed charges. I called CitiCrooks and tried to talk them into re-applying the credits they'd cancelled. I gave them numerous examples of on-line reports about the Acai Berry/colon-cleanse scam artists (like the reports at usacomplaints.com - I hadn't found the usacomplaints.com site at that point but I'd found other consumer-ripoff sites with many, many reports from people that had been scammed by the same Acai Berry and colon-cleanse ripoff artists I was dealing with). CitiCrooks continued to side with the the AcaiBerry/colon-cleanse sleazebags.
At this point, I decided to drop the whole issue because it was just eating up too much of my time. (Of course, this is just what CitiCrooks and the Acai Berry/color-cleanse people were counting on.)
I guess I ended up losing over $300 plus 15-20 hours of my time on this whole deal.
Incidentally, Dr. Oz is suing the scumbag company that's selling Acai Berry for using his name and photo without his permission.
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