Late night infomercials can be entertaining and sometimes can bring attention to some great products that we enjoy. Shopping on late-night television or via the Internet however, always comes with a buyer beware. It is difficult to know when a company is being truthful about their product.
The latest exposure in a large chain of money scams is an American company called Central Coast Nutraceuticals. It's based out of California, run by two people under four affiliated companies. It has recently been shut down by the Federal Trade Commission after selling their product, AcaiPure and Colopure for more than three years.
Both products had fake celebrity endorsements by Oprah Winfrey and Rachael Ray. The company claimed their products helped supplement and cleanse the body resulting in dramatic weight loss, neither of these claims were actually backed by any scientific proof. The company ran their scam, managing to claim more than $100 million out of more than one million costumers.
The company has since been shut down and all assets have been frozen by the United States District Court, however, this does not help the million consumers who were duped by the company. David Vladeck, the director of the FTC's Bureau of Consumer Protection says, "It markets these products by telling consumers if they enter their credit card information on the internet to pay for a modest shipping and handling fee, the consumers will get free samples. But the products don't work, and the consumers soon find out that they have been charged the full price for what was supposed to be a free trial offer."
He explains that, "The company then begins adding recurring monthly charges for products they didn't order. Consumers then face months of aggravation trying to remove the unauthorized charges from their accounts and trying to obtain refunds from CCN," he said. "Many even decided they had no choice but to cancel their credit cards or close their bank accounts to avoid further CCN charges. Even then, consumers often get nasty collection letters and emails from CCN threatening to ruin their credit if they didn't pay up."
Visa is encouraging consumers to fight back. Their senior business leader for payment system risk, Martin Elliot, says, "We have tightened enforcement of our rules against banks whose merchants generate excessive levels of cardholder disputes because of deceptive marketing." He also made a point to note that it is very difficult for companies like Visa to prevent such deceptive companies because these companies often change their information such as bank, location and even name to avoid being caught.
Credit cards can be one of the handiest tools to have living in such an electronic world. It can also be a vulnerable part of our financial well-being. Being taken advantage of by free trials or any other type of pre-paid purchase is never a pleasant experience. Not only can it milk a person out of hundreds or even thousands of dollars, it can play havoc on a credit rating.
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