Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Exploiting the Recession, or Exploiting the Public?

     You learn something new every day, or so they say. Here's today's lesson, from me to you:

     You've seen this everywhere, I'm sure. They want to share the 'trick' a mom figured out for whiter teeth. Don't pay hundreds, even thousands, just use this simple trick. Strawberries and baking soda? No. Scam-o-rama? I think so.

     They tell you to go to http://www.karensteeth.com/  and check out the news. They make the page look like an official news site. "Consumer News Weekly" it reads across the top. They use every trick in their arsenal to make it look like it is a news site, or at least a helpful, newsy blog.  They tell you how you can even get the shipping for almost free. A mere 99 cents a site. Of course there are two sites because this  mom learned to use both products together for some unexpectedly great results. Just order both trial products with coupon codes for 99 cent shipping and you're in!


     You're in alright. In a trap. They will send you the free trial stuff, but you have to cancel within 10 days of ordering the product. How many days does it take to arrive? We shall see. Yes, I ordered it. As soon as I ordered (with a 'special' credit card number they can't abuse) I called them to cancel my order. They refused. I will have to receive the product and then call them. Then I will have to return it. This was pretty much what I expected. I ordered it 15 minutes ago. I just got a call from a lady verifying my order. I told her I had already called to cancel and had been refused. She said "Oh, some of them do that. They make you receive it and return it." Now, mind you, there are two such offers. Each offer is for a free trial. Each offer will bill you what will be hundreds of dollars if you do not cancel. If you are lucky, one of them will renew it and ship out the product to you at timely intervals!

     There is no mention of this on the http://www.karensteeth.com/ website. A real blogger would have told you all about the return/subscription portion of the deal and how to avoid it.

     Not surprisingly the comments are closed due to "spam".  I'm pretty sure that was a typo and the comments are closed because it's a scam. The referral links to this page are laced with special tracking so the 'right people' get credit for sending you.

Updates coming soon. We'll see how they behave when I call them again. Poor girl, she sounded ashamed of doing her job. It's no wonder. I bet their employee turnover is high.


3 comments:

  1. I actually signed up for this a while back. I received the product and tried it out. Then I called and told them I was returning it and expected a full refund because I didn't see any results. Which is true. It was easy enough to use but wasn't doing the job. It was infuriating to go through the red tape and to find out it was a scam. But I did get a full refund.

    One other thing... if you have a cell phone, make sure that you aren't being charged for text messages and extra stuff. They did this to me. I was able to call my cell provider and had them take off the charges and block that 'caller'.

    This scam is bad news and preys on us folks that just want to find an economical way to look better. :(

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  2. ProActiv did the same thing a while back - not sure if they're still doing it, but when you ordered a 'free trial' you were basically signing up for a 'subscription' where they would send you more and more unless you called and canceled immediately.

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  3. Here's an Omaha news story about it:

    http://www.wowt.com/news/headlines/80387037.html

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