This publication explains how the Better Business Bureau and consumer complaints web sites like ComplaintsBoard.com can help consumers avoid falling victim to frauds and scams.
3. F R A U D
A L E R T
Forget most product reviews.
Itâs a new online come-on:
Web sites that âreviewâ
products and recommend
the âbestâ ones. With names
like Consumer Best Deals,
Diet Awareness Institute,
and The Acai Berry Report,
theyâre designed to instill
confidence. But Consumer
Reports they ainât.
âBe Careful of Acai Berry
Scams!â warns
theacaiberryreview.com.
âAfter months of testing and
after trying all of the Acai
Berry products on the market we have compiled a list o f
the best Acai Berry products
currently on the market. All of
these products are tried & tested
and produced great results for us. All of the
More often than not, product âreviewâ sites
are trying to sell you something.
Stop by the Better Business Bureau.
While the
âThe comInternet
pa nyâs terms
provides
and condinew optio ns change
portunire gularly in
ties for
veral areas
se
crooks, it
cluding
in
also make s
the length
it easier fo r
of the
you to snif f
trial pearound a
r
iod, when
company
charges are
before you
applied,
buy.
and terms
Check with the Better Business Bureau before
regarding
Start wit h
buying online from a company youâre not familiar with.
the Better
reversal of
Business
charges,â
Bureau, at
the report notes.
us.bbb.org. Click on âCheck Out a BusiâWe sure wish online shoppers would
ness or Charityâ and enter any informacheck the Better Business Bureau Web site
before they do business,â says Jane Driggs,
tion you have: company name, name
and city, phone number, Web site address
head of the BBBâs Utah office. âThree
(URL), or e-mail address.
minutes with us would save them a lot of
hassle.â
Consumers who did that for FX
It also helps to search the many
Supplements, which markets Acai Berry
complaint Web sites where unhappy
Maxx, for example, would have seen that
dealing with the company was a dicey
consumers post their tales of woe. Try
complaintsboard.com, complaints.com,
proposition. The BBBâs online report gives
and ripoffreport.com. You can also
FX Supplements an F rating, noting that it
had processed 213 complaints against the
Google the company or product name
and look for links to complaints.
company over the preceding 12 months,
and that 81 complaints were pending as
of January 9.
pro
ducts offer a free trial, so
yo can try before you buy.â
u
Two of the three supplents
me the site recommends,
Acai Berry Supreme and Acai
Be Maxx, are marketed by
rry
co
mpanies that have received
an F rating from the Better
B
usiness Bureau.
Sometimes the truth is in
t fine print. The Amerihe
an
c Anti-Aging Spotlight,
which âwas established to
rate, review, and compare
the various âWrinkle
Creamsâ sold to consumers on the internet today,â
is a âpaid endorsementâ
for its nu mber-one rated cream,
according to the tiny type at the
bottom of the page.
Açai Evidence
The açai berry is a South American
fruit that looks like a grape. It took off in
2005âits juice selling for $40 a quartâ
on word that it was a new âsuperfruitâ
full of antioxidants.
Today, ads for açai berry weight-loss
pills are popping up all over the Internet
...complete with âfreeâ trials that end up
costing consumers hundreds of dollars.
âEven if açai does have antioxidant
activity, what does that really mean?â
asks berry expert Amy Howell of
Rutgers University in New Jersey.
âAntioxidant activity may have absolutely
no health relevance at all unless itâs
shown to do something specific.â
So can açai berry extract pills help
you âlose weight & flush the poundsâ?
Not likely. No studies have looked, and
thereâs no good reason to think that the
berry might help.
At least one brand, Acai Berry Select,
contains 200 mg of added caffeine
âthe equivalent of about two cups of
coffeeâin every capsule. While the
recommended daily dose (one capsule
before breakfast and one before lunch)
might make some people too jittery
to feel like eating, it has nothing to do
with açai.
N U T R I T I O N A C T I O N H E A LT H L E T T E R â A P R I L 2 0 0 9
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