Shelley Polansky
The internet is rife with ads and links leading to pictures of celebrities and “miracle” products that promise easy weight loss, whiter teeth or disappearing wrinkles. You may be enticed to try these products through a “risk-free” trial: Just enter your name, address and credit card number, and the product will be on its way for only a nominal shipping and handling charge. A new in-depth investigative study by Better Business Bureau (BBB), however, finds that many of these free trial offers are not free.
Many free trial offers come with fine print, buried on the order page or by a link, that gives consumers only a short period of time to receive, evaluate and return the product to avoid being charged often times $100 or more. In addition, the same hidden information may state that by accepting the offer, you’ve signed up for monthly shipments of the products and such fees will be charged to your credit card.
The study found that many of the celebrity endorsements in these ads are fake. Dozens of celebrity names are used by these frauds without their knowledge or permission. Sometimes the fine print even admits these endorsements are not real.
Free trial offers can be a legitimate way for credible companies to introduce new products, provided that the company is transparent about the offer and its terms. However, fraudsters have turned such offers into a global multibillion-dollar industry, one that grows every year.
Available FTC data shows that complaints about “free trials” more than doubled from 2015 to 2017, and BBB has received nearly 37,000 complaints and Scam Tracker reports over the last three years, though not all of these complaints involve monetary loss. In addition, victims in 14 resolved FTC cases collectively lost $1.3 billion, and consumers making reports to BBB lost an average of $186.
If you believe you have been a victim of a free trial offer fraud, follow these steps:
Complain to the company directly.
If that is not successful call the customer service number on the back of your credit card to complain to the bank.
Complain to www.bbb.org.
~ Shelley Polansky, VP Communications, BBB Serving Northern Colorado and Wyoming.