It’s frustrating to see so many new diet pill scams pop up lately. It’s also frustrating to see so many people (or websites) supporting such diet pills by endorsing their products so they can get their cut as well. In light of this frustration, I thought I’d write about one of the most popular scams that’s hit the internet lately: The Autoship.
Let me start out by giving a basic definition of an autoship program for those who may not be familiar with it. Essentially, an autoship program is simply a program in which the company will automatically ship you a product in regular intervals of time so that you don’t have to bother with continual purchases of the same product on a regular basis. Most autoships send new supplies of products on a monthly basis. They will automatically charge your credit card whenever the shipment is sent out.
Not so bad right? In reality, the idea of the autoship is quite convenient and handy. And when the customer is aware of the program and desires to be a part of it, it is convenient and is a good thing. Where you run into trouble, however, is when companies try to get you to enroll in the autoship without you knowing about it. It’s the way the company uses the autoship that can make it a good thing or a complete scam.
Now I don’t know the history, but at some point in time companies figured out that if they hid the details of the autoship in the fine print of the terms and conditions, that they could get people to agree to it without them knowing about it. People would skip over the terms and quickly purchase the product and bingo. They’re enrolled in the autoship.
I imagine it wasn’t too much later that companies (including diet pills) realized that “free” trials were very popular. So they started to offer these free trials, and again hid the autoship in the terms and conditions. Bingo! They just created a money machine for themselves. And all at the expense of the unsuspecting consumer.
To give you an idea of just how horrible some of these programs can be, I’ll try to walk you through a classic autoship agreement hidden in the fine print. I’ll use Customer John as an example. John sees an ad for a free trial and says “Sure, why not?” In order for John to get the free trial they ask for all of his information. If John looked enough he might also find in their privacy policy that they reserve the right to sell his information to third parties (this is not a good thing). They also get his credit card information so that he can pay the small shipping fee (Bingo! This is also so they can charge it in the future).
John glances over the fine print, gets bored and checks the box saying that he agrees to the terms and conditions. He clicks submit and little does he know that he is now a full fledged member of the company’s autoship program. 15 days later he sees a charge on his credit card for $60 (could be anywhere from $30 to $100 depending on the product). What he didn’t know is that he only had 15 days to call and cancel the autoship. On the 15th day, they shipped him another month’s supply and gladly charged his credit card. If he doesn’t call soon, he’ll see another charge for the same amount next month. Furious, John calls customer service to get an explanation of what happened and to demand a refund. John is either given the run around and can’t get ahold of anyone with actual answers or his phone call doesn’t get answered at all (this is not always that case, but is common). Now, after paying hundreds, he has a few diet pills that, even if they were effective, he wouldn’t take because he’s so mad.
Now, are all autoship programs like our fictitious example above? No. Many fully disclose their autoship in very noticeable manners. But the ones that don’t are not much more than a scam that uses a diet pill product as it’s conduit to take your money. The point of this: read the fine print and be cautious of free trials. Not much in this is life is free and I assure you that these companies aren’t looking out for anything but their own bottom line.
