While reviewing diet pills lately, I’ve come across more scams that I’ve previously seen. I always try to give notice to these scams and the products that use them. But I’ve been surprised at the increasing number of companies (not just diet pills) that are using a certain scammy sales tactic known as the autoship. Since so many consumers seem to be falling prey to the autoship, I thought I’d write a little article about it.
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.
Well that doesn’t sound so bad does it? It sounds rather convenient if you ask me. And it is, as long as that’s what you want to have done. It’s important to understand that not all autoship programs are scams or necessarily bad. Here’s the thing: it’s the way that the companies use (or maybe better put, disclose) the autoship that can turn it into a scam.
Somewhere along the line, companies (including diet pill companies) found out that they could hide the mentioning of the autoship in the fine print of the ‘terms and conditions’ and virtually no one would know (because not many actually read that fine print) that they were actually agreeing to enroll in the autoship when they made their purchase. And that’s where the scamming started to happen. Imagine their surprise when they started to see what they assumed were fraudulent charges on their credit card. “I didn’t authorize that!” they would say. Oh, but they did. Unfortunately, they did.
Then diet pill companies got “smarter.” They realized that if they offered a “free” trial, they could get a lot more people to sign up for the autoship. Who doesn’t want something for free? And this is where they really start to make their money. It’s also the source of thousands of complaints filed on complaint boards all over the internet. Now we see these free trial offers all over the internet (not just for diet pills).
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).
Once John submits his request, he now finds himself enrolled in the autoship. John will usually have around 15 days to call and cancel the autoship (which he likely won’t even know about unless he read the fine print). If he doesn’t cancel, on the 15 day he will be charged anywhere from $30 to $100 depending on the product (some even charge you for a 3 month’s supply in advance, tripling these charges). He is surprised and irate by the charges and tries to call the company to find out what is going on and to demand a refund. Surprise! They either don’t answer their phone or they give John the run around telling him to call a dozen different numbers, none of which gives him any answers (this isn’t always the case, but seems very common). And before you know it John has a couple worthless bottles of pills and few hundred dollars in charges on his credit card that he can’t get refunded. Sounds like a scam to me!
Now again, are all autoship programs scams? No. There are many companies out there that fully disclose (and make it obvious for the consumer) that they are enrolling in an autoship. Others give the consumer the option to enroll or not to enroll. There’s nothing wrong with this at all. But there are many, many other companies who’s sole purpose of the product and website is to deceive the consumer and suck as much money as they can out of them. So be wise and make sure that you are fully aware of what you are agreeing to. Read the fine print. You’ll be glad that you did!