My husband has bought many a thing from watching infomercials late at night... a portable convection oven, knives, saws... and who knows what else! I have to admit that I secretly judge him thinking he fell for scams... but I can no longer judge. I have been scammed. A few months back I was searching for something random on google and came across an article that looked like it could have the answers. Now I've run into this before, but didn't realize until too late, but this article had words that were highlighted in blue that you could click on making it appear that if you were unsure on terminology you could click the highlighted word and it would provide you with a pop up window of the definition or explanation. Anyway, I clicked one of these words and it took me to a random blog. I thought "hmmm this is weird, it must have been a bad link" but it wasn't a bad link. These links are on purpose, and I've run into them since this incident and realised their true intention, advertising. Either way though the blog caught my attention and I read on to hear about how this girl used an acai berry supplement along with another cleansing supplement and lost lots of weight. Now I don't usually fall for this sort of thing, but because it was on a blog it appeared as though it was real person saying this actually worked. There were even comments from her friends! So I thought, hey, sounds interesting, I'll see if I can find free samples too! So upon lots of searching I finally found some free samples that I could sign up for. Of course I was careful and read everything they provided making sure I understood how the program worked as far as canceling and such, but of course they don't give all the information do they?! I knew I was taking a big risk, and I even had a mini panic after I gave them my credit card number and officially ordered their free trial supplements, but I couldn't go back so I waited for it in the mail and tried the magical combination for two weeks and then stopped cause it didn't do a darn thing. So I called each of the companies and told them I wanted to cancel thinking that their free trial meant that I got the pills for free and just didn't order for the next month. Nope, I had to ship the unused pills back to them on my own dime otherwise they would charge me the outrageous fee of $60 for the bottle! So, I grumbled my way to the post office, sent them back their lame non-magic pills and thought it was over. Until of course I saw my credit card statement. At first they were not refunding me the money for the bottle of pills and I started to panic because I hadn't wanted to pay the extra money to have the package tracked and I thought they were gonna scam me by saying they never got it, but today I looked at my bill again and discovered that while they did FINALLY refund me my money for the pills, there were some new charges. Some "membership" fees that were vague and non-descript. So I copied and pasted the charge description into a google search and found a thread that was totally dedicated to this membership fee and the scam it was running. Apparently when you sign up for Acaiburn (the company I got the free trial offer from) they sign you up for these other companies memberships and publishings. So now I had to call three other companies to cancel these memberships and user fees that I didn't even get anything for! And of course they hire sweet little 16 year old girls who you feel bad yelling at so you keep your cool. Needless to say I did not get any money back, but apparently I'm all canceled on my "insider secrets" and "weightloss membership clubs" ARG! Who are these people? Who do they think they are?! Why do we let people be so dishonest like this and knowingly scam people out of their hard earned money? I've learned my lesson, but why is it that we live in a world where this lesson has to be learned? I hate it when people say "if there is a God how can he let so many bad things happen?" well here's some news for you, WE are the ones who make the bad things happens, so maybe, just maybe we should stop putting up with it.
All that from a measly online scam.
So. Lessons learned. Don't sign up for AcaiBurn. Don't click on what you think is a definition link in random internet articles, and don't let evil people ruin your day, or the world we decent people are trying to create.
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