Friday, October 23, 2009

By 

James W. Stone

What am I so upset about? It's this relatively new approach to marketing products with a FREE TRIAL coupled with an automatic subscription to future orders. You may think there is nothing new about this, but there is, and it stinks!

Many products being sold on the internet for better health, longer life, or whiter teeth are being sold this way. Ask yourself, "How can you determine the effectiveness of Resveratrol (or Acai berry extract, or whatever) for extending your life or improving your health after using a 14-day sample?" The answer is, "You can't." Worse yet, the trial period is claimed to be 14 days. But the clock starts when they ship the product. The time the product is in transit to you is not used for evaluation, but is being counted in the trial period. You don't really get 14 days to evaluate the product.

When I think of a free 14-day trial, I expect to get a 14-day supply of the product to test out for a 2-week period. What really happens is the merchant ships you a 30-day supply with a 14-day approval period. If you don’t send the remainder of the product back within 14 days, you are charged full price for the product. That's their idea of a FREE SAMPLE!

To process this order, you are told you only pay for shipping and handling which may be "only" $2.95, or whatever. Shipping costs will range somewhere between $1 to $6. Handling often includes a foreign transaction fee of $1-$2 because these products are being distributed from outside the U.S. It would seem perfectly acceptable to pay the shipping and handling for a FREE sample. However, what the merchant really wants is your credit card information. Then, 14 days after they ship your order, your credit card is billed again for the full month supply costing just over $80 on average. And if you haven't stopped them from continuing with the refills, they will ship you another one-month supply when 30 days have passed from the initial shipment. There's a good chance you haven't even received your credit card statement to see the initial charge that was made.

The basic problem with this situation is that in order for you to receive a FREE TRIAL (by their definition) you were required to enroll in a continuing subscription to automatically reorder the product you wanted to evaluate.

A secondary problem is there is no way to evaluate this type of product in the short period of time given for your trial period. So a trial period makes no sense for many of these products.

As bad as this is, there's yet another problem with this deal. It's not that easy to return the sample and cancel the subscription. There is a need to make sure the returned product is matched to the correct order — so you must call the merchant to get a Returned Merchandise Authorization (RMA) number. Once you have the RMA number, you must ship the remaining product back to the merchant's refund processing center within a certain period of time. Once they have received the returned product, your account is credited and you have completed your FREE TRIAL. The least amount of money out of your pocket is the initial shipping and handling charges and the return shipping charges.

But, as Ron Popeil might have said, "But wait, there's more!" Some of these merchants add to the aggravation when you call to cancel the subscription and get your RMA number. You might get forwarded to a high-pressure salesperson who wants you to explain (for their customer survey) why you didn't like the product. (Hey the product was supposed to lengthen your life. Can you tell me it didn't work? You're still alive.) They might offer you a reduced price for the next six-months. They might say anything to keep you from cancelling. Be prepared for a hassle.

Some merchants are very clear in stating the terms of a sale like the one I just described, although they may not point out the hassle you will encounter when you try to cancel the order. Other merchants hide significant terms of the sale in "mouseprint" (the barrage of text that nobody wants to read, usually found on a separate web page and often requiring you to scroll to read it all.)

If you find that you have been caught in one of these sales traps, notify your Better Business Bureau. More importantly, notify your State Attorney General's office. They are always looking for additional information and support for litigation to provide consumer protection. Many of these merchants aren't even located in the United States. Your Attorney General will work in concert with other states to help get laws passed to guard against unscrupulous merchants. Until those laws are passed, it is up to each of us to look out for ourselves and warn each other about the dangers lurking behind the words "FREE TRIAL."

James W. Stone
Copyright 2009, James W. Stone, all rights reserved worldwide