Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The Acai Berry scam

This recently appeared in the Chicago Tribune

Q: How do I pronounce "acai"? And is this fruit really as good as Oprah Winfrey says?

A: She has distanced herself from acai weight-loss products because of predictable marketing scams. They work like this: Ads using celebrity endorsements or free trial offers lure in consumers. But once hooked, customers find it's very difficult to cancel the contract; they're getting stuck with automatic delivery of more acai products every month or membership fees of $39 to $100 a month, according to the Better Business Bureau of Chicago and Northern Illinois. "Read the fine print," advised BBB President Steve Bernas.

Reporter Julie Deardorff:
After reading about the Acai berry scam in Sunday's Smart section of the Chicago Tribune, many of you emailed to say you'd fallen for it. "I was so angry when the second bottle arrived and I found out I had to pay for both bottles," wrote Barbara. "I did call and cancel and also wrote a letter documenting the cancel and requesting a written response. Needless to say, I have not received a written response." Now she's wondering what to do. She can start by contacting Tom Joyce at the Better Business Bureau for help. He's at tjoyce@chicago.bbb.org or 312.245.2643.Courtesy of Chicago Tribune

Steve - as we had warned our clients a few years ago, the acai is way overhyped and now customers are being taken to the cleaners. The same goes for the multi-level Monavie products.

5 comments:

Don Metcalf said...

I don't see how you can categorically dismiss a potent whole food that is doing wonderful things for peoples' health, i.e. MonaVie. There is a great research paper published in J. Agric. Food Chem. 2008, 56, 8319–8325 8319, among others that demonstrates the value of Acai and the daily intake of fruit in the diet. The rapid increase in disease these days can be traced back to poor nutrition, poor quality of the food we do eat and a life style that's in too big of a hurry to think about what they consume, or don't. People need to take the time to understand that their health should be the single most important thing they can focus on daily, because without it, there is no life. There are some aggressive marketers out there that can detract from the products they "represent". However to summarily dismiss them without proper understanding, is a shame. MonaVie does have 15 years of good science behind it and it does deliver good wholesome nutrition in a convenient way. Have you had 13 servings of fruit today? I just did.

nutrocon@aol.com said...

Don, while not jumping to conclusions, can we conclude that your are somehow involved in the sales of Monavie products? We are very well-versed in Monavie. We are asked it about several times per week from our clients. We will continue to consider it overpriced and overhyped. It is NOT a substitute for fruits and vegetables and never will be. It is also not a "miracle cure" for every malady its representatives purport it to be.

sanjay said...

Acai berry is antioxidant food. Antioxidant foods are an important part of any diet.
Acai scam

Unknown said...

The biggest Acai Berry scams have been about the Acai Berry Pills or juice. The pills are made using the Acai berries, which are only found in the Amazon forest. The berries perish very easily therefore getting fresh ones is not always easy. This has made it necessary for the berries to be ground into powder so that they can last longer. Those involved in the scam give the pills without any charge. There are Acai free trial programs that have been started and give the pills to consumers for free once you agree to cover the costs of shipping and handling

Unknown said...

As long as there will be products to be sold, there will be those who will try to scam people. More and more people start hearing about the Acai Berry and the miraculous powers they have and start to pay some more attention. The problem here is if they pay attention to legitimate informers or scammers. I think that most of the fault lies also with the person being scammed, and let me come back to that later.

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