Off Topic Public Service: Dr. Oz, Rachael Ray, Oprah-Acai Berry Scam Information

By Cindy

I am going to stray WAY off topic here, but there is a very good reason. Thousands of people across the country are being scammed by unscrupulous fly-by-night Internet vendors of Acai Berry products, and one of them is my own mother.

Hopefully when people do their research online about Oprah and acai berry this post will pop up in search engines and inform them to run the other way from all of the paid advertisements that get shoved in front of their face.

TAKE NOTE: If a link saying “Oprah’s flat stomach diet” or some derivative of this, or a paid advertisement in Google, takes you to a site that looks like one pictured at your right or below, DO NOT SIGN UP!

(Update: Viewing this post I just realized that when the Google Adsense ads rotate through on MSF, an ad for “Diet of the Year” pops up.  I am not allowed to click through it, per the terms of service I have with AdSense, but it looks like another Acai Berry site.  Be careful if you click-through to this website as it could very well be one of the sites that is the subject of this acai berry scam post.)

(By the way, do you notice the similarities of these two sites, which are at different URLs? A little curious isn’t it? And just try leaving the websites. You will be inundated with more pop-ups trying to assuage your legitimate skepticism.)

MAIN POINT: Do not sign up for the “risk-free” trail from any of the multitude of online vendors of acai berry claiming that the product was explicitly endorsed by Oprah, Dr. Oz., Racahel Ray, or Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.

If you want some explicit examples of people being taken by the Oprah-acai berry scam, follow the link to this post on a forum at Oprah.com:

Oprah-acai berry scam

And it’s not just Oprah. As I just mentioned, these websites offering the “risk-free” trial of acai berry products also claim endorsement by Rachael Ray, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and Oprah’s pal Dr. Oz.

There are two huge problems:

1. Neither Oprah, Racahel Ray, nor any of the people cited on these websites endorsed that particular acai berry product or company. In fact, if you look at the fine print, it says that none of the celebrities or sources that they cite actually endorsed product. But many people, like my mom, do not realize that they have to scroll to the bottom of the page to read the terms and fine print.
2. The “risk-free” trial is not risk free at all. You are required to opt-out within 21 days or you will receive future shipments of acai berry products (at around $90 a pop) and be signed up for other services like “Ultra-Slim” that are only mentioned in the fine print.

Another thing I noticed is that on every one of these sites, there is a disclaimer saying that none of the claims about weight loss and wellness benefits have been authorized by the FDA.

Here are a few examples of the websites to which I am referring. If you go to any of these websites, run the other direction as quickly as you can:

• Brad Pitt-Angelina Jolie acai berry scam
• Oprah acai berry scam – (each of the sites listed here)
• Dr. Oz acai berry scam

Don’t even think twice about this, I’m telling you. When you go to Oprah.com and visit the pages that mention acai berry, the paid google AdSense advertisements do not bring any of these supposed Oprah- and Dr. Oz-endorsed products up. Doesn’t that seem a little ironic? If the products were legitimate, don’t you think they and Oprah.com would want the obvious click-throughs they would get from advertisement for acai berry free trials on Oprah.com? That fact alone makes no sense at all.

Well, when you consider that Oprah and Dr. Oz never officially endorsed these products, it actually does make perfect sense why there would be no ads for these companies.

Again, for all of our loyal sports fan readers, my apologies for straying off topic, but this kind of stuff just pisses me off.

My mom thought she was getting a legitimate free trial of a product endorsed by Oprah. Neither is true, and judging by the recent forum posts at Oprah.com, my mom is not the only one. Sure, more savvy Internet users like me and many people my age would not have been taken in by something as obviously scammy as this — but a lot of people in the generation before me are still relatively new to the Internet and not as savvy at sniffing out scams.

This Oprah-acai berry scam is absolutely designed to capitalize on the timeliness of these supposed Hollywood endorsements (all they said was that the berry itself had anti-oxidant qualities) and prey on people who do not know everything they need to know to look for in an Internet scam.

Please, if you have been caught in this web of acai berry deceit, leave a comment and feel free to leave links to the sites that tried to or succeeded in sucking you in. Let’s expose as many of these frauds as possible.

And before you decide to just give it a shot anyway, understand that when you want to cancel your acai berry “free trial”, or if you have questions about use, your phone calls are routed to outsourced calling centers in India. I have no problem with this practice per se, as many companies do it; but the specific call centers for this product are instructed to give you misleading information and read from a very strict script — meaning that they try to outlast you and get you to stay signed up or not issue refunds. How do I know? I just listened to my mom talking on the phone with them for over an hour.

Okay, I’m done venting now. Time to go watch basketball. Hopefully the right people see this post and refrain from getting suckered by this and future scams.

Moral of the story: If a site that you do not know is trying to get you to sign up for a “risk-free” trail, do your homework first. Online commerce is very safe and practical, as long as you buy from sites that are legitimate and trustworthy. Sites that look like the ones above, and that make bogus claims about “risk-free” trials and celebrity endorsements, are just trying to capitalize on the naivete of unsavvy users.

Bastards.

Don’t get suckered by the Oprah-acai berry scam. If they don’t have links to vendors on Oprah.com, rest assured that the product is not officially endorsed by Oprah and that your “risk-free” trial will result in plenty of unnecessary and unexpected charges and headaches.