I've been dealing with a nightmare that has gone on for nearly 2 months and it looks as if it's going to still be weeks before I can finally put this 'episode' behind me.
I'd had a difficult few weeks, including a significant bereavement and decided I needed a bit of a pick-me-up! Anyhow, October 10th, reading blogs, following links, and a small advert about a suburban woman who combined 2 anti-ageing moisturizers together and within weeks lost about 20 years in age and angered doctors as it was more effective than botox(?) caught my attention. There's loads of them about, but I'm not going to name any names. Why? Read on...
The free sample of the first of these, (you only pay p&p. looked everywhere, no catches) Looks good, just what I need, I'm a single woman, 59 in December, don't give up hope yet.... Anyhow, did some google searches on the product, loads of hits came up, was reading them, all seemed ok. Paid the £1.99 p&p online with a debit card. Started looking for the second cream to make this magic formula, found it, googled it, all seemed good. This one cost a bit more, about £2.50 p&p. Still good. Ah, there's some terms and conditions... Damn, not recommended for people with high blood pressure or those with kidney disease, I have both. Was looking for a phone number and saw some very small text. Something about 2 weeks to cancel and then be charged the full price of £89 pm and you will automatically be sent a new months supply, every month?. Hang on! That's a bit steep.
Anyhow, the confirmation email of the 1st one has now come through. No mention of monthly payments, but there was a customer services number. Called straight away, told them I had seen the T&C of the 2nd cream and realized I couldn't use it as I have high blood pressure and kidney disease.... Blah blah blah, yes I know I can't get the p&p back, just wanted to cancel the order, don't want it as I can't use it. OK cancelled. You'll receive a cancellation email within 24 hours. Still waiting for that.
So the next day, I'm bemoaning the loss of the opportunity of using the miracle products, but relieved not to be paying £80 for it. So I start searching for the ingredients to see if I could find them in other products I could find sold in a more conventional way, like in a shop and come across a very interesting forum. A forum of people who have been scammed by this and similar companies. Most of them didn't get any products, most had £100s taken from their accounts, the performance of different banks to this issue, and some really informative people.
Basically, I've given my address, date of birth, email address and bank details to a complete and total thief and con artist. To cut a long story short, I didn't get the product, but within 6 weeks, nearly £260 had been taken out of my account. I've had to change my debit card, thankfully, as I informed my bank what had happened before unauthorised withdrawals were made, they are being really helpful. But the stress of checking my account every half hour for a couple of weeks was so high, it was almost a relief when the withdrawals were spotted. Then I found out all my friends on FaceBook were getting spammed adverts for all kinds of so called 'health related' supplements and treatments, acai berry weight reduction stuff, teeth whitening products, colon cleanse 'stuff', 'work at home and earn a fortune 'stuff' all with a personalized recommendation from me, all claiming I'm using and advocating the stuff and advising them to sign up for trials for the cost of p&p! I spent a week apologizing.
Last week I came back from a day in outpatients in my local hospital to find and email from my ISP to say they have quarantined an email for containing malware. Yep, saw a web mail image of it and it's the cancellation email from the company. By coincidence, overnight 70 emails from the same outfits/different companies flogging the stuff to my friends on FaceBook. All screaming to me to 'try' this wonder product just for the cost of the return p&p. And the next thing I know is that my laptop has slowed to a crawl and I only have about 6% of free space on my hard disk it's so full of malware and spy ware.
I'm so pissed off and stressed, I can't tell you. I'm waiting for the delivery for a new portable drive and then I'll have to waste a couple of days cleaning, backing up and copying my hard drive before I wipe it clean and totally re-install Windows, and that's an extra expense I can do without at the moment.
If you thought I didn't have a protected machine, you'd be wrong I had all kinds of anti virus and spyware on it and pay an extra few quid a month for my ISP to check all incoming traffic too. No the truth is I compromised all of the security I put in place, myself. The chances are, I was not buying anything worth having, even at the p&p price. A lot of people who apply don't get anything at all. The products, if you do get them will not live up to the claims. The aim of the adverts is not to sell, it's to get your bank details, tie you into a bogus monthly rip-off contract and get your personal details, access to your PC and sell through you. The whole international industry (Utah, Cyprus, Israel) is set up from top to bottom by scammers, they write the adverts, they write all the other 'sites' that come up in Google that discuss the product, they manipulate google analytics to make sure you pass on to their sites, they have bent lawyers working for them, they lie to legitimate companies to get their adverts posted in legal sites that sell advertising to 3rd party ad space sellers. It's a mind boggling racket that put's James Bonds adversaries to shame. It's a boiler-room share scams for the health conscious. Don't believe me? Check out
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/fake_news
http://strangelyperfect.tv/3311/watch-out-for-the-scam-double-bluff/
and to find out how people are responding to being scammed
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3475221&page=2
I gave out all of my essential information and contact details because at a moment of weakness, I was chasing a mirage. More than anything else I have trashed the image I had of myself as a prudent, careful, intelligent, savvy, well educated, confident, intelligent, mature woman. How about gullible, stupid, irresponsible, not safe to be left alone online with a debit card, idiot. Seems to fit somehow.
To anyone who's wondering where I am, catch you when I've got this sorted out.
I'd had a difficult few weeks, including a significant bereavement and decided I needed a bit of a pick-me-up! Anyhow, October 10th, reading blogs, following links, and a small advert about a suburban woman who combined 2 anti-ageing moisturizers together and within weeks lost about 20 years in age and angered doctors as it was more effective than botox(?) caught my attention. There's loads of them about, but I'm not going to name any names. Why? Read on...
The free sample of the first of these, (you only pay p&p. looked everywhere, no catches) Looks good, just what I need, I'm a single woman, 59 in December, don't give up hope yet.... Anyhow, did some google searches on the product, loads of hits came up, was reading them, all seemed ok. Paid the £1.99 p&p online with a debit card. Started looking for the second cream to make this magic formula, found it, googled it, all seemed good. This one cost a bit more, about £2.50 p&p. Still good. Ah, there's some terms and conditions... Damn, not recommended for people with high blood pressure or those with kidney disease, I have both. Was looking for a phone number and saw some very small text. Something about 2 weeks to cancel and then be charged the full price of £89 pm and you will automatically be sent a new months supply, every month?. Hang on! That's a bit steep.
Anyhow, the confirmation email of the 1st one has now come through. No mention of monthly payments, but there was a customer services number. Called straight away, told them I had seen the T&C of the 2nd cream and realized I couldn't use it as I have high blood pressure and kidney disease.... Blah blah blah, yes I know I can't get the p&p back, just wanted to cancel the order, don't want it as I can't use it. OK cancelled. You'll receive a cancellation email within 24 hours. Still waiting for that.
So the next day, I'm bemoaning the loss of the opportunity of using the miracle products, but relieved not to be paying £80 for it. So I start searching for the ingredients to see if I could find them in other products I could find sold in a more conventional way, like in a shop and come across a very interesting forum. A forum of people who have been scammed by this and similar companies. Most of them didn't get any products, most had £100s taken from their accounts, the performance of different banks to this issue, and some really informative people.
Basically, I've given my address, date of birth, email address and bank details to a complete and total thief and con artist. To cut a long story short, I didn't get the product, but within 6 weeks, nearly £260 had been taken out of my account. I've had to change my debit card, thankfully, as I informed my bank what had happened before unauthorised withdrawals were made, they are being really helpful. But the stress of checking my account every half hour for a couple of weeks was so high, it was almost a relief when the withdrawals were spotted. Then I found out all my friends on FaceBook were getting spammed adverts for all kinds of so called 'health related' supplements and treatments, acai berry weight reduction stuff, teeth whitening products, colon cleanse 'stuff', 'work at home and earn a fortune 'stuff' all with a personalized recommendation from me, all claiming I'm using and advocating the stuff and advising them to sign up for trials for the cost of p&p! I spent a week apologizing.
Last week I came back from a day in outpatients in my local hospital to find and email from my ISP to say they have quarantined an email for containing malware. Yep, saw a web mail image of it and it's the cancellation email from the company. By coincidence, overnight 70 emails from the same outfits/different companies flogging the stuff to my friends on FaceBook. All screaming to me to 'try' this wonder product just for the cost of the return p&p. And the next thing I know is that my laptop has slowed to a crawl and I only have about 6% of free space on my hard disk it's so full of malware and spy ware.
I'm so pissed off and stressed, I can't tell you. I'm waiting for the delivery for a new portable drive and then I'll have to waste a couple of days cleaning, backing up and copying my hard drive before I wipe it clean and totally re-install Windows, and that's an extra expense I can do without at the moment.
If you thought I didn't have a protected machine, you'd be wrong I had all kinds of anti virus and spyware on it and pay an extra few quid a month for my ISP to check all incoming traffic too. No the truth is I compromised all of the security I put in place, myself. The chances are, I was not buying anything worth having, even at the p&p price. A lot of people who apply don't get anything at all. The products, if you do get them will not live up to the claims. The aim of the adverts is not to sell, it's to get your bank details, tie you into a bogus monthly rip-off contract and get your personal details, access to your PC and sell through you. The whole international industry (Utah, Cyprus, Israel) is set up from top to bottom by scammers, they write the adverts, they write all the other 'sites' that come up in Google that discuss the product, they manipulate google analytics to make sure you pass on to their sites, they have bent lawyers working for them, they lie to legitimate companies to get their adverts posted in legal sites that sell advertising to 3rd party ad space sellers. It's a mind boggling racket that put's James Bonds adversaries to shame. It's a boiler-room share scams for the health conscious. Don't believe me? Check out
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/06/fake_news
http://strangelyperfect.tv/3311/watch-out-for-the-scam-double-bluff/
and to find out how people are responding to being scammed
http://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/showthread.php?t=3475221&page=2
I gave out all of my essential information and contact details because at a moment of weakness, I was chasing a mirage. More than anything else I have trashed the image I had of myself as a prudent, careful, intelligent, savvy, well educated, confident, intelligent, mature woman. How about gullible, stupid, irresponsible, not safe to be left alone online with a debit card, idiot. Seems to fit somehow.
To anyone who's wondering where I am, catch you when I've got this sorted out.
Sorry this happened to you, Bijoux. One moment of weakness and so many problems! I'm guessing this is why you didn't get a notice about &/or have time to get to my previous comment asking you for your email address... Contact me when you can. slipofagirl@gmail.com
ReplyDeleteI've been reading your comments at Slips lingerie blog for awhile and so thought I would pop over here. I read this story that is sadly all to common and I just wanted to say, you are way to hard on yourself. I realize this is just my opinion and it's free so there are all kinds of possible comments about its value but I don't think there is a human on this planet who hasn't let their guard down. I think your first comments about yourself are far more accurate than the "...gullible, stupid..." comments. Quit beating yourself up, you don't deserve it.
ReplyDeleteRick