2008
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The idea behind a good direct marketing campaign is to acquire happy, repeat customers that purchase again and again and have a high lifetime value. Then there’s your scam artists who are out for the quick buck and lure you in with deceptive advertising. Some of them so deceptive that you’re credit card is charged month after month for a product you never agreed to purchase.
Such is the case with the company Intelligent Beauty, LLC, marketing a product called IQ Derma. As you can see from the ad above, we have a photo of the Bride of Godzilla who appears to have been magically transformed into a princess by using their skin care products. If these claims were actually substantiated, it would put plastic surgeons out of business. Take a closer look at the blue smudgy print to the right of the photo where it says Simulated Imagery … meaning … fake results. Take another look at this landing page from IQ Derma to see even more of their before and afters that say “Dramatization: Not Actual Results”. At least the print is more visible on the website than on the ads they have placed all over the Internet.
Now notice at the bottom of the photo to the left where the ad says Try it FREE. You might take that to mean that you actually get to try it for free. I’m not usually one to fall for scams or even try free trials, but it must have caught me at the right time because for the first time in my life, I sent away for their FREE trial. You have to give them your credit card number and $3.95 shipping to receive the free trial.
I received my free trial and thought great … that’s the end of that. I used it for awhile and wasn’t impressed in any way with the product and thought … well, glad it was a free trial since it is crap and doesn’t really do what it claims to do. Two months later, I receive an identical box to the first box. I opened it and scratched my head and said wtf? Why are they sending me another free trial? I just put the box in a closet since the first product had not been used. Two months later … yep … another box. This one I investigated more thoroughly. Hidden under wrapping and under a catalog was an invoice for $95.70. I was shocked to find that I had already been charged $95.70 for this box, the second box and the original “free trial” box for a total of nearly $300 charged to my credit card. Read the rest of this entry »
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