Acai Berry, Colon Cleanse, and Now There's Sensa: Do Any of Them Help with Weight Loss?

By now, everyone who has searched for an effective diet pill or appetite suppressant online, has run across the Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse products, being literally plastered everywhere you look on the internet. I have seen various versions of Acai Berry described as Acai Berry Extreme, Acai Berry Detox, Acai Berry XL, coupled with Colon Cleanse products promoted as Total Cleanse and Intracleanse, just to name a few. Now there is something called Sensa, a totally different type of diet product, which we'll discuss in a moment. Just about everywhere you surf on the net, you see links for how to "gain a flat stomach," "obey this simple rule for getting a flat stomach," or "lose 25 lbs. in 25 days." According to published statements on the net, the weight loss industry is a "$55 billion industry," and apparently has far more than its share of con artists. I say this because I can find no proof anywhere on the internet, on TV, or in any newspaper or magazine suggesting that Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse products, as advertised in these phony diet blogs such as Jenny's Weight Loss Blog work.

Every one of these phony weight loss blogs continue to claim that Oprah Winfrey, Rachael Ray, and Dr. Oz, in some combination, have made statements that endorse Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse products when Oprah and Rachael Ray's websites have put out disclaimers. Oprah specifically says at her website that she "does not endorse online Acai Berry products," and Rachael Ray says that "use of her photo in connection with the sale of Acai products is not authorized." You would think that if consumers knew the truth about the phony celebrity endorsements, that they would steer clear of involving themselves with these "free trials" of the Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse products. But the hucksters who sell these products are good at parsing words, saying things like, "Oprah swears by it," and that Rachael "calls it a great superfood," and that "Dr. Oz said it gives you more energy," but notice nowhere in any of these snippets do you find any direct endorsement of Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse as weight loss products, nor do you find any specific endorsement of the latest version of Acai Berry being sold, be it Acai Berry Extreme or Acai Berry Detox.

It would be closer to the truth to plainly state that these venders of Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse online, are engaging in a legalized form of identity theft. They have "borrowed" the identities of Oprah, Rachael, and Dr. Oz, by claiming they support these products, and then tell you that you can "try these products out for free," for $4.95 shipping and handling. Consumers are under the illusion that they just have to pay the shipping and handling charges on their credit card, and can later make a decision to buy more product if they are satisfied. And if a consumer has trouble making up his mind about the free trial and tries to close the window on his computer, a pop-up window usually appears, offering to "lower the shipping and handling charge to $1.95, or some other number that seems much lower than the $4.95," to try to give buyers the impression that the sellers of these bogus products really want you to try them. The whole objective is for the sellers to get your credit card number, even if it's just to charge ten cents, so that they can start adding more charges to your card in seven to ten days, under the negative option or assumed consent clauses. Within seven to ten days of signing up for a "free trial," your credit card typically gets charged another $87.13 for the Acai Berry. And if you signed up for Colon Cleanse, it usually charges you another $79.00 or so, bringing the total to over $160.00 for the two "free products" you just decided to try. When you finally decide to cancel these monthly auto-shipping charges, you usually have to call two different customer service numbers who are anything but committed to helping you cancel. If you are lucky enough to get a customer service person on the phone and you can understand them, you still may not be lucky enough to get them to credit the "right" credit card number, and thus you may get the wrong "confirmation number" cancelling your Acai Berry order, causing a few more auto-shipping charges of $87.13 a pop to continue to appear on your credit card statement.

These magic diet pills and supplements seem to appear under just about any kind of name and make just about any kind of promise that they think will appeal to you. Many of them falsely claim movie actors use their products. These diet pill and supplement sellers, usually always have a small disclaimer at the bottom that nobody can read without a magnifying glass, saying that there were no "direct statements made" by any of their celebrity endorsers, endorsing their products, and my personal favorite, "the Food and Drug Administration have not evaluated the claims made by the sellers of this product." The modus operandi is always the same with these modern-day snake oil salesmen: get the customer's credit card number under any pretense, even if you have to lower the shipping charges to $1.29, so that you can create a contract with the buyer in which the buyer is forced to take action to stop charges.

How many of you, who thought that Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse products would help you lose weight, would have tried this stuff if the sellers had said: "Pay us $4.95 for shipping and handling now, then pay us $87.13 a month for the Acai Berry pills in two weeks, and another $79.00 for the Colon Cleanse in two weeks, and give us six months to see if the products work, while we continue to keep charging you $166.13 every month for a 30-day supply of both, plus the $4.95 shipping charge. Unless you contact our customer service number to let them know you want to cancel, and IF you're even able to contact them before we disconnect the phone, we will continue to keep charging you for the pills on your credit card." While I'm being a bit facetious about the phone being disconnected, it's not much of an exaggeration. Many people report half hour waits and longer, trying to get through to a customer service number. Most people express complete surprise that their credit card is being charged over $160.00 in two separate charges, when they thought they would have the right to try the products first before committing to thirty-day supplies.

It's safe to say that, given the difficulty involved in disputing a credit card charge, and given that some people with marginal credit won't risk contacting their credit card company to make an adjustment, that venders of Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse have no intention of helping you lose any weight, but have every intention of trying to bilk people on their credit card as quickly as possible after the free trial begins, before consumers discover the charges on their statements.

Ask yourself the simple question, if these diet products were so effective, then why aren't the purveyors of these shoddy goods patient enough to wait for YOU to make the decision to buy more of them after you've been given a legitimate two-week trial, without being forced to stop unauthorized charges to your credit card?

Not satisfied with just scamming people with the Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse products, now there is Sensa, a new diet product that apparently is trying to be the "next generation" of diet scam product. Sensa claims to help you lose weight by just "sprinkling" the product on all your food as some sort of "tastant." Indeed, Acai Berry has even been sold in "patch form," promising to bypass enzymes in the stomach and go directly to the fat cells for an accelerated weight loss effect. The patches are usually sold along with "Green Tea." Sensa also offers a free trial, and after the initial $4.95 or $1.95 shipping and handling charge, depending on which sales pitch lures you in, your credit card starts getting hit for about $88.00 a month. It seems the fraudsters who sell these diet pills, patches, tastants, and/or supplements all try to keep the charge per product under $100.00 but close, so as to extract the maximum amount of money they can, without risking serious consumer fraud charges. In other words, there must be something in the law somewhere that says if you scam someone for more than $100.00, it rises to the level of a greater severity of fraud, then if you just scam someone for $89.99.

The sad truth seems to be with many of these diet products and even many other health related products such as male enhancement pills, is that there is no truth in advertising. As long as someone can afford to pay for advertising, they can seemingly get away with claiming that everyone from Oprah to President Barack Obama endorses their product, without any fear of retribution from the Federal Trade Commission. All that many of these online fraudsters seem to do, is watch the tabloids and look for pictures of celebrities on recent copies. So if you see a lot of pictures of Angelina Jolie or Jennifer Anniston on the latest copy of the National Enquirer, you're likely to see the same pictures in advertisements for Acai Berry and Colon Cleanse, claiming endorsement. Just like celebrity marriages don't seem to last, neither should consumer confidence in any of these snake-oil diet pills last without some sort of legitimate free trial and without some sort of verification that they work from a reliable source