Beware scam re Raspberry Ketones slimming pills

Ilovecats

Hi, unwittingly I purchased the above along with Aloe Colon Cleanse at the end of November; the advert said all you had to pay was the postage for a month's supply. There was no mention that you had 14 days to cancel etc. I would say I have not touched them, they are still unopened. When I checked my bank account yesterday I discovered that £79.95 had been debited out of my account twice!! When I went onto the internet I discovered that this has happened to lots of people. I paid by debit card so I am assuming that I will not get my money back. I phoned a number but all I got was 'this number is not being recognised'. What am I going to do now? Is there any way I can stop other payments coming out of my account or reclaim my monies back?? Can someone give me some advice/help please?? I cannot afford this type of fraud, because that is what it is. Please please help. :mad:

DCFC79

There is already a thread about this, have a read of it. Plenty of posters have posted on the first thread how to get a refund.

wealdroam

Have you thought about searching the forum for ketones?

I've just done that and found that ketones are mentioned on one hundred and fifty four threads on these fora.

Here are a few recent ones which do contain the answers you are looking for:

Have i been scammed?? Raspberry Ketone Fresh

Slimtone plus Raspberry Ketone - free trial - NOT! (another Nutrascience)

Ketone Premium/Cleanse premium

Ketone premium taken over £100 with no product! HELP!

Good luck.

hollydays

What's this thing about ketones? What's it about. Why not just lose weight by eating healthier?

j0nathon2

This. Unless you can prove the T&C you agreed to are illegal or misleading or against Visa/MasterCard rules, you must not raise a chargeback.

I find it somewhat funny that the person is proposing to commit fraud, against the law, to try and get money back from something that while, in my opinion, is clearly a scam, is actually legal.

EDIT: MSE have removed the post I originally referred to, so I will leave this but clearly it makes no sense out of the context that I won't re-introduce.

Antispam

Its a nice marketing way to get people unfortunately to depart there hard earned cash to scammers. I believe there is no real definitive evidence to support ketone actually helps reduce weight. I dare say they may be a few doctors whether real or fictitious that claim to support this product. I dare say some will have a nice little wad of cash to claim it works

"The only research on the effect of raspberry ketones on fat are a handful of animal studies. The studies were done over the last 10 to 15 years. Researchers looked at the effect of raspberry ketones on rats, mice and rabbits."

hollydays wrote: »

What's this thing about ketones? What's it about. Why not just lose weight by eating healthier?

madchef

Thank you Money Expert, I had realised my stupidity after paying them and immediately got a replacement card but after reading the posts I decided to ring my bank, Barclays. They are reissuing me another card with a block on the previous one and have assured me that the company will not be able to take any more monies from my account, fingers crossed this will be so.

kellys1980

Ilovecats wrote: »

Hi, unwittingly I purchased the above along with Aloe Colon Cleanse at the end of November; the advert said all you had to pay was the postage for a month's supply. There was no mention that you had 14 days to cancel etc. I would say I have not touched them, they are still unopened. When I checked my bank account yesterday I discovered that £79.95 had been debited out of my account twice!! When I went onto the internet I discovered that this has happened to lots of people. I paid by debit card so I am assuming that I will not get my money back. I phoned a number but all I got was 'this number is not being recognised'. What am I going to do now? Is there any way I can stop other payments coming out of my account or reclaim my monies back?? Can someone give me some advice/help please?? I cannot afford this type of fraud, because that is what it is. Please please help. :mad:

I got it all the money back on chargeback against the vendors merchant account. If was visa card i think it can be either a debit or credit card you paid with . What i found and proved is that they have multiple checkout pages some with terms and conditions indicating an agreement to autoship and some which dont. You may after you purchased go back to the main site and "think" you missed the terms and conditions saying its autoship but i can assure you that they definitely have pages with NO autoship ot terms even disguised in guarantee text

So put in writing to your back or credit card you dispute the card not present transactions as you did not authorise and agree to any thing on the checkout page you purchased from . Your bank will then ident against the vendors merchant account and the vendor has a company whose job it is to defend the vendor . However fortunately they are useless, albeit persistant and they send screenshots of the wrong website with the wrong ammounts and which show terms and conditions on. So when you get that write back again and tell the back thats not the page you purchased from as the one you purchased from had no terms at all . Visa who it will eventually get escalated to will know the criminals are revolviong checkout pages as i showed them a series some with terms and some with none

It will help if you get a letter from tarding standards saying its in their opinion a scam (although i didnt as i had enough proof as i took screenshots of the fake websiets and non visa compliant checkout pages). It woudl look better if you also reported to action fraud as you cna say its gota crime reference number as its going to be harder for the vendor to defend

You have to write the first letter to your debot or credit card privider within 120 days and demand a chargeback as otherwise you may miss the opportunity

kellys1980

Ilovecats wrote: »

Hi, unwittingly I purchased the above along with Aloe Colon Cleanse at the end of November; the advert said all you had to pay was the postage for a month's supply. There was no mention that you had 14 days to cancel etc. I would say I have not touched them, they are still unopened. When I checked my bank account yesterday I discovered that £79.95 had been debited out of my account twice!! When I went onto the internet I discovered that this has happened to lots of people. I paid by debit card so I am assuming that I will not get my money back. I phoned a number but all I got was 'this number is not being recognised'. What am I going to do now? Is there any way I can stop other payments coming out of my account or reclaim my monies back?? Can someone give me some advice/help please?? I cannot afford this type of fraud, because that is what it is. Please please help. :mad:

One thing i forgot to mention is that it may help you identify the actaul site you purchased from, ie perhaps led to it via facebook advert then a fake magazine site then a product page . If was led to it by a fake magazine and can be proved you are o your way to winning a charge back against the criminals

To find out if you can identify the page you looked at go to History on your computer and if you are lucky you may still have the pages there to identify from which fake newsmagazine you were led to it. Oftemn within the urls they have slightly diffenrent urls to revolve the non visa compliant checkout pages

so look in you computer history you may be lucky and find its not set to delete after a week and may still be there

wealdroam

kellys1980 wrote: »

One thing i forgot to mention is that it may help you identify the actaul site you purchased from, ie perhaps led to it via facebook advert then a fake magazine site then a product page . If was led to it by a fake magazine and can be proved you are o your way to winning a charge back against the criminals

To find out if you can identify the page you looked at go to History on your computer and if you are lucky you may still have the pages there to identify from which fake newsmagazine you were led to it. Oftemn within the urls they have slightly diffenrent urls to revolve the non visa compliant checkout pages

so look in you computer history you may be lucky and find its not set to delete after a week and may still be there

Thanks for those suggestions Kelly.

Using the same techniques, can you please identify those checkout pages that you have found that do not have the autoship terms and conditions on them.

I am sure that information would be a great help to many.

kellys1980

wealdroam wrote: »

Thanks for those suggestions Kelly.

Using the same techniques, can you please identify those checkout pages that you have found that do not have the autoship terms and conditions on them.

I am sure that information would be a great help to many.

Hi Wealdrom,

Thank you for your sugestion to give some details of how we reclaimed the money and accordingly i have tried to put a few further details on the one I was involved in disputing and hopefully will help some of you get money back. I think normally you have to start the dispute with 120 days but it may be more in exceptional circumstances but I dont know

I have put urls in and found that links get stripped on the forum so you need to delete the bits in brackets and put url together afterwards. I cnat think how else to communicate it but if people cant find Ild put the screenshots on flikr

Unfortunately although all the scams are made by one person the details I give here only appy to the scam I mention below but there may be similarities with other scams and sadly ones which wil happen in the futre

Actually it wasnt me that got scammed and I was helping someone who was scammed.

However I can confirm that with my help they have now got about £380 back in last few days as I was able help to prove the scammers did not meet Visa guidelines...so the the entire ammount has been given back to my friend via Visa chargebacks.

Yipeeeeeeeeeee! A HUGE relief as we were seriously stresed over losing so much money to lying criminal thiefs and glad we won :-)

What is especially gratifying is that because the raspberry ketone criminals deliberately keep the ammounts for each transaction below £100 for each transaction to try to avoid various laws it means they will have had in my case got SIX charge backs so hopefully will have cost them up to maybe as much as an additional $600 on top of refund via Visa the fees for chargebacks may be as high as $100 each :-)

Moreover the more chargebacks they get the more likely they will get thown off their merchant account, although sadly as they operate through about 100 companies they will come back again.

However the more chargebacks these criminals get, besides getting your money back the harder it will become for these scum to operate as it will become harder for them to get a merchant account. Actually the one I was helping with I estimate they stole maybe half a million pounds over five days and so it is the vendors merchant account that takes the risk as it is liable if that company has to repay all the money if it is found to have breached Visa guidelines

The particular one I am aware and had been helping on of was from a facebook advert which linked to http ( I Put in space here as links get stripped on this forum so remove this ) / ( I Put in space here as links get stripped on this forum )inwomenshealthmag.com/denise/?t202id=129&c1=3802&t202kw

In fact the vendor scum have already breached Visa guidlines with the fake womens health magazine as every line is a lie designed to con you !

From that fake womens health page please click on raspberry ketone offer . On that page enter dummy imformation such as address phone number and you will go to the checkout page

On that page in fact it does not meet Visa guidelines in my opinion but the realy clever bit is that when they pump a few grand on to facebook adverts they for a short period run that same page with no any agreements or terms at all . I guess if they spend may ten thousand on facebook adverts over twenty four hours they dont during that period want any barriers to sales

What happens is then the buyer finds the extra payments taken from their card, phone up either the vendor customers service or the bank who are told that the site does meet guidlines as it has a checkbox to say customer saw terms and conditions

You as a customer then look at the site and think Gosh how did i miss those terms and conditions and think maybe it was your own fault so dont pursue as much as you would if you knew the truth

Anyway frome teh fake womens health magazine go to buy raspberry ketone and then fill in the dummy information and you go to the checkout page which has terms disguised in the Guarantee whihc is bad enough

But look carefull at the url of that page and where it within the url shows the words "offer05" change them to "offer10" and yu will find the page with no terms at all

https: ( I Put in space here as links get stripped on this forum so remove this ) // ( I Put in space here as links get stripped on this forum so remove this ) ketoneslimxt. ( I Put in space here as links get stripped on this forum so remove this ) com/offer10/order.php?prospectId=1123775&shipcountry=IE&cid=463&AFID=&AFFID=4001&SID=&TID=&AID=&click_id=&C1=137&C2=3802&C3=

Now as yuo will see ion that page there is NO terms at all and what happens is when you buy you then get to next page which offers additional products as an upsell

Its a very very clever scam as they revolve the checkout pages with the one which is ketoneslimxt. ( I Put in space here as links get stripped on this forum so remove this ) com

If it was from the sites i mentioned as many of you were (if different you may find the links in your computer "history" .

My advice is write to bank or credit card provider saying you want a complete refund and explain that the vendor has multiple checkout pages and the one you purchased from did not have any terms or agreements on it... I believe you need to have started the dispute within 120 days normally but I may be wrong and it may be more

Then when you get a letter back from bank saying the vendor is defending theior claim write back and conform you are escalating the dispute

The vendor may have hired a company to defend against the chargeback however you have the advantage as you can offer screenshots of the pages that are with out terms and conditions or any agreement. Im my case we were able to also point out that on the checkout page i mentioned there is also the womens health logo etc which proves the person who made the fake womens health magazine is same person as made the website

now when the vendors chargeback defence form writes to the bank defending their claim theyw ill say it meets Visa guidelines and provide screenshots of the ketoneslimxt. (delete this ) com which is indeed compliant with Visa guidelines a sit has a checkbox saying you agree to autoshipping terms and conditions

So at that stage you write back and show screenshots of all the other checkout pages with no terms and conditions which proves you are right and they are lying and if its the same link as I mention its basically like showing to the bank you have caught a thief with their hand in the till and there is no way they can defend further as you will have proved they are liars that revolve the checkout pages between Visa compliant pages and non Visa compliant pages and make fake magazines

Good luck to any one disputing these criminals who have stolen money from you . You need to be persistant with the bank and give all the details to prove that the site you purchase from does not meet Visa Guidlines. Dont expect your money back with just one letter, expect to write at least four . If like me you find proof in the website urls of the deception i sugest after you have started a written dialogue to make a note of the bank person/department you are dealing with email and send by email as well as on paper because the incriminating urls are so long when the send to either Visa or the Vendors merchant account by fax (as they are sent overseas by fax as teh criminals are in USA ) no one will be able to enter the urls to see your proof as its too hard from a paper copy let alone a faxed copy . If you request the electronic version is sent also so they can copy paste the urls with your proof. It may also be worthwhile informing action fraud also if only as you can mention a crime reference number which gives weight to your claim

Hope this helps, i think Im right in saying that the charge back scheme is ok with debit and credit cards and applies in this case as the criminals make every transaction below £100 to avoid the laws relating to transactions over £100

You do have to be persistant and it may take three months before you win and get your money back but as this site says then you will be a money saving expert! Moreover as each transaction they do is split between multiple smaller paymnents and accounst they get six chargebacks for every case you guys win and the more chargebacks they gets the sooner they shut down

I think that once you make clear how they operate if they do in the same way as they did in mine you will win if you can prive what they are doing

I think that there is no laws that can prevent this happening. However Visa and Mastercard have no wish to help criminals and obviously dont want vendors abusing their Merchant Accounts so dont look upon the dispute process as you against Visa/Mastercard as they will want to shut down embezlers and fraudsters as if they dont everyone will loose confidence in using their debit and credit cards