Too Good To Be True? Cedar Rapids Woman Spends Weeks To Cancel Diet Pill Trial

CEDAR RAPIDS – Dotti Burke says she works out for hours at the downtown YMCA and is losing weight, about 40 pounds since February.

Which explains why she was intrigued by this: The Acai Optimum and Advanced Cleanse - both diet supplements she found for a free trial on the Internet.

“I tried them for four days and then I started to get hives,” said Burke after the shipment arrived in mid-April.

Because of her reaction after taking the pills, Burke scratched that plan and just tried to get her money back. Here is what she was on the hook for:

- $79.95 a month for the Acai Optimum

- $12.95 monthly for Advanced Cleanse

- $169.95 as a one-time fee the Advanced Cleanse.

Unless she was able to cancel within a certain time period: 20 days for the Acai Optimum and 14 days for the Advanced Cleanse

Yet she says she ran into real trouble when trying to cancel. “It takes you 20 to 30 minutes on the phone just for them to tell you the same thing everyday,” said Burke.

Burke said the company didn't have any information on her when she would call.

But they did have the charges for her to pay. Nearly $160 for the items and her credit card did not cancel the charges.

“I received a letter that they're not able to put a block on them because merchants give them a certain code to allow or not allow blocking,” said Burke of the letter dated April 19.

On the website, www.ComplaintsBoard.com, we found about 100 other postings from people making the same claim on the same products. After all this, Burke gave it one more try on Monday afternoon.

After giving her zip code, name and email address again, this try held a different result. The company gave Burke another toll-fee number to call and after giving the information again, a surprising breakthrou

“It has already been successfully cancelled,” said the voice on the phone, much to Burke's surprise.

After weeks of trying and, according to Burke, about 20 hours of making phone calls to the company and the Iowa Attorney General's office, she told us she's still concerned the company could charge her again next month.

We spoke with that last customer representative, who said it should never be a problem to cancel an account but, when asked to be transferred to a supervisor, our connection was cut.

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