If you ever decide to buy something from these wackos, NEVER EVER give them your financial information unless you're ready to hand over control of your bank account to someone else.
WHAT MAKES THESE APPEALING:
Some of these commercials are crazy with celebrity endorsements, overseas testimonies and medical diagnoses that are all supposed to add an infallible degree of truth to whatever product they're trying to hook you in for. Some of the products you'll find are as follows:
Boner-helpers - you have to get up extra early to see the giggly ladies latched on to some pimp, all going on about how their product helped them tremendously. If that doesn't convince you, we'll bring in some old guy with a mail-order degree in some line of medicine (a retired x-ray tech, I think) who will give his professional testimony about how the product is designed to work successfully for anyone. Cue the middle-aged overweight guys with the old ladies by their side all faking a shy smile as they go on and on about how this product reignited their love life. They use all the same types of people for boner pills and for the vacuum pump commercials. And hey! Your insurance might even cover the cost of the pump! Call now.
"You're Too Fat" Products
These can be anything from pills, to strap on electrical devices, to extreme exercise DVD series, or super-secret literature about eating everything you're eating now, but still lose weight. What's THAT about?! If I'm eating everything I'm eating right now, shouldn't I already be losing weight?! Not buying it. I could also order some DVD series about losing weight as I learn to dance to whatever they're calling music these days. The DVD library is a couple hundred bucks, but hey - they'll give it to me for half a dozen easy payments of something-ninety-nine. And if I order now, I'll also get something even more expensive and a whole lot more useless that I'll have to pay double for shipping separately.
Convenience Products
Vegetable peelers, cloth rags that supposedly absorb gallons of liquid, food preparation products that let you magically produce chef-quality dishes with little-to-no-effort. Why are the people in these commercials always talking like car salesmen? Why do they have to shout? And why is their audience always so happy and chipper? (Uhm, cause it's a fake audience.)
With all these products, you always get hooked into giving them your personal financial information. At that point, you're pretty much screwed because:
* they'll keep taking money out of your account without you wanting it,
* the disclaimers they mumble off sign you up for all sorts of additional crap you don't want,
* they can send you whatever they want no matter how many times you decline, and
* it takes an act of Congress to get them to stop taking money out of your account
Did they promise you a refund? Good luck with that! Your odds are better with a scratch-off lotto ticket.
So, while infomercials are fun to watch for their creative efforts, NEVER give them your financial information if you decide to buy something. The safest thing to do is either pay with a money order and mail the payment in - at this point they're obligated to send you the product and they can't touch your bank account. OR use one of those disposable credit cards where the amount of money in there is strictly controlled, and you don't get hit with overdraft charges if they decide to take more money than you had originally agreed upon.
After you talk to the operator taking your order who seems to be numb from the neck up, or who's a little too friendly and eager to get your payment information - verify that you ONLY order that product and your are NOT being signed up for any trial subscriptions, samples, or products. (They love sneaking in that crap!)
Happy Shopping!
