Live and learn and take a lesson from me :(

I've gone back and forth on whether I want to post about this, mainly because it's so embarrassing to me.  But if I can help anyone avoid a similar fate than I guess it's worth it, tho I doubt anyone would make my same mistakes.

I guess I'll preface it with the fact that usually I'm not very naive.  I don't click on things in random emails I receive, I don't even open those emails, I don't answer the phone when I don't know the number, and I never feel pressured by pushy sales people.  In fact, usually they only make me want to say no more.  Just ask Costco-they keep trying to make us upgrade to a higher plan, but it's only because we bought our treadmill there this year so it looks like we're spending WAY more than usual, but it was only a one time purchase-doesn't justify paying for a higher plan.

That having been said, I've never really had any experience with the "health industry".  Naturally cause I've always been healthy-ya know- to a normal degree.  I try to run every day, I may look at ingredients when I'm shopping and try to get the least processed option/no high fructose corn syrup etc, but I'll admit I don't go to whole foods, I eat things with gluten, I eat carbs, I don't eat green shakes, etc, and don't think i'll ever eat Kale or any other faddy veggie the new health professionals are pushing.  Not that there's anything wrong with that level of health, I just would rather live moderation in all things than jump to extremes plus i'm honestly too lazy to care THAT much.

So ALL of that having been said, I honestly don't know what happened to me this one day-I seriously must have had a blow to the head.  I was on facebook I think...and I see some article from a women's health magazine about some new asian fruit extract fad that's helping women everywhere shed the pounds.  The article is written by some staffer who tested it out, along with some colon cleanse product, to get ready for her wedding.  She went on and on about how it worked and how all her coworkers were jealous that she got the assignment etc.  At the end of the article was a link to a page that would get you a free 14 day trial of both-all you had to pay for was the shipping and handling.  The total for both came out to like 9 bucks.

Now, I don't really do fad diets.  I figure if you want to be healthy- eat less junk food/sweets, drink more water, and do some form of cardio every day.  If I had a nice weights set I'd say alternate between cardio and weight training.  That's it.  You don't need anything else. It may be hard and it may take a long time, but eventually you will see/feel results.  Since Jake I've had 10-15 lbs of extra weight that have been bugging me.  Since my birthday when I got my treadmill, I think I have lost some of that (I don't have a scale/really believe in scales), but I feel better and I'm noticing subtle changes.  I was tempted by this article.  It's all natural-some fruit extract that boosts your metabolism and the colon cleanse is "really healthy" for you.  It's just a 14 day trial- that's all I'd honestly need to loose my few left over lbs anyway, wouldn't need to buy anymore....and code and I budget a small slush fund for each of us every month so we dont' have to ask/can do whatever we want with it-i've even saved it over a few months time and bought me some toms shoes.  I love it.  So I thought meh, 9 bucks what the heck.

Now I'm sure by now you are all shaking your heads in disbelief and thinking, "whitney, whitney whitney..."  I know! (well, NOW I know).  I was dumb enough to assume that it was as simple as that. Well it wasn't and apparently, never is.  When I told Code about it later that night he asked, so are they going to charge you for anything else?  (even HE knew it was shady).  "no, no, just shipping and handling that's it-didn't say anything else about having to buy anything else."

So I get the stuff in the mail.  I realize pretty quickly that the colon cleanse is green coffee pills.  All natural yes, but not something I feel comfortable taking.  Oh well, it was just a free trial.  I was a little late so I wanted to wait and make sure I wasn't expecting before I took the other.  The next day code says that we've been charged 160 bucks worth of stuff from these companies.  WHA??? How could that be?!

After closer inspection, Of course as you all know I'm sure, somewhere buried in the terms and agreement page where NO ONE looks-cause people assume they're being honest about what they're selling, is the statement that if the customer doesn't call/email to cancel the subscription (that I didn't even know I had made) within 14 days of ordering, they will send you a fully-priced bottle every month and automatically charge you for it.  And because it's written in the fine print they can't get in trouble-it's my fault for not magically knowing that they were shady/criminals.

Needless to say I was furious.  i was able to get a hold of the carcingia, or whatever it's called, company pretty quickly and cancelled the subscription and got a partial refund.  The way they did it was, they send a full bottle of pills with 14 days worth deducted from the full price-for the first 14 days you are not charged and then they charge you for the rest of the bottle minus the 14 days worth of pills.  So you can't even get JUST 14 days worth of pills-how they get their hooks in you.  Getting a hold of the green coffee colon cleanse people was another story.  I went to their website and followed their instructions on refunds-by sending an email to a certain address which was suspiciously no longer working.  Luckily our bank let us know how to get ahold of them and since I had to use my debit card cause they didn't accept AMEX (gee wonder why) we had to cancel my debit card just in case in the future they don't listen and keep trying to charge us cause you can't dispute a debit card charge like a credit card.

So yeah.  I called the coffee people and canceled it and got a partial refund.  CROOKS!  So I am paying off the rest of it little by little every month with my slush fund (my terms not code's-i'm punishing myself for being so stupid.)  I prolly won't have fun slush money til next year sometime.
Sigh.....
So take a lesson from me- A.) don't fad diet/take pills-have the discipline to get and stay healthy the RIGHT way-the way that takes WORK and EFFORT.
and B.) don't trust ANY KIND OF HEALTH INDUSTRY PRODUCT-they're all scams and not worth the spike in blood pressure.

sigh.  live and learn.