Home Consumer Feds Charge Online Marketing Scheme with Deceiving Shoppers!

Feds Charge Online Marketing Scheme with Deceiving Shoppers!

relief

Did you get scammed by an online shopping group that according to the Feds was just looking to rip off your credit card information and rack up unexpected charges?

“Buyer Beware” in the Digital Age is more critical than ever as scams are super-charged on the internet!!

The FTC says, “the defendants asked people for their credit card information to cover shipping and handling, and then charged them for products and services without their consent. The FTC’s complaint alleges that Brian Bernheim, Joshua Bernheim, Jared Coates, Robert Koch AAFE Products Corp., JBE International LLC, BSDC Inc., KADC Inc., Purestrike Inc., and BNRI Corp., formerly known as Bernheim and Rice Inc., violated the FTC Act and the Restore Online Shoppers’ Confidence Act.

According to the complaint, the defendants’ websites, TV infomercials and email deceived consumers by prominently claiming that their products and services were free, without clearly disclosing that they would start charging consumers if they did not cancel their “free trial” or return the “free” products. They also misrepresented their return, refund and cancellation policies. Specifically, they buried these terms in pages of fine print that people could reach only through a tiny hyperlink.”

You can read the FTC release HERE

[vc_message message_box_style=”3d” message_box_color=”blue”]By Al Sunshine, SouthFloridaReporter.com, Consumer Investigator, Mar. 25, 2017[/vc_message]
Al Sunshine is a South Florida-based Broadcast and Digital Journalist whose career has spanned more than 40 years at the local and national levels. His award-winning investigations have triggered more than a dozen state and local consumer protection laws and his work’s been cited in Congressional Testimony before the U-S House of Representatives. He is best known for his “Shame On You” features for CBS Miami which sought to expose businesses, agencies and individuals defrauding or deceiving consumers, as well as endangering the safety and welfare of the general public. In 2013 Al retired from CBS Miami to set up his own Digital News Business, “Sunshine News, LLC” and Al continues to blog for the Radio, Television, Digital News Association, sponsors of the prestigious Edward R. Murrow Awards”. An avid environmentalist, Al is one of the founding members of the “Miami Pine Rocklands Coalition”. The Florida Non-Profit is fighting to save and restore the last 2% of Pine Rocklands found only in South Florida and nowhere else in the continental United States. Al was recently elected its President.