The Internet is littered with websites claiming that they can offer pain relief – naturally. They offer all sorts of pills, potions, techniques and systems to help you cope with chronic pain. For example, there’s the “Pure Natural Healing” scheme that claims to teach you all about Chinese medicine — primarily accupressure. But it’ll cost you a whopping $40 for the information. However, as you’ll read below, you are getting played by clever, but greedy, marketers who are repackaging free information and they selling it to you for outrageously high prices.
In addition to Pure Natural Healing, recent Net offerings claim to cure your sciatica, fibroids, back and shoulders, just to name a few. Their slick websites ask for the “low price” of $35-39.95 for what appears to be an ebook or a “program” that “guarantees” pain relief. This is a textbook version of the numerous other $39.95 infoscams that have infected the Web over the last three years. The Pure Natural Healing marketers have opted to charge $39.95….which is pretty standard. (although if you refuse that offer, they’ll also sell the same “system” for $19 if you try to leave the page).
If this claim looks familiar, it probably is — it is almost identical to the questionable other pain relief offerings also hawked on the Internet — and it was probably conjured up by the same marketers. In some cases, one marketer may be offering a host of related products. A guy named Clayton Nee, for example, boasts that he has created Disease Less, Memory Healer, Weight Destroyer and Pound Melter. They almost all charge the mysteriously-set price of $37-39. (We’ve reviewed some of these scams and they are laughably bad) Here’s how it works: you are treated to a videomercial that touts the “proven way to lose weight; many of them are targeted specifically at women. Is it a scam? Is it a rip-off? Does it work? You’ll never find out, largely because of an increasingly pernicious Internet industry that uses fake product review sites to hide customer reactions. You’ll also never be able to find out about the credentials of the authors — none apparently exist on the Internet, nor are they provided at his own alleged web site. So, should you spend the $39.95? We recommend not, for the following reasons:
1. There’s a reason this sales pitch is slick — they spend a lot of marketing money to get it to you. Who is paying for that? You are. And, like many scammers, they are using Clickbank to sell their ebook so don’t assume you’ll get a refund. “Rock solid guarantee”…..don’t bet on it. The scammers bet on the fact that most consumers won’t seek refunds until after the 60-day period expires. In fact, they count on it.
2. If you look for a review of the product, you are deluged with lots of fake review or “scam” sites that simply direct you to the main sales site or offer some officious pablum talking about how the product is highly rated or recommended. The marketers for this service pay 75% commission for any referrals they generate. So these “affiliate marketers” create create fake review sites which effectively thwart any customer who is looking for real reviews. It is also a tactic to obscure any customers who have posted complaints or alerts about fraudulent claims. This affiliate marketing trick makes it very difficult for consumers to detect this and other such scams, As one persevering blogger has noted, scam artists rely upon these fraudulent reviewers to be using tags like: “does it work?”, “is it a scam?” or “verified review” to suck unsuspecting consumers into this fraud. In the case of the Pure Natural Healing, they are offering affiliate marketers the standard 75%, meaning of the $40 you fork over to these fraudsters, they paid $30 to the affiliate website that promoted this scheme.
3. In the case of the Pure Natural Healing, the alleged author of this plan is some guy named Kevin Richardson. The photo purported to be of him is just a Shutterstock image anyone can buy and use for anything! They offer no qualifications or credentials about the author, although they talk quite a bit about a “Master Lim” who created all of the secrets. If the creator of a diet won’t agree to be identified, it tells you something about the credibility of the “system”; there is none. Oh, and Master Lim? He doesn’t exist….at least, not according to Google. In the first pop-up page, the scammers went as far as quoting top universities (Harvard, Australia’s University of Western Sydney, Beijing University) celebrities (Gwyneth Paltrow, Jim Carrey, Julianna Moore and Robert Downey Jr.), who had on different times spoken favorably about Chinese traditional medicine. But don’t be deceived by this, as it is just a clever marketing strategy of stating a fact with the purpose of selling a fraud.
4. Whoever created this Pure Natural Healing scam is a great fan of stock photos. This is because ALL the testimonials featured on the website are stock photos bought from different stock photo websites … and there are a lot of them! For example, Anthony H. from Rochester, New York is a stock photo bought from Fotosearch.com, Margaret M. from Henderson, NV was bought from 123RF.com, Shane B. from Sioux Falls, SD was bought from Dreamstime.com while Megan White, a supposed breast cancer sufferer-turned cancer-free ‘for the past 12 years’, is a stock photo model whose photos you can buy at Shutterstock.com. As you can see, this scammer bought photos from at least 4 stock photo sites just for testimonials alone.
5. Perhaps most importantly, there is an abundance of free or low-cost pain relief resources available on line. Here are some additional free and reputable chronic pain-relief sources for you on the Net:
Acupressure.Com – all of the information about acupressure you need at NONE of the cost
Pain Management Resource – the non-profit American Chronic Pain Assoc. put out this comprehensive guide and referral guide.
Livestrong – A level-headed, researched summary of how to diagnose and treat chronic pain
Mayo Clinic – One of the more credible and well-regarded health institutes in the world
WebMD – This site also includes new treatments available to patients
Healthline – Lots of natural and free remedies are listed at this site.
There are also numerous FREE books at Amazon about chronic pain relief. Just type in “chronic pain” and sort the offerings by low-to-high price. Our bottom line: you don’t have to spend $40 to get information about how to lose weight. And beware ANY Net-based sales pitch that has uncredentialed, slick video presentations with no independent reviews. It may not be a scam, but it is probably a rip-off because it is overpriced for what it is offering. In this case, there’s lots of good pain relief information in the marketplace offered at a fraction of the cost of most weight loss schemes. Save your hard-earned money.
One additional warning: once you give them your money, you’ll be tagged as “meat”. Once they know that you’ll fall for this pitch, the same marketers will be coming back to you over and over and over for other such pitches. So understand that if you pay these marketers anything….let alone $40…..they’ll continue to hound you with more slick schemes designed to prey on your fears and concerns. Don’t open your door or wallet to them.