Acai Berry Supplements - Warning & Scams

Here are some things to watch out for when buying Acai products ...

Acai Autoship & Free Acai Trials | Acai Extracts or Concentrates | Poorly Processed Acai
As Seen on TV Acai | The Oprah Endorsement | Over-Priced Acai

 

Acai "Autoship", "Monthly Ordering Plans", "Free Trials"

This is actually a good idea when you know you've got a good Acai product, want it regularly, and can easily cancel your subscription (which is very often not the case unfortunately) ... How it works:

You sign up for a monthly automatic delivery of Acai, with your payment taken from your card/bank automatically.

Many companies offer this option (we do not). Unfortunately, some companies out there make it very hard to cancel your order, with people having to resort to cancelling their credit cards to stop payments being deducted.

If you want an autoship/monthly plan, contact the company first. Make sure they have a telephone number, address and email address you can use to contact them on should you want to cancel. Or better still, find a company and product you like and just order monthly!

The "Free Trial" Autoship

This is when Acai marketing can get very "dirty". You are offered what seems a great deal, a Free trial of Acai, perhaps just paying the postage and packing (though legally, if it's a free trial, there should be absolutely no charge).

You sign up for the trial, but don't read the small print ... You haven't just signed for a freebie, you've signed up for a monthly autoship. If you don't cancel your subscription (and it's never made obvious that you were subscribing) within 14 days, not only are you going to get charged for your free trial ... you are also going to be sent Acai each month.

And you can't cancel the payment your end with your Bank. It has to be cancelled by the company you are ordering from! Try contacting some of them, and then you discover how difficult that can be.

The other rip-off is what you're getting charged! These companies are charging up to £80 a bottle, and that's generally for cheap Acai extract with no certification. That is over three times the cost of our Acai.

Avoid Free Acai Trials ... They are hard to cancel, and generally offer cheap quality Acai.

 

Acai Concentrate 4:1

There are companies selling Acai extract or concentrate, quoting a ratio of 4:1, with anything up to 1,200mg per capsule.

That's fine ... but remember 4:1 does not mean that it's 4 times more powerful.
4:1 is the ratio between fresh unprocessed Acai, and dry processed Acai.
So 1 kilo of fresh Acai fruit, when processed, makes 250g.

All Acai is processed, with the majority of processed Acai used generally being at 4:1.

When a product says that it is an "extract" or "concentrate", that means it is using the 4:1 ratio with an advertised 500mg capsule actually only containing 125mg. Similarly, a 1500mg capsule would only have 375mg. Not quite the exciting "powerful" product you initially imagined.

Compared to these companies, several (including Pure Acai™) offer "full powder" capsules, where a 500mg capsule actually contains 500mg! If you were to use the marketing other companies used, you could say that each capsule had 2000mg.

Although you may have to read the above a few times to understand it clearly,
IT IS VITAL TO KNOW WHAT YOU ARE BUYING WHEN COMPARING PRICES

Pure Acai™ - 120 capsules of 500mg full powder at £18.97 (inc P&P) -
This equals 60g of Acai at 32.6p per gram

Other Brand - 60 capsules of 1,200mg 4:1 at £9.97 (plus P&P) -
This equals 18g of Acai at 55p per gram. (plus P&P)

 

Not Freeze-Dried Acai

Freeze-dried Acai should be your only choice when buying Acai. Other manufacturing processes severely harm the Acai and should be avoided. You can read more about the different types of Acai processing here.

 

Acai "As Seen on TV"

You may have seen those red and white images which say "As Seen on TV" on several Acai websites. They are used to add "authority" to a product, implying that as it was (supposedly) seen on Television, so it must be a quality product.

The thing to note here is:

Was it the actual product that was seen on "TV"? More often than not, it was not their branded Acai product that was on "TV", but Acai itself being discussed. Some companies automatically put this image on their site to "mislead" visitors that their product has more authority as it was seemingly featured on some television program.

When you see this, check that it was their product. And, even if it was, still do your homework about the quality and guarantees being offered.

 

The Oprah Winfrey Endorsement

Let's get this straight, Oprah Winfrey has NEVER endorsed any specific Acai product.

Yes, it has been discussed on her show, but no branded Acai was mentioned. She was discussing the general qualities and potential health benefits of quality Acai on her shows, nothing else.

In fact, Oprah's lawyers are on a hunt for websites that claim she endorsed their product.

 

Over-Priced Acai

We've already talked about one Acai price rip-off when people fall for the Acai Free Trials.

But there are other ways that you can be forced to pay much too much for your Acai.

Talking just about the best quality Acai, the freeze-dried, organic, Fair Trade, with no additives (i.e. comparing to our Pure Acai™), prices for a bottle of 90 - 120 vegetarian capsules can be up to £45!

How come?! A very quick bit of a marketing lesson ...

How do companies promote their websites?

• Advertise on Search Engines, Newspapers, Magazines.
• Rely on being found in the Search Engine results.
• Use "affiliates" to promote their website in turn for commissions on all sales.

It's when companies use "affiliates" that you end up paying well over the odds for your Acai.

The company has to charge more to pay their affiliates, plus they charge more to pay for the advertising tools that their affiliates need to promote that website.

We know of several websites that pay their affiliates £10 plus per sale ... That is £10 that you SHOULDN'T HAVE TO PAY. By ordering from an Acai site that doesn't use affiliates (you guessed it ... we DO NOT use affiliates, so you aren't paying us to pay affiliates!), you are getting the best value products.

 

Have we missed anything? Let us know here so we can keep this page updated!