The Dangers of Buying Dietary Supplements Online.
1. Buying Nutritional Supplements from Online marketing companies
Questions that need to be asked before buying from online supplement companies or 3rd Party retailers like Amazon.com:
a. Are they made from Synthetic or Whole-food sources?
b. How do I know that the supplement is really what I need?
c. Are there ANY tests conducted or recommended to know what supplements are right for me?
d. What assurances are made to the quality, purity and consistency of the products?
e. Is it affordable and a good value?
f. Are there any side effects and is it safe?
g. Is the manufacturing done in a quality-controlled environment, are all ingredients tested prior to production and is there quality control performed on each batch of product?
h. How do I know if the products contain the true parts of product advertised, ie, is it really Korean Ginseng or some root from some unknown plant or mostly unknown plant with just a little true Ginseng?
i. Can you trust the company and the manufacturing facility?
j. Am I left to figure out what I need or is there a medical professional to determine what is really best for me?
k. What research is listed that confirms the claims?
l. Can I trust that the labeling is not false or misleading?
Think about it! You generally can’t know the answers to any of these questions when buying from online companies. In fact, you don’t know the answers to these questions when buying from ANYONE- Discount Stores, grocery stores, large pharmacy chains, or your local health food store. That is why it is extremely important to know who you are buying from and trust that they can answer the above questions about the products they sell. It is equally important to know if the person who is selling the products is QUALIFIED to recommend the products being sold. Don’t go blindly buying products you know nothing about based on symptoms you have or some self-diagnosis you’ve made. Let a qualified health professional help you determine what is best for you.
2. Buying nutritional products off of Amazon.com – “DON’T!”
(From Natural News) A Natural News investigation has confirmed that Amazon.com (AMZN) is functioning as a retail “front” for a rapidly-expanding list of dietary supplement counterfeiters who profit by exploiting the Amazon.com trust factor to sell fake products to unsuspecting Amazon customers. This counterfeit operation does not appear to be the intention of Amazon.com itself, which is a widely-celebrated online retailer, but rather a result of Amazon’s inabilityto adequately police the tens of thousands of third-party sellers who sell products through the site.
Natural News, a consumer advocacy whistleblower news organization, has learned and confirmed that:
• Counterfeit dietary supplement companies are very easily able to repeatedly and successfully sell a multitude of counterfeit nutritional products through Amazon.com.
• Amazon.com is unable to adequately police these sellers.
• Amazon.com is currently unable to distinguish between legitimate (original) manufacturers of a product vs. a counterfeit manufacturer of a fake product.
• Amazon.com actually lends counterfeit products a high “trust factor” by assigning high star ratings to products which are wholly counterfeit (see explanation below).
• Amazon.com has allowed counterfeit companies to “hijack” its anti-counterfeiting policy, resulting in counterfeiters getting original manufacturers banned from Amazon as if they were counterfeiters.
Do not buy nutritional products from third-party sellers on Amazon.com
To be clear, Amazon.com is an impressive company in many ways, and Amazon.com remains my favorite online retailer. Amazon excels at inventory logistics, a positive online shopping experience and an impressive IT backbone that keeps the company humming along.
The risk of buying a counterfeit product through Amazon.com right now is simply too high.
Amazon.com counterfeiters use a network of ever-changing account names
Counterfeiters are able to exploit the Amazon.com e-commerce infrastructure by shifting from one seller name to another in chameleon-like fashion. If they get shut down under one account name, they have several others to fall back on, and they’re constantly adding new “throwaway” accounts to make sure they always have visibility on Amazon.com.
The fact that counterfeiters use fake ingredients to manufacture counterfeit products also means they have a much higher profit margin than the original manufacturers. This allows counterfeiters to often attain low-price leadership positions on Amazon.com, where resellers are recommended based on price sorting (low to high). Customers actually think they’re getting a bargain, even when they’re buying counterfeit nutritional products that Amazon.com has actually placed in the No. 1 position on these comparative lists.
Amazon.com star rating system can assign five stars to a counterfeit product
The Amazon.com star rating system can also grossly mislead consumers into thinking a counterfeit product has received a high user rating. This happens because Amazon assigns a star rating to ALL the products that it believes are identical, regardless of which seller is offering them. Thus, if Amazon.com can be tricked by a counterfeit seller into categorizing a counterfeit product as being identical to the original, genuine product, the counterfeit product will enjoy the high-star rating that users have actually assigned to the original product.
In this way, the counterfeit product in essence “hijacks” the high star rating advertised by Amazon.com.
One original product manufacturer told Natural News, “Amazon is allowing and supporting these acts of deception.”
Amazon does, after all, earn money on each and every sale regardless of whether the product is genuine or counterfeit. The fact that most nutritional supplements do not generate near-instant noticeable effects (like pharmaceuticals do) further plays into the ability of counterfeit manufacturers to exploit the Amazon.com e-commerce infrastructure for dishonest gains that can go unnoticed by customers for months or years.
Bottom line: Until Amazon.com clamps down on counterfeit products, do not buy nutritional products through Amazon.
Until Amazon.com finds a way to effectively police this problem of counterfeit products, I am advising all Natural News readers to avoid purchasing nutritional products through Amazon.com sellers. The risk of obtaining a counterfeit product — which may actually be dangerous to your health — is simply too high. Instead, purchase nutritional products directly from companies and names you trust.
The fact that counterfeit products are slipping through the cracks at Amazon.com is potentially an enormous threat to the company’s credibility, legal exposure, regulatory compliance and stock price. If a customer is harmed by a counterfeit product purchased on Amazon.com, Amazon may find itself legally liable for at least part of the damages due to “misrepresentation” and even “fraud” that it has negligently allowed to be carried out on its own website.
Learn more:
Standard Process sells ONLY through qualified healthcare professionals and NEVER authorizes the sale of their products online through Amazon.com or any other 3rd party retailer. If you see Standard Process products online you can almost guarantee they are counterfeit.
NEVER BUY STANDARD PROCESS SUPPLEMENTS ONLINE UNLESS THE DOCTOR OR PROFESSIONAL YOU NORMALLY PURCHASE FROM HAS DIRECT SHIPPING ARRANGEMENTS WITH STANDARD PROCESS.
ALERT!!! WE ARE NOW SEEING BIOFREEZE THERAPEUTIC CREAM BEING COUNTERFEITED. DON’T BE FOOLED, GET YOUR PRODUCTS FROM REPUTABLE SOURCES.
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