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The big debate: Complaints about a berry seller

‘You can only lose weight by sensible eating and exercising. When will Americans stop wasting their money on worthless pills and get off their duffs?’ – saladfork

The story: The local chapter of the Better Business Bureau has received more than 140 complaints about a company that sells, through a “no-risk free trial,” a weight-loss and health supplement (“snake oil,” according to one reader) derived from the berries of the acai (A-sigh-EE) palm.

Your take: Caveat emptor, of course. The Citizen’s online community is in I-told-you-so-mode, scolding those who purchased the company’s products through its Web site. Also, readers say, you’ll never achieve weight loss by swallowing a pill. Some representative comments:

• “Never give your information out as a condition for a ‘free trial’ of anything.” Leftfield

• ” . . . not only will you suffer the possibility of a raid on your credit card but they may steal your identity in the process.” 3795

• “Only shop online with sites you trust or have had word-of-mouth type references.” Towken1

• “The first red flag would seem to be that this vendor asked for credit card info for a ‘free’ trial.” Pclind

• “Buy one for 10 bucks and get another free? No, that just means that you were forced to buy two and paid five bucks for each of them.” Xflbret

• “Is it me, or there are there a lot of massively obese people in this Town? I mean a lot of really huge porkers . . . .” handslikeclouds

Citizen Online Archive, 2006-2009

This archive contains all the stories that appeared on the Tucson Citizen's website from mid-2006 to June 1, 2009.

In 2010, a power surge fried a server that contained all of videos linked to dozens of stories in this archive. Also, a server that contained all of the databases for dozens of stories was accidentally erased, so all of those links are broken as well. However, all of the text and photos that accompanied some stories have been preserved.

For all of the stories that were archived by the Tucson Citizen newspaper's library in a digital archive between 1993 and 2009, go to Morgue Part 2

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