Garcinia Cambogia Maker Hit With Deceptive Marketing Class Action

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Weight loss supplement maker Healthy Choice Labs, LLC was hit with a class action lawsuit by an Oregon woman, alleging that after signing up for a free trial she was unwittingly charged a monthly fee for repeated shipments of Garcinia Cambogia.

Plaintiff Kassie Merritt says that she gave Healthy Choice Labs her credit card information to cover the $5.00 shipping and handling fees of the “free trial” bottle of Garcinia Cambogia offer she wanted to take advantage of.

“Unfortunately, Defendants don’t clearly or conspicuously disclose that once consumers provide Defendants with their payment information (to purportedly pay for the costs of shipping and handling), Defendants enroll them in a recurring monthly club and then place substantial monthly charges on their accounts without disclosing — in any readily recognizable fashion — that these charges will be imposed,” Merritt says in her deceptive marketing class action lawsuit.

The Oregon woman believes that thousands of Healthy Choice customers have been deceived by the Garcinia Cambodia free trial offer.

Merritt alleges that Healthy Choice, along with the other defendants in the class action lawsuit — Yavone LLC and Global Pro System, Inc. — are engaging “in a far-reaching scheme to defraud consumers into purchasing their supplement.”

According to the Garcinia Cambogia class action lawsuit, she and other potential class members are first deceived by “targeted online advertisements and their affiliate websites that are designed to look like consumer reviews, blogs, and articles recommending” the weight loss supplement.

Merritt alleges that Healthy Choice and the other defendants “designed numerous review websites that purport to be written by consumers satisfied with Defendant’s Garcinia Cambogia products. Unbeknownst to the readers, though, the reviews are not actually ‘unbiased’ or real reviews of Defendants’ product, rather they are merely advertisements designed by one of Defendants’ affiliate marketers.”

“However, these websites are actually fabricated advertisements designed to direct consumers to Defendants’ website where consumers are strongly encouraged to sign up for an introductory free trial,” Merritt says in her deceptive marketing class action lawsuit.

In addition, the defendants also use the name and image of Dr. Mehmet Oz of “The Dr. Oz Show” to tout their product, knowing that Dr. Oz’s health and medical advice is widely respected. However, he was also criticized during a Senate hearing in June 2014 for deceiving customers over “weight-loss aids” on his TV show.

According to Merritt, Healthy Choice was helped by this so-called “The Dr. Oz Effect.”

“Once a consumer was directed to any of Defendants’ websites, they were greeted with statements, graphics and claims — including references to The Dr. Oz Show — designed to convince them to sign up for a ‘free trial’ bottle of Defendants’ products,” the Garcinia Cambogia class action lawsuit claims.

Merritt claims that when she made the shipping and handling payment on the Healthy Choice website that there were no “terms and conditions” or “asterisks or other notations next to the total price directing the consumer to review any further terms or otherwise indicate that this wasn’t the total price to be charged.”

All she was asked for was her name, address, email address, phone number and payment information, she says in her class action lawsuit.

Healthy Choice allegedly placed the disclosure information below the payment information “in a final effort to discourage any consumer from seeing or reading a price disclosure.”

Such practices are prohibited by the Federal Trade Commission, which has stated that “disclosures should be placed as close as possible to the claim they qualify. Advertisers should keep in mind that having to scroll increases the risk that consumers will miss a disclosure,” Merritt cites in her class action lawsuit.

Merritt is looking to represent a nationwide class and a subclass — one for customers who “submitted payment information for Simply Garcinia Cambogia and who were charged monies beyond the listed shipping and handling fee.” The subclass is for “all persons in the class who had monies debited from their bank account beyond the listed shipping and handling fee.”

Merritt is charging Healthy Choice with violating Oregon’s Unlawful Trade Practice Act, fraud in the inducement, fraud by omission, breach of contract, and violating the Electronic Funds Transfer Act.

The plaintiffs is represented by Darian A. Stanford and R. Hunter Bitner of Slinde Nelson Stanford.

There is no attorney information available for the defendants at this time.

The Garcinia Cambogia Deceptive Marketing Class Action Lawsuit is Kassie Merritt v. Yavone LLC et al. in the U.S. District Court of the District of Oregon, Eugene Division.