Bogus Testimonials: A Far Too Common Occurrence
Bogus testimonials. I’m sure you’ve seen them on any web site selling weight loss supplements. They usually go something like…
“Wow, thanks so much for a great product. I’ve struggled with my weight for years, constantly flipping from one diet to another. But until I tried ‘Fat Blaster 2000’, I’ve never been able to lose the weight and keep it off. Not anymore… I lost 20lbs. in 30 days! My husband is amazed at my transformation, and can’t keep his hands off me.” Stephanie K, St Louis
Of course, I just made this up now. And I suspect many retailers do exactly the same thing — all the time. But until recently, most weren’t dumb enough to get caught doing it. Notice I said “until recently”. Yup, lately Lab 88, the manufacturers of MetaboSpeed XXX, got caught completely fabricating an amazing testimonial on the effectiveness of MetaboSpeed.
Seems the lady featured in the testimonial (Maree Briggs) never used MetaboSpeed XXX in her life, never endorsed it, and never authorized the endorsement of the product. Seems Lab 88 had stolen her “before and after” pictures and featured them as their own. As you can imagine, she’s none too pleased about the whole thing, and is in the process of taking legal action against these scum bags (click here to read the whole story).
It always amused me to see that product testimonials all “sounded alike.” In other words, they all “read” like they were written by the same person. I receive a lot of feedback on this site, and everyone’s writing style is different, their grammatical preferences are different, and so on.
In other words, the testimonials all sound like they were written by a single person. Perhaps it was Ted in the advertising department?
Bottom line?
While Lab 88 with their Metabo Speed XXX is the only company I know of that has actually been caught fabricating testimonials (hmm… I wonder if Metabo Speed really is the diet pill of the stars?), I would be extremely surprised if this is not a everyday sort of thing. It really all boils down to this old adage…
If it sounds too good to be true, you can bet your “you-know-what” that it is.
