A couple of months ago I raved about a fab eye treatment caled Relastin, and a handful of you wrote in complaining about the company's automatic shipment program. It's certainly worth a clarification here as well as some tips to get around it:
The Relastin site encourages you to sign up for the free 30 day trial offer; you enter your credit card details to cover shipping, and the company sends you a full size Eye Silk and Skin Revitalizer (the face cream, which I have not reviewed yet). The catch is that if you don't cancel within 30 days of the ship date, the company will charge your credit card $96 + shipping and handling every 45 days and automatically ship you a new full size Eye Silk and Skin Revitalizer.
There are a number of problems with this: (1) the offer details aren't clearly displayed on the order page, (2) it isn't clear that you can simply order the product a la carte, (3) if you only want to use one of the two products, you're stuck, and (4) I don't know about you, but I don't finish jars of eye and face cream in 45 days!
Still, Relastin Eye Silk is a great product that I highly recommend, so here are some steps to avoid being sucked in by the auto-ship program:
- If you choose to enroll in the "free trial offer," read the fine print (scroll to the bottom of the page and click the link for "offer details") and make sure you call to cancel within 30 days of the ship date. If the 30 day trial period expires and you attempt to send back your first paid shipment, you will NOT be refunded, so be vigilant!
- Just order a la carte. The site pushes the 30 day trial program so vigorously that it's hard to see the "regular" order option. Click here to go directly to that page (just scroll down past the 30 day offer). You can still send the product back within 30 days for a full refund, so if you hate it you're only out the shipping cost.
- Make sure to remove the 30 day trial option from your cart when checking out. Annoyingly, it's placed in there automatically when you order anything. Why would I want to enroll in the free trial and auto-ship when I'm already paying to order a product?
It's really a shame when annoying and deceptive business practices like this tarnish the reputation of a great quality product. Normally I wouldn't even bother with Relastin after having to navigate all this, but I really do love the Eye Silk. Fortunately, there's a way to get it without all this hoopla if you follow the steps above.
And no matter what you're buying, it's a best practice to always, always, always read the fine print!
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