CCN – or Central Coast Nutraceuticals – have recently experienced what it feels like to be at the wrong end of customer dissatisfaction. Their shady on line sales and advertising tactics met with anger and confusion, resulting in hundreds of complaints being made to the Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard. Goddard set about trying to bring the company to justice.

Justice was seen to be done when CCN settled for a record $1,375,000, $350,000 of which was to be set aside for consumer restitution.

This might seem a harsh punishment but bear in mind that CCN’s huge profits came about purely and simply through deceit. The business model used by CCN in selling acai was that of the ‘free trial’. Customers were enticed into giving credit card details in return for receiving a free trial of acai products, or the other health products sold by the company.

The small print of the acai free trial offer would contain a provision whereby CCN continued to charge the customer periodically for further items sent. So far, you’ll see that nothing untoward has taken place; unfortunately this is where the legitimacy of the operation stopped. Customers were unable to cancel the acai berry subscription whether they wanted to continue with it or not. This meant that customers were getting charged without their consent, and often without their knowledge. In addition, CCN were shipping products that were never requested, again they were subject to a periodical – expensive – subscription.

Most on line sellers struggle with customer trust at the best of times. Unfortunately it is incidents like this that force on line retailing backwards.