Lumanere

“Just pay a small postage fee,” Lumanere says on its website, and you can get a “free bottle” of its wrinkle-reducing facial serum. But in reality, signing up for the bottle enters you into an auto-shipment program that’s going to charge you into infinity if you don’t cancel in time. Before you’re asked to surrender your credit card, you can only find this information in the terms and conditions that are buried on the company’s site. The terms state:

By placing your order today you’ll be shipped an initial 30 day supply of Lumanere for trial purposes only (just pay $3.86 S&H). If you feel Lumanere is not for you, cancel within 14 days from today to avoid the purchase price of $89.84 and enrollment in the auto-shipment program. Forty-five days after you start your trial and every thirty days thereafter, we shall send you a fresh 30 day supply of Lumanere and charge you $89.84.

But that’s not all. The Lumanere site pitching the free bottle also features several questionable health claims including that the serum “reinforces(s) the skin’s elasticity” and “helps rebuild the collagen network,” as well as before-and-after images that are really just stock photos of women without and with makeup. And lest we forget this graph that doesn’t even name the inferior skin care product to which Lumanere is compared, if that’s even what “other” represents.

A TINA.org reader who said she was almost stung by Lumanere’s hidden charges alerted TINA.org to the company’s advertising.

Enticing offers are aplenty online. No matter how attractive, remember to read all of an offer’s terms and conditions aka Sometimes termed “mouse print” or, more benignly, “disclosure language”, and presented in miniscule font. It is there to take back every enticing offer made in the ad. before making any purchase online.

Find more of our coverage on skin care products here.