Experts Warn: Bulgarian Consumers to Watch out for New Internet Scam

Business | December 3, 2020, Thursday // 11:08
Bulgaria: Experts Warn: Bulgarian Consumers to Watch out for New Internet Scam pexels.com

Body patches for Coronavirus! Ads touting products with dubious effect inundate sales sites these days

In recent weeks, "healing" patches have been widely available on shared shopping sites. According to the offers, the product effectively supports treatment of coronavirus and boosts the immune system. And the result of the treatment is a matter of days.

According to the ads, the patches have to be fixed in a certain place on the body and following an accurate scheme.

The offer with the miraculous patches is available on many sales sites. The promised effects are the same. The recommended duration of the "healing" session is from 10 to 20 days, which means that about BGN 100 must be paid for a weekly schedule or up to 200 for longer-lasting health effects and immunity boost.

The members of Active Users Association believe that the offer with the healing patches is another scam on the Internet, and their magical properties are difficult to prove.

"Our weak points as consumers are fear and temptation. And that's where they make possible all kinds of scams. We cannot believe such an offer, given that around the world hundreds of thousands of doctors and thousands of institutes are working on medicines and vaccines, and finally it suddenly appears in small advertisements on the Internet that a patch will cure the disease that is blocking the world for BGN 18. This is not possible", said Bogomil Nikolov from Active Users.

To claim medical action, a product must have undergone through a number of tests and be registered by the FDA, the Pharmaceutical Union explains.

"They have no right to claim medical effect. Everyone wants to have a quick solution to this problem. This can't happen that fast. Nor do they have any trials of these patches. This is absolutely illegal", Dimitar Marinov is adamant.

The Consumer Protection Commission has launched a probe into unfair commercial practice that aims to mislead consumers.

 We have made a test purchase, as it is necessary to go all the way to spot an unfair commercial practice. As is currently known from the official positions of the WHO and all authoritative international medical institutes – such reliable treatment is currently under research, but has not yet been found. So, all such offers raise doubts about their fairness and each case will be investigated", said the President of the CPC Dimitar Margaritov.

 Not only the benefit of such products is questionable, but they can also cause side health effects, experts warn. Guarantee of the composition and healing effect of any product that claims such action  can give only pharmacies and drugstores, experts from the industry remind. However, the instructions for using the patches we find in the ads are extremely professionally written, which can easily fool users, experts warn.

 Controlling products that claim miraculous healing effects on the Internet is very difficult, experts admit. Which leads to a boom in this type of fraud.

 

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Tags: Bulgaria, Internet, new scam, Coronavirus

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