Don’t be stupid

I came very close to spending $50 today on a product that is ridiculous on its face.

Or ridiculous on anyone’s face.

I don’t have a lot of spare cash right now. And yet I got suckered into watching an infomercial for face lift cream.

The hook? An ad that said, “Tighten and lift a saggy neck (do this before bed).”

The cream is sold by a company called “Beverly Hills MD.” The name alone should have told me all I needed to know.

But first I clicked on the ad because I thought I might learn something from the video. Like maybe an easy jaw exercise to firm your neck muscles, for example.

Us cheapskates who want things for free get what we deserve.

The video is long, uses the same script that all marketing videos follow. One of the rules is to tell a really long story that makes the seller seem like a good guy instead of a conniving schmuck.

The story must NOT mention that a product is being sold, but rather convince you that you are going to be inducted into a secret society where you will learn how it is possible to get rid of your saggy neck.

Anyone who has been drawn into these commercial videos more than once would realize quickly that there will be a product, not a free exercise. Still I watched because I thought there might be some new technological breakthrough.

Technology to reverse aging, get rid of your saggy neck without surgery. Right.

The technological breakthrough is that Facebook has gotten better at predicting what kind of product I, a 56-year-old woman, can be talked into buying.

As the HighYa review notes in its understated way,

Beverly Hills MD’s anti-aging products include a lot of proprietary, third-party ingredients that sound really cool and are made to appear effective, although verifiable clinical trials for these products appear to be scarce.

The special Internet-only price for this cream was $49.95, which is in fact half of what this cream sells for on Amazon.

I went to Amazon not to compare prices, but to read the reviews. They were very negative.

And I also read a page on a site called RealSelf, which reviews and gives doctors’ critiques of various body improvement treatments. The page was titled, “Do Face Lift Creams Really Work?”

The answer from doctors was a resounding No.

Thank God for reviews. It’s like having a really smart older sister sitting next to you while you’re watching TV.

Today’s penny is a 2014, which is apparently the year that Beverly Hills MD went into business.