Slashdot Mirror
California Man Sues Penis-Enlargment Firms
Ronin writes "The DenverPost reports that 'A California man on Thursday sued a slew of international companies, including a Greeley distributor, alleging the penis-enlargement products they market and distribute do not work.' One of the highlights of the article is when the man says "I was wondering for a long time why no one has gotten around to suing these penis-enlargement guys, because it seems like a pretty blatant ... fraud." Probably cause people are too embarrased to say they've tried it."
These things prey on people's desperation and feelings of inadequacy. I mean really, even a tiny dude can score if his head game is good.
It may be hard to track down the spammers advertising it (and prove a link between them and the retailer) but it is hell-of-easy tracking down the retailer when they accept payments on Visa/Mastercard.
It's fairly clear from the article he's a California man suing a Greely, CO firm in Denver, CO, most likely because it's an interstate matter. Greeley is in Weld county... one would assume the suit would take place in the county seat (which I believe is Greeley)... but I don't really know too much in matters of interstate law. Perhaps one of the sides requested a change of venue...
It appears to me that people who are stupid (and insecure, but mainly just stupid) enough to buy these products seem for some reason unable to resist the persuasive tactics of modern marketing. Surely logically, the demographic spending money on such obviously fake products must waste vast amount of money on anything which appears in a slick television commercial, created by intelligent advertising execs who can speak English.
I suspect that even if penis enlargement pills and suchlike are taken off the market, those that will buy such products will simply spend their money on something else that they neither really want nor need (diet pills, viagra, naked teens in their email etc.) Although the advertisers are clearly doing wrong in this case, and suing them is a good course of action, this may not really help matter in the long term. There have always been products on the market whose effectiveness is dubious at best, and are often even harmful, yet some people clearly continue to purchase them. Perhaps the answer could be stricter controls over what products are allowed to be advertised at all. The crazy extreme alternative of course, is to take money away from the stupid people, but with adverts for personal loans and debt consolidation every five minutes during our mind-numbing daytime TV schedules, it seems unlikely that this will happen any time soon.
Food for thought, in any case.
From a social engineering point of view, selling penis enlargement pills can bring a very limited amount of loss. Just imagine, you are a guy who is concerned about his manhood. You buy tons of expensive pills to find out that none of them work. Would you advertise it to the rest of the world? Would you have enough balls to tell a sweet young lady on the other side of the phone that your penis is still small despite that four hundred dollars that you have spent in the past six months? Probably not.
Additionally, you cannot argue when it comes to shady products such as penis enlargement and dieting pills. Usually when you get those items, you get many disclosures that state "Not approved by FDA" and "results may vary." How are you going to argue against that? If you do not believe me, go to any GNC store and get a bottle of any *magic* pills that promise to turn you into a pro-bodybuilder with an eleven-inch manhood. Then read what it says on the bottle... then, if you dare, go and use it. Then go and complain about your results if you find them to be unsatisfactory. At best, everybody is going to laugh at you.
Rich white criminals don't land in pound-me-in-the-ass prisons.
America's judicial system may be better than a lot of systems around the world, but neither is it free of corruptino.
May we never see th
Yeah, uh-huh. So who is this lucky dick anyway? From the "About Me" page, he's a regular working stiff from NYC who you can reach by email at thepill3@lycos.com. No name, as far as I can tell.
So, yeah, if you want to beleive a bunch of absolutely unverifiable crap from "thepill3@lycos.com", then yeah, I suppose it might be interesting. At least he provides lots of links to suppliers.
No matter how many of my rights are taken away, somehow I still don't feel safe. -Frigid Monkey
A lot of these junk products remain legal because they very narrowly escape making outright false claims. My local radio stations are currently inundated with "star registry" commercials in time for V-day. The particular company claims that "the star name is registered in book form in the U.S. Copyright Office." Very clever. Name-dropping a government agency gives their claim an appearance of legitimacy, when in fact all they are doing is taking your $50 and writing down someone's name in a book. Hell, I can do that for $25. Another product claims to regrow hair, and "is so effective that it was awarded a patent." The truth, of course, is that a patent only says a particular party has claim to an idea or method, not that the idea or method actually does something useful.
My personal favorites are the suggested-physician scam products. These companies try to suggest that a doctor is/was involved with the product, and we are supposed to make the mental leap that this means the product has been proven to work through rigorous medical trials. The cheapest scammers use the words "doctor" or "physician" in the product name. Next are the doctors that speak to you on television, but hold a doctorate in some totally unrelated field (most likely business). Some of these guys manage to get a real M.D., but he only says something like "I use it", or perhaps "it worked for me", which really isn't making any legally-binding promises.
But, scammers can claim damn near anything they want, as long as they can make you keep it for [at most] 30 days, they have your money and you can't do a thing about it. (I love it when they claim a 60 or 90 day "guaranteed" refund -- as if they are required by law to honor that) The only thing the scammers have to worry about is if the product hurts you, so it's in their best interest that the product does nothing at all.
Fred
"A fool and his freedom are soon parted"
-RMS
We also feel cheated out of a useful legal system because of sue-happy jack asses such as yourself.
This guy is a real treasure.
Is this really Expanding a Geeks Head..? No pun intended..(ok, yes it is..)) Being a faithful follower & reader of '/.' , this subject here just don't feel right. Is this is a place for 'News for Nerds / Stuff that Matters' or a place for 'Fiends w/ little Wienies / Stuff that Splatters'. Times a changin'~..
Even the ones hawking these things tell you that the average size for a human is something like 6.1 inches. And that the vast majority of humans have "only" that size.
So basically guess what? Anyone who "only" has 6 inches -- or is within, say, +/- 10% of that -- is just a perfectly normal member of the human species.
Why, in Odin's name, would anyone feel desperate and inadequate for being perfectly normal? WTH? Since when it's inadequate to _not_ be a mutant?
I mean, what next? Spam for pills to grow a 6'th finger on your hands? Or to grow an elephant trunk instead of a nose? Or to grow a giraffe neck?
The whole thing seems stupid beyond belief to me.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I've often wondered why the internet is fascinated by:
* Getting a larger penis
* Using chemical pheremones to motivate the opposite sex
* Porn
Then I remembered that the internet is was created by geeks for geeks and funded by a government that knows that large numbers bored smart people would eventually get tired of large numbers of stupid people making the rules.
-- $G