Suvaril

Written by: Saira Clemence

Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals in particular and Suvaril in general have spawned a large number of customer complaints. Many of these complaints and the stories surrounding them are available online from sites such as the Rip-Off Report and Complaints.com. Here are a few of the many websites that reveal a pattern of complaints against Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals.

http://w3.ripoffreport.com/reports/ripoff109463.htm
http://badbusinessbureau.com/reports/ripoff104478.htm
http://badbusinessbureau.com/reports/ripoff109784.htm
http://www.ripoffreport.com/view.asp?id=111246&view=printer
http://www.complaints.com/directory/2004/october/20/41.htm
http://www.complaints.com/directory/2004/september/15/34.htm
http://www.quackwatch.org/15Ads/bbb/enzyte.html

The complaints against Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals all follow the same general pattern, and many of them are so similar that they verge on identical. Basically what happens is the customer takes advantage of a "free-trial" offer, agreeing to accept a sample of a Berkeley Nutraceuticals product and to have a shipping fee of around five dollars charged to their credit card. After a few weeks, they receive a second shipment of the product and find that a larger amount of money has been charged to their credit card. Both of these things occur without the customer's permission. Any time a customer attempts to cancel his "membership" in Berkeley's automatic shipment/payment plan, he encounters the same difficulties. Customers who have cancelled their memberships online via Berkeley's company website have reported that they continued to receive shipments and have their credit cards charged even after the cancellation process was completed. When they tried to contact Berkeley's Customer Service department, they were told that the company had no record of their cancellation and that they needed a confirmation number to "prove" that they had cancelled their memberships. The company refused to grant refunds to these customers, even though the customers all stated that no confirmation number was ever supplied when they tried to cancel online.

Customers have also complained that when they tried to call the Customer Service number, they were kept on hold for excessive amounts of time (from forty minutes to over an hour) and that if ever they did manage actually to speak to a representative, that person was very rude and argumentative. Several customers have indicated that after discussions with rude Customer Service reps, they have requested to speak with a supervisor, only to discover that the supervisors were even ruder than the regular service reps.

The Cincinnati area Better Business Bureau has given Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals an Unsatisfactory rating based on the number of unresolved complaints against the company. More information on this rating can be found at here

Currently there is a class-action lawsuit in progress against Berkeley Premium Nutraceuticals alleging that the company misrepresents the benefits of its products and does not respond to customer complaints or offer refunds when customers are charged for products they did not order. Further information about this suit can be found at here